I was getting ready for work when my wife told me that a plane had hit the TC. I thought it was probably a small private plane and didn't go watch the TV right away. About 10 minutes later I sat to have my coffee and watched the morning news. Thought, 'Wow, that's a big hole'. At the time the talking heads were speculating that it was a charter flight, etc... Then as I watched the live feed, the second tower was hit. My first thought was, well blank. Stunned. My second thought was this was our Pearl Harbor and we are at war.

With the Pentagon then hit and the reports of the fourth plane, I knew our lives had changed forever. My son was due to go into the Navy on Oct. 1. Thoughts of his safety were high as we weren't sure who was responsible.

Never Forget!
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I just want to say thank you to everyone for sharing... I think threads like this help to bring you back to the day this happened. It lets your remember how you felt, and every other important and not so important detail. It's helps you to remember that day and how we pulled together as a country. How even in one of our darkest moments in history we as American's turned it into one of our brightest.

I think President George W. Bush said it best when he said "Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature, and we responded with the best of America" on Sept 11, 2001:-)
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On duty. I had the OOD that day. I had two boat crews getting ready to get underway, and I was in the armory getting weapons. The CO was there, he was getting underway with one of the crews.

The cook at the time was a huge Howard Stern fan, and a wicked joker. He cam busting through the doors of the messdeck and said the WTC had been bombed. I remember asking him where he had heard that. When he said Howard Stern, we all called bullshit, but flipped on the TV anyway, just in time to see the second plane hit.

We all watched in disbelief.

The boats got underway. I kept updating the CO over the Nextel as things went on, and I could kind of tell he was getting a little pissed. When the Pentagon got hit, he had the boats RTB, and we posted emergency billets, with no recall.

2 hours later, the CO got a call. He then closed his door and didn't come out until after 9pm. An MK3 at Station Fire Island was a fire fighter in NYC on one of the high ladder teams, and had died in one of the towers. This kid was like a son to my CO when he was the OiC at that station. I had gone into his office to give him a status report on emergency watches, and he promptly shooed me out of the office. He was a mess.

That night, I had tons of calls of people wanting to volunteer sentry duty at the station. One, a former Marine sniper, said: "I have my .50 and a high power scope. Just give me coffee." I had to turn him down. I kept telling people that if they had to volunteer, to do it with the Red Cross or their local National Guard armory.

The next day when I got off duty, I drank and cried
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At home on annual leave from my job in the Fort Worth Federal Building. This was the first year since that I didn't take that day off.
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I was in my office here at the house going over some jobs with my two foremen. The TV just happened to be on when they broke the news. We all just sat here stunned. And then the Pentagon got hit.

I live less than 7 miles away from the Pentagon. In my wife's job - she is frequently at either Crystal City or the Pentagon in the Army section - which is the section that got hit.

I spent the next three hours frantically trying to contact her, cell phones and land lines were jammed/down. I can't tell you the thoughts that went through my mind when I could not reach her. When I finally did reach her - she was safe. But a girl in the office - lost her husband at the Pentagon. Sad note here is that she showed up for work the next day. She was in shock and had to be taken to the hospital.

All told we lost 8 people that my wife and I knew through her work. And there were more that she knew of from meetings/briefings that she attended there.

The next day when I arrived on my companies job site - it was tough to keep my eyes dry - our workforce is primarily Guatemalan - and every one of their vehicles was flying an American flag from it's antenna.


Ron
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I was out of work at the time. I was at one of the Michigan Works centers when it all went down. One of the employees came into the room and said something about a terrorist attack in New York, so I went and they had a television tuned to the news...I went home. As I was driving home the news came over the radio about a plane crashing somewhere in PA...
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I was at work at the job I had then. It was a mill job and we didn't have TV. But I remember when someone had heard about it and told me, I found a portable radio (don't even remember where I found it) and listened to it on the radio for the rest of the day. I remember just being in shock for the first couple hours and then I was angry.
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I was sitting in my history class when we turned on the news to see about current events....

About half the kids in my class started to have panic attacks all at the same time, as their parents worked at the WTC. My father was flying from JFK to LAX that day, and while the reports were still sketchy about where other planes were headed, I was nervous as all hell. I recall spending most of the day in tears.
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I was teaching a second grade class and turned the TV on when they went to a resource class. I will never forget the initial confusion and then the anger. I will continue to pray that we stand strong to all aggression towards our country both internal and external.
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I had just started vacation and I got up before my kids and turned on the TV, which was never my routine on a week day.

I couldn't believe what was happening! I got the rest of the family up and we watched in horror. I took the kids to school and came back home and watched in unbelief... Why?

Everything changed that day!!!
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Let's see...

Feb 93, when it was bombed the first time, we were locked down on Coleman Barracks in Mannheim, Germany.

This time, I was watching CNN with the 1SG (now retired) and we both shook our heads. Then we both said the same thing - ""ya know, something like this happened about 8 years ago......"".
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I was deployed as a peacekeeper in Kosovo. Remember dropping guys off that day and when we got back to the base people had their helmets and body armor on. Of course when we got back we missed Afghan and did invasion of Iraq.
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I was in High School, and we knew something was going on when we saw the teachers all getting the same notice. We finally heard while walking between classes. I was in the center of the courtyard when I found out.
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