Since today is 911 I decided to write about my memories of 911. As with most of us, the events of that day had a profound impact on our lives, whether it was a fundamental change that will last a lifetime or not, the result is the same, the world we knew on September 10th was and will be forever different from the world after September 11th. But for me I felt the change beginning on September 10th something made me feel creepy and it was confirmed on September 11th.
At the time I was working full time for the California Army National Guard, and on September 10th I would be flying from California to South Carolina, in order to work with recruits at Fort Jackson. Up until 911, the Army and particularly the National Guard was having a difficult time of keeping recruits motivated during the time between arriving at basic and actually beginning basic training. For some recruits this time period could be a matter of days or several months. And believe me few things are worse when you’re eighteen than being on an active duty post waiting to start training, and doing “busy work”. You aren’t a solider yet, you don’t know when to salute or not, or even how to talk to other people in the military, and if you do open your mouth its usually the wrong thing to do. As you can imagine this is a time when young soldiers go “I’ve been her two months, this isn’t what I signed up for, I want out.” And at that time, soldiers could get out fairly easy. So the numbers in the National Guard were falling, they couldn’t keep recruits in long enough to get them through basic training, and something needed to be done. So they reached out to the different States and their National Guard soldiers, and asked them to send Non-commissioned Officers (NCO) to Fort Jackson for the express purpose of keeping the recruits motivated until they would actually start basic training.
September 10th I sat in the Sacramento airport waiting on another soldier, I’ll call her Sergeant Cammo, who would be traveling with me to Fort Jackson for the same reason. When she arrived she was in the old green camouflage uniforms we wore before the desert cammies and the new digital uniforms. Wearing these uniforms, at that time, was unacceptable for traveling you could travel in dress uniforms but wearing cammies to travel in was frowned upon. So me being the senior NCO, I frowned at her. She had a reason, her life had just turned upside down, when someone had broken into her apartment stolen a lot of stuff, and the only thing she had clean was in her car, which was her cammies. I didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much we could do because the flight was boarding.
We arrived at Chicago and were waiting for our connecting flight, when I noticed an older gentleman dressed in a business suit reading a paper and staring at my traveling mate Sergeant Cammo. I’m not very adept at reading individuals and for the most part people don’t stare, its just impolite, but this guy had the creepy kinda stare going, not like he was a pervert, but like a killer. He looked at Sereant Cammo with a deep hatred or disgust. At one point Sergeant Cammo got up to get something at shop and this guy, got up and followed her. I watched and waited. Sergeant Cammo came back, and we waited to board, Creepy dude sat a little away from us watching her the whole time. I’m not one to jump up at tell a guy to stop looking at a girl, but this guy creeped me out. I stood up to approach him just when they called for us to board the plane, I used the opportunity to hustle us both on board and watched creepy dude walk away from the boarding area back into the terminal. Why was he so interested in Sergeant Cammo? The only reason I could think of is that she was in uniform. At the time I suspected he might have been former military and was upset to see a young soldier flying in her cammies, and wanted to read her the riot act about doing so. Years later I still think the reason he was watching her was because she was in uniform, but I don’t think it was because he was former military and wanted to chew her out, I think it was because she stood out like a sore thumb.
After arriving at Fort Jackson and getting settled in, I still had another soldier, call him Sergeant Black Hat coming from California. He would be arriving later, and I would need to use a van to pick him from the airport around eight in the evening.
I arrived a little before eight and sat in the terminal to await the flight. The flight never showed, and shortly after it was supposed to, I was called over the intercom to pick up a courtesy phone. Sergeant Black Hat called me to let me know that his flight had been re-routed in Chicago and he was in
Massachusetts, his next flight would put him in around midnight.
I went back to base caught a cat nap and headed back to the airport. Flight shows up, but no Sergeant Black Hat. Once again a call for me to pick up the courtesy phone comes out over the intercom. Sergeant Black hat is on the other line. He’s complaining that all the flights are messed up, they couldn’t get him on, but his luggage is, can you pick it up at the carousel, I’m renting a car and driving down. All pretty strange but at this point, I’m just tired, so I get his luggage and take it to the base. Sometime in the early morning Sergeant Black Hat arrives after driving through the night and early morning to get there.
The morning of September 11th myself and four others, Sergeant Black Hat, Sergeant Cammo and another Sergeant were running around base in-processing, since we would be there for a month. Somewhere between the pay department and medical we heard news that a plane hit one of the towers. My first thought was some stupid student pilot, flew his little Cesna into the building. A short time later we heard the second plane hit the other tower, and we made it to an office where they had the television on. Then we new it wasn’t just some student, it was planned.
Immediately the base closed down, and guards were put on the incoming checkpoints. For years this base had been an open base, because it was mainly a training post, many families would come to see their friends and loved ones graduate basic and advanced training, the guard shacks were normally empty and the gates permanently open. That all changed. The gates were closed and the guard shacks were manned. Something that hadn’t occurred in over twenty years became the norm, the base became a closed base. As a side note I always thought it was funny that just a week before 911 the base had conducted a test during the morning rush. The test they conducted was this. They closed all the entrances to the base put guards in the shacks and checked everyone’s I.D. They had done this just to check how much disruption it would cause, in the event they needed to close the base. Only a week before 911, curious?
As I stated early on the world changed that day and for me it started on September 10th. A few years later I was deployed to Iraq with the 2668 Transportation Unit, a California Army National Guard unit from Sacramento. My unit made it through the entire deployment without loosing a single soldier, which in the end is the single most important aspect of any deployment, not what you do while your there but who you come home with.
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