I’m not sure where to begin. Somwhere between my outrage with ABC for their revisionist history and my recollection of that moment in DC, lies my loss for words. I tried to write about 9/11 yesterday but, I could not do it.
5 years ago I was wandering my way to work at a US Navy project office. I remember it was a nice day in Old Town Alexandria, VA. just on the south side of the Potomac. I took my time on my walk to work, as I frequently did, and stopped into my favourite coffee shop. I grabbed a cup of Route 66 blend from Mischa’s and made my way the rest of the way into the office. I was within 10 feet of my desk when our project leader came into the room. John, Rob and I were confused by his news. The initial report we heard from him was that a small plane, possibly a Cessna, had crashed into a building downtown NY. My office mates and I looked at each other as we processed the news and we shrugged. “Well that sucks” said John. We all silently wondered how the poor bastard had managed to hit a building. Bad day. With that we turned back to our computers.
Not long after the boss came back in a told us that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. What the f*ck? We had managed to move from the impression of some poor bastard in a wayward commuter plane hitting some nondescript building to two airliners hitting the World Trade Center. This was no accident. This was very very bad. We switched from network security monitoring to data mining. We searched for anything we could find on the internet about the mornings events.
Rob was a smart kid. But, he had the unfortunate habit of a habitual smoker. The nervous nature of what was happening was starting to creep in. He excused himself to go outside for a smoke. John and I exchanged a glance and I knew that he too was nervous. We all were at this point. I was sure that this was going to get worse before it got better. I exchanged a few instant messages with friends in Europe and Canada as they too tried to figure out what the hell was going on. Sadly, I was of little use to them.
Then we heard it. My coffee cup started to shake on my desk. The picture frames on the wall began to rattle. I looked at John and saw the colour had drained from his face. I had little doubt that he saw the same thing in me. The windows in our three floor office building were then blotted out by an alien form. A massive image of what could only have been a plane was there just above our three story building. I closed my eyes and waited. For a moment I thought this one was for us. I expected a momentary flash, a crash and searing heat. I gripped the edge of my desk and waited. But, that didn’t come. The roar began to fade. Rob came running into the office shouting “did you fucking see that shit?!” Flight 77 had just passed over us by on it’s way across the 395 to the the Pentagon. I looked at John, father of two, and realized that he had tears in his eyes. He and I had both thought that was it for us. We could see the rivets on the bottom of the plane. It was that low.
We snapped to it and began to lockdown the facility. We had been in this location for only a few days and no one really knew we were here. This thought hadn’t kicked in before. We decided to stay put. Then we heard it. The plane had hit the Pentagon. Enough already. But no, it kept coming. Now the attacks had switched into high gear as the US media in fine fashion whipped up the hysteria and started reporting ANYTHING that they heard. We had reports that there were car bombs going off around the Washington Mall. Then we heard that there were armed attackers running around the Capitol firing AKs.
The phones were out. We were ordered by the Navy to stay put. The media was off and running. By this point it was nearly lunch time now. We ventured out and headed down to the coffee shop on the first floor. In order to get there we had to go outside and cross the courtyard. The smell, the smell was acrid. The smell of burning jet fuel and building was a nasty mix. Bits of detritus drifted through the air. The smoke from the Pentagon spiralled into the air and we stood transfixed for a moment as we processed the sight. Nothing prepares you for the visual.
People I knew would soon be placed into body bags. I felt sick.
Now, five years later I still have a hard time talking about that day. Yesterday people in the office were recalling where they were on the 11th. “I was at the cottage”, “I was in Vancouver” et cetera. I just kept quiet and walked away. The media feels it necessary to drag this up every year and CNN even went so far as to replay footage from the day.
We all need to heal. We need time to reflect. We don’t need to hear conspiracy theories about how flight 77 wasn’t actually a plane but, a missle. We don’t need CNN to play it back. We don’t need ABC to play a revisionist movie version of events. We just need to heal.
[tags]9/11, Path to 9/11, September 11, Terrorism, World Trade Center, Pentagon[/tags]