A moment of silence and remembrance for those lost on that terrible day, and since.

I was driving to work on the north beltway at the time when John Matthews highlighted on radio that there had been a plane that hit the WTC tower.

We watched the news footage at work over some TVs as the second tower was hit. We all went home around lunch time. Not a plane in the sky Ill never forget, earily quiet outside.

My wife had a Dr. Appt for our first child, she was at ~35 weeks. He sent her home for bed rest from that day on, baby born 10/05 she is 18 and at Texas A&M now.

We saw some immense unity after that for a period of time at least.

If my calculations are right, kids born after 9/11 are voting this year - for the first time.

I was in the cube farm at work, working calmly and thinking about the day being the one-year mark on my new job. Then my pal Bill (RIP, WWG!) spun his chair around and said calmly, "Some dumbass just ran a plane into the World Trade Center." We assumed it was a small plane... two-seater or something.

We looked at each other for a moment, with a giant "WTH cloud" around us. Internet service then wasn't nearly as good as it is now, and we had a hard time getting more information. Suddenly Number One in the house rolled a TV from the training room into the conference room -- near a narrow window in an effort to get some over-the-air signal. (Our building is sorta in the sticks.)

About twenty of us stood in front of the TV, finding out it was most definitely not a small aircraft. Shock, simultaneous calm and panic, tears and prayers. I looked at my in-house mentor as if to ask, "what do we do now?" His answer (without my having actually asked a question aloud) was, "find a donation center and go donate blood. Now is the time."

I'm used to seeing an airplane or two over the house each day, and several over the building at work. The coming days were eerily silent.

May we remain vigilant and united, and may we never forget the lives that were stolen from innocent people on that day.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: vthoky,

Was spaying a dog at my old clinic when someone walked in and said a plane hit the WTC. We all commented about how inept one would have to be to do that, and that we wondered what was up. Then the second plane hit. Someone actually pulled a tv with rabbit ears into the edge of the surgery suite and I finished my surgery watching them burn.


I remember that I vacillated between numbness, anger, and helplessness the rest of the day, and the airport (which was directly across from our clinic) had airplanes stacking up as they were ordered grounded to whatever airport wherever they happened to be near. I called my wife and asked her to go get my daughter from school, because in my mind this might be only a part of the bigger picture of an impending attack from a foreign power. She told me that she'd been sick that day, and was home.

Terrible, terrible day.

Stepped off a train in Duesseldorf with a bunch of GOs to see the second plane hit on the overhead. Spent that evening and the next day trying to get back to Andrews AFB and the Pentagon, and commandeered the last C141, probably the last plane, out of Europe. Literally spent the next year with the CAT in the basement of the Pentagon, walking over my dead friends every evening for the first few months, tracking down who did it, and laying down and implementing the plans to hunt down and kill every last one of the fuckers responsible, and their dogs, and their cats, and their mice and their cockroaches. Until mission complete.

God bless you, Doc H. You and all who carried out those plans.

^^^^^^

I'd like to echo Dr. T on that.

You and all Americans are very welcome, and I hope God will see it in His own light, because we laid waste the earth in those first weeks, unreported, unhindered and unrepentant. I'm sorry we didn't tag some key players sooner. And I'm sorry we weren't better prepared and couldn't execute faster, with a clearer vision of the past, the future and consequences. Those who come after, that I trained, will certainly be, and God willing will never need to be. They asked the team when we disbanded what we would like after we stood down. By then we were a Band of Brothers in every sense, some even much later to die along the way, because of this one day. I will never forget. Never. No one wanted a medal, or even a commendation. The consensus was unanimous, and Media developed and presented each of us this:



The gentleman on the left at the head of the stretcher in the photo on the right near the bottom is the Surgeon General of the USAF, P. K. Carlton.

May God bless those who lost everything this day, and everyone who lost someone they loved. And God bless this great country and those who defend her.

Worth watching. Remember what duty costs. Then bow your head and, as Gen. George S. Patton said, do not mourn that such men died, but thank God that such men lived.

I was right across the street from the Pentagon in an office building on 9/11. Most of the offices did not have a direct view of the Pentagon, only a select few did. I was on the phone with a customer when someone came down the hallway to my office stating that a plane had hit the WTC. Like many others, I figured it was a small plane - a Cessna or something like it that that run into the building. I just chalked it up to a terrible chance event. I continued on the phone calling customers, when the news came that another plane hit the other tower. While I was talking on the phone, I tried to get into cnn.com, but the internet seemed jammed - I could not get through.

At that point, it was obvious the first plane strike was deliberate, plus it was known it was a large plane. Everyone in the office had gathered and were talking about the incident, and nothing was getting done...But at that point, no one realized it was only the beginning. Not long after, there was a muffled "boom" which shook the building. Not being able to see the Pentagon directly, someone joked, "Maybe they bombed the Pentagon". I found an office with a view of the Pentagon, with the smoke rising. I called my wife to tell her, and she said, "Get the hell out of there". Everyone was pretty rattled, so I shut the office down. By that time, smoke from the Pentagon was drifting into our building's parking garage under the building.

It was total gridlock in the streets outside - in fact, what was normally a 45-minute drive home during rush hour became a 6 hour effort to get home. While stuck in traffic, I was listening to the local news station - and there were rumors of another plane that was unaccounted for. No one had any clear facts, but it was very obvious at that point that a major attack was underway. Of course, that was the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. Efforts to contact my wife again were thwarted by jammed cell phone circuits. While stuck in traffic I saw lots of black suburban vehicles forcing their way through traffic - clearly Government vehicles. A mass exodus from DC was underway.

I eventually got through to my wife in Herndon, VA. She was at the local elementary school helping them out. Half of the parents that were available had come to the school to get their kids.

I can't remember exactly when in this mess I heard all of this, it may have been a few days after, but some Senator or Congressperson said a communication was intercepted that said, "Two targets hit" - I think that is when it became clear who was responsible for the event.

I will never forget that day, as I suspect everyone of age during that time will always remember what they were doing on 9/11/2001.

I was a young lawyer in my country of birth, and woke up after one of those crazy 20-hour days youngsters are wont to do. In the haze of my sleep-deprivation, it took me a while to realise that what I was seeing on tv was real.

God bless America.