My 9-11 Reflections on the 20th Anniversary

Well on the 20th Anniversary of 9-11 many people are shairng their 9-11 story. So, here is mine.

I will never forget that day. I was up the hill from the Pentagon at Ft Myers-Henderson Hall attending a briefing in the theater when the plane hit the Pentagon. We felt the building shake from the crash. We all ran out of the theater and saw the smoke and fuselage of American Airlines Flight 77 in the side of the Pentagon. That image will be with me until I die.

I was stationed at the Navy Yard and so the five of us at the briefing from OJAG/NAMARA spend the next 5 plus hours trying to get back to the Navy Yard for accountability and in anticipation of some follow on orders to support the Pentagon. Streets were gridlocked, subways were not running, and cell service and phone lines were down. We were also expecting to need to change into utility uniforms to support the search and recovery operations, since the Service "Charlie" uniform (well starched short sleeve khaki shirt and green trousers) and "plastic" corfram oxford shoes, would not protect or hold up crawling through the rubble of the Pentagon. The atmosphere of DC changed in that instant. The streets usually bustling were eerily empty like a scene from The Walking Dead. As we got closer to the Navy Yard we walked past Marine Barracks 8th & I. The Marines on the gates were no longer in dress blues, but now in combat fatigues with flacks and helmets and M-16's with ammo magazines inserted. They were ready for war... and after seeing and feeling the impact of the crash, so were we.

Arriving at the Navy Yard was anticlimactic compared to the effort to get there. The offices were empty and we were told simply to take some briefs to work on and go home. Military and civilian disaster and emergency response units had it, they did not need a bunch of lawyers in uniform stummbling around the scene trying to "help". We were told the best thing we could do was to keep doing our jobs preparing appellate briefs and arguments for appeals of courts-martial from home for the next couple of days, keeping in touch and accountable by phone and ensuring our own families were safe.

To this day I still ask myself, should I have just run down the hill? Was accountability and getting back to the Navy Yard really that important? I was not the senior person in our group, should I have disregarded the instructions of my immediate superior? And if I had ran down the hill, could I have made a difference, or would I simply have gotten in the way of the trained search and rescue teams and firefighters already on the scene?

Leaving the Navy Yard around 1630 (4:30 pm) that day and heading home, no one was on I-395. I drove past the Pentagon, now with the flag draped over the side, at about 15 mph and just stared in disbelief. That sight and the whole day just seemed so surreal, as if clocks might start melting next. My memory of that drive and view of the Pentagon always plays back in my mind in extreme slow motion.

When I arrived home it was the first time I had spoken with my wife since I left that morning for work. I told her as I was leaving I had a meeting at Henderson Hall but planned to stop by the Pentagon beforehand to meet up with a few friends and see if they would also be attending. She had no idea if I was in the Pentagon or not when the plane hit. I never made it to the Pentagon because I was told to carpool with the others going rather than drive myself. So when Jill saw me it was like she seeing a ghost at first. I felt guilty for her worry and for the relief and joy she now had. Because I had not come back from the dead, or even a near death brush; I was simply returning home from an Odyssey trying to do the things I was told were right but providing no sense of accomplishment or service in doing them.

So that in my 9-11 story. No personal heroics, no brushes with death. Though there are countless stories of such from those in the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and Flight 93. I was close, but not really fully in it. In some ways though my experience was foreshadowing and emblematic of the last 20 years. There are some true heroes for certain, but many of us served, followed orders and did our part. We may even have taken pride in it at the time, but never felt a full connection the bigger picture, or felt that the picture we had on the ground was different from the one DC was seeing. What was worse was seeing our efforts undone shortly after we departed, only to be redone a few years later by others, and then abandoned yet again. We are not the forgotten Vietnam generation. We have had more than our share of parades and "thank you for your service". But we are also not my father's World War II "Greatest Generation" who survived the Great Depression, won a war and changed the world. I don't know what our future legacy is to be. Will we be eclipsed by the China war generation? Or might we live to see yet another generation pick-up our mantle and return yet again to Afghanistan and Iraq/Syria?