A Quarter Century Later ...

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Twenty five years ...

A quarter century ...

The world went from looking pretty good, from my own perspective, to yet another nightmare vision.

I'd grown up during Vietnam, the specter of that conflict loomed ever closer as I got older. Casualty lists published in magazines, along with pictures of those who fell, were not uncommon. I began to wonder if that was my fate.

No.

Then the Cold War, which seemed to heat up throughout my adulthood, but never boiled over. The threat of nuclear weapons hovered over everything.

I was on Okinawa when two U.S. Army officers were murdered by the North Koreans in the DMZ. We had two squadrons of Phantoms on the way to Kunsan in no time at all. War seemed very likely.

No.

The Soviet Union collapsed, the Warsaw Pact died, it looked as if peace was breaking out all over. I retired from the Air Force, my oldest went into Navy ROTC, things were looking pretty good.

In the spring of 2001, my son was commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy. My oldest daughter had an ROTC scholarship in hand and would be following her brother into that program. Everything seemed wonderful, and in many ways it was.

It was a Tuesday, an absolutely gorgeous day. I was in the courtyard at work, chatting with a buddy, someone mentioned that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. My first thought was this ...

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I went down to the cafeteria, on the way I heard that it was a commercial airliner which had hit one tower of the building.

It wasn't an accident, it was this ...

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At the cafeteria where, back in the good old days, we had a television tuned to CNN, we could see one tower of the WTC smoking. There was a big crowd in there, all eyes glued to the screen, everyone was very, very quiet.

As we watched, a second aircraft hit the other tower.

A friend in the crowd turned to me and asked what this meant, I answered with three words ...

"We're at war."

And so we were, but with who? A bunch of assholes who were already dead? The country they came from, the guy who planned the whole thing?

While I walked back to my desk, in stunned silence, my first thought was how this might affect my son, now on active duty. Then I wondered how The Missus Herself might feel about me returning to active duty. It was a possibility.

But this was a different war, Dubya went after the wrong bad guys, Iraq was a sideshow. Afghanistan followed, the world once again went to hell in a handbasket and once again the specter of nuclear weapons raised its ugly head.

Who was the enemy?

All I know is that the world changed that day, and not for the better.

And things seem to be getting worse.

The American people woke up on September 11th, 2001. Now they've gone back to sleep.

The wolves are once again at the door.

Never forgive, never forget ...

U.S. Air Force Photo

Too many Americans already have.

Have I Forgotten?

The National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial is seen on the 19th anniversary of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, Washington, D.C., Sept. 11, 2020.
(DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando)

No, I have not.

I gave some thought Sunday to having juvat move his regular post to Tuesday, but Mondays suck enough without depriving the readers of juvat's musings. Which I also enjoy. Then again, I wasn't really ready to write about this date on Sunday. Though it's been 22 years, the memory of this particular event remains raw, an open wound on my psyche. I think of that day often. (I talked a bit about that here.)

I thought about waiting until tomorrow to post this, but no, it has to be done today. Not to overshadow juvat, but it is 9-11. For some of us, that happened yesterday. (Especially when you have a child who was commissioned as an Ensign in the Navy in the spring of 2001. War is much more immediate. I'd rather go myself than send any of my kids.)

While looking around for remembrances of this day, I saw these posts: one by my friend and colleague, HMS Defiant, another by my sister-in-arms, Zendo Deb, and this last one from ABC News, which rather stunned me, but it shouldn't have.

- Forty percent of those who died at the World Trade Center -- 1,104 victims -- remain unidentified.

Considering the scale of the destruction, I suppose that shouldn't have shocked me. But it did.

As to the posts from my friends noted above, I agree with everything said therein. We are ill-served by those who run the government. We have been for quite some time.

I've visited that memorial at the Pentagon, wrote about it here, see that name on the bench in the opening photo? Another reason why I'll never forget, never forgive.

IT2 Kris Romeo Bishundat, USN

(Source, both photos)

Go read about IT2 Bishundat at that source.

We often forget, these were not just names, they were real people, with real lives. Their future ended on this day, 22 years ago.

Never forget ...

I won't.

Memory

(Source)

It can be a hard thing, memory.

Remembering what was can be good.

Or not so much.

The first time I ever saw the World Trade Center was from an aircraft. It was December of 1991. My brother and I had driven my car down to Bayonne, to have it shipped to Germany.

We had driven down to Bradley, in Connecticut, where we left my brother's car. We would fly back from New York, pick up his car and drive back to my parents' house from there. I remember well that it was snowing like crazy when we left.

It was clear by the time we got to Bayonne.

After a taxi ride from Bayonne to JFK, we boarded a small aircraft for the return trip to Bradley. I didn't realize it, but this was my brother's first plane ride since we were kids. (Mom and Dad would take us to the local air show every year, where Dad would pay for my brothers and I to go flying for a half hour or so. Good times.)

As we headed out, first we went west of the Hudson, as I recall. We eventually turned on a heading for Bradley. From the aircraft I looked towards Manhattan, and there they were, the Twin Towers. First time I'd ever seen them, it was also the last.

They were truly magnificent. This was my second trip to New York, the World Trade Center hadn't been built the first time I was there, tallest building at the time was the Empire State Building.

After our return from Germany, and my retirement from the Air Force in 1999, my oldest daughter went to New York with the high school band. She went to the top of one of the Towers, I don't remember which one. So for various reasons, I felt a connection with those buildings.

Fast forward to a beautiful September day in 2001. Word spread quickly through my place of work that a plane had crashed into one of the Towers.

I was outside having a cigarette (for I was a smoker in those days) and my first thought was of the time a B-25 had flown into the side of the Empire State Building. But that had been a very foggy day, this day was brilliant, clear skies, Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited (CAVU). So it had to be something else.

And so it proved to be. My parents' generation remembers where they were when Pearl Harbor was attacked, mine remembers where we were when the World Trade Center was attacked.

For some years after, The Missus Herself and I had occasion to travel by aircraft, often passing through Newark. That hole in the New York skyline always made me remember that day.

Then one day, as I looked over towards New York, I saw something different.

(Source)

It felt strange to see something there, it filled the hole in the skyline, but it didn't fill the hole in my heart. It's hard to explain. I wasn't sure how I felt about it then.

To this day, I still don't.

One thing is certain, on this day I remember what happened that day and the many things which followed in the wake of that day, I will never forget.

And, God help me, I will never forgive.