Remembering September 11, 2001.

According to the news today is the “anniversary” of the events of 9/11. I don’t really like the use of that term in this context, this is not something to celebrate. The word remembrance is much more appropriate.

I remember my boss MSgt Kersey (RIP) stopping by my house in the morning and telling me to turn on the TV, and then the entire process of trying to figure out if this was real or some sort of mean “War of the Worlds” type joke being played on us by the media. I remember the pure disbelief, the pure anger, the pure hatred, and then realizing that my plane was leaving in two days.

Everything is kind of a blur after that. I remember packing my bags and landing in Kuwait.

After landing we were divided up into teams and drove to FOBs with names like H1, H4, and H5 the cool names were yet to be introduced, AAFES and Burger King, Morale Tents, Chapels, etc were no where to be seen.

We would have to drive back and forth to the Airport in normal everyday SUVs…no body armor, no vehicle armor, 20 rounds of ammo (at most, did not want to scare the locals you know), oh and no convoys. That’s right 3-4 of us would pile in an SUV and hit “Dead Sheep Highway” and drive sometimes over an hour to the Airport without GPS, SINCGAR, Cellphones, or anything nice like that. We were told to not stop in between the FOBs and to drive as fast and aggressively as we could, even had orders (yes orders) to run over civilians if they would not get out of the way (they could be terrorist), so there we were driving 100-120mph down the highway blowing by “security checks” (sometimes they were real, sometimes they were thieves/terrorists) and cutting in and out of traffic this was the way we rolled….it was common thought that if you had to come to a complete stop off post you would probably not be making it to the next post you would either be killed or taken prisoner or worse if you were a female.

After 90-120 days (or more) depending on your orders it was time to go home. Go to Airport, turn in weapons, put on civilian clothes, and use your GPC once in Baltimore to get home (yep you were responsible for your own transportation)….when you got back to your home base there was no reintegration time, no welcome party, it was just right back to work…often with-in a day or two of returning (travel time was counted as your rest time) unless you were lucky enough to get leave…..to people in the duty section you were just the Guy who got to spend the last 4-6 months in the dessert “slacking off” while they busted their asses to “cover you.” No one really knew what you had been through, we had not been at War for most of if not all of the senior leaderships careers….we had Chiefs/Cols/Seniors/MSgts/hell probably Generals that had never been deployed and had no idea how to deal with us when we returned……..we got to get called smartasses at training because we truly “knew” better ways to do things than the folks who were training us (who also had never been deployed)…we got called liars because command did not want to believe that they had sent us over there without the appropriate equipment, supplies, or yes even training (OJT in a war zone sucks). Anyway needless to say the process has gotten better, the training has gotten better, but as I know from multiple additional deployments after this first one being away from family and being stuck in a war zone still sucks.

Many thanks to all my military brethren both those who forged the way “Before it was cool to deploy” and those who took up the banner and continued to fight when we got to old or broken. Someday I pray this nonsense will come to an end, but I doubt it. As long as there is “evil” in the world we will continue to send good men and women to lay down their lives in the defense of what is right. Peace, love, and democracy to all.