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

[RGD.]

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

[shark]

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...