On 9/11, 2001, I was living in Maine. We'd come back from Japan after 7 years there, and had just gotten everything unpacked and settled in. My husband the Packhorse was working the midnight shift as an avionics tech in a Special Projects Squadron at NAS Brunswick, which meant he got home around 7 a.m. I tended to stay up late to match his schedule.
That morning, early, the phone rang. NOBODY called that early because our friends knew his schedule, so this was very unusual.
Of course, it was the base, and they told my husband simply to report at the usual time, that nothing had changed. He, who had learned over the years to sleep whenever he had a chance, rolled over and went back to sleep.
I, however, felt in my bones that something was wrong, and headed for the computer, where I hit the news sites. That was where I learned that planes had crashed into the WTC. I burst into tears, because I had spent five years in NYC and had many friends living there, some of whom I knew worked in the twin towers or near them. Were any of them hurt or killed?
I sat there numbly reading until around noon, then I woke my husband, because I needed the solace of his arms. I told him, in broken sobs, what had happened. We sat there together, holding each other, and cried for the innocent lives that had been taken. Yet, oddly, we felt little surprise.
Why, unlike so many Americans, were we not utterly shocked? Well, we'd just returned from 7 years overseas. In the wake of the embassy bombings and the attack on the Cole, we'd seen the lackadaisical security at the gates ratcheted up. Before those attacks, you could drive onto the base so long as you had a base sticker or a pass for a specific time and day. A lot of wives taught English to Japanese, so there were always students coming on and off the base. All it took to get a pass was a request from someone on the base. The pass was limited to the time of the class the student was taking, but there didn't seem to be any in-depth check involved--you filled out the form, handed it in, and within a week, got a pass good for six months. In other words, someone could have carried a bomb on the base, hidden it somewhere in base housing, particularly in a high rise building, have their lesson, leave the base--and several hours later, use a cell phone to set it off.
That changed. You could still get the pass, but there were random trunk searches and the occasional search underneath the car with a mirror. You never knew when you;d be checked. The lines at the gates got longer.
As soon a I heard the news about the WTC--and later the Pentagon and Flight 93--I knew my husband's squadron would be involved in the aftermath. A Special Projects squadron of P3s, they had been in every hot spot in recent years, doing recon duty. They were fully loaded electronics birds that did surveillance and recon. When they deploy, the families are not told where they are going, or for how long. There is no e-mail. There are no phone calls. The only mail you get is when a bird comes home for supplies. You can write to them and drop off letters at the duty office. Your only certain communication was a weekly phone call from the command MCPO telling you that your beloved is alive and still more or less in one piece. And you weren't supposed to tell family and friends they were gone. This squadron wasn't one people selected--this squadron elected you. You didn't get orders there unless you were on a list of potential candidates they had drawn up. You had to be damned good at your job to get on that list.
While most Americans were sitting in shock, lost in grief, I was already seeing how this would effect my life. I didn't have the luxury of being in shock.
A week or so later, the families were called in by the skipper for a briefing. We were told they would be heading over,but he couldn't tell us where. We could pretty much guess that it was Afghanistan. And the squadron did deploy,right around Christmas, around the same time the Special Forces did. In fact, they did the recon that allowed a drone to take out a convoy with one of Osama's top three riding it. As it turned out, my husband didn't deploy. One annoying Senior Chief wanted to send him--you keep a bag packed and are expected to deploy at a moment's notice--but my husband was retiring, and his MCPO intervened. Since the call had come around 3a.m. (he'd been transferred to another division and was working day check), he'd left a note telling me he was deploying--that note would have been the way I'd learned he was gone for an indeterminate amount of time. Blessedly, that Master Chief told the Senior Chief that my husband was retiring in 8 months and he'd done enough for his country.
My 9/11 was a lot different from most people's, unless they were members of a military family. When something like this happens, you know it will have a direct effect upon your life, beyond the grief everyone felt that day. You know that your life will be changed forever. You know that someone you love may well be going into danger. And you know that friends you've had for years will be facing similar danger. It's not something you can explain to someone who hasn't lived it--the fear, the tightness in the chest, the trying to act as if everything is normal and you're not terrified. Keeping a stiff upper lip to make their job easier. Crying when they're not around. When you're a military wife, you don't watch the news the same way civilian families do.
That's my 9/11 story.