Where were you???

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