As we commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11 – both the catastrophic losses and the subsequent demonstrations of heroism on the part of first responders and others – we also remember the initial shock of that seminal event in American history when nineteen Al Qaeda terrorists commandeering four American airliners launched the worst-ever single day attack against the United States and the world. Approximately 3,000 men, women, and children lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. America and her allies were soon embroiled in two overseas wars and untold counterterrorist operations around the globe. The world was changed forever.
For me as a formerly deployed Marine rifleman, a civilian military analyst, and a journalist who had already covered conflict overseas – specifically the Bosnian War in the mid-1990s as well as clashes between the Israelis and Palestinians on the West Bank – the 9/11 attacks seemed to thrust me as it did so many others into an experiential place never imagined.
Within 48 hours of the attacks, I was at “Ground Zero” in New York.
At the time, I was living and working on the Lexington side of Lake Murray. I remember making a few calls from my landline, but it was difficult to get through to New York. After a few hours and a couple of successful calls, I tossed my bags in the trunk of the car and drove straight through from S.C. to New York. I recall having a cell phone – not yet a smart phone – but mobile calls were not getting through nearly as easily as were calls placed on land lines. Beepers (pagers) were still being used to a limited degree, though most beepers had been phased out by 2001, and I had ditched my own a year or two earlier. Email was a relatively new means of communicating. But accessing an Internet signal was often hit-or-miss, more often than not a time of patiently (for me impatiently) waiting for a connection which far too frequently failed.
Still I was able to get through to a friend who worked in Manhattan and who invited me to stay in her home in Brooklyn, which I did: Both in her home and a few nights on the floor in her office overlooking Times Square.
TRAVELING NORTH
I remember there being very few civilian travelers on the road as I made my way north on Interstate 95, though there were lots of military convoys and law enforcement vehicles, big dark unmarked SUVs, most of which were traveling past me in fast-moving columns with lights flashing.
The morning following the attacks, I was crossing the Verrazzano Bridge and for the first time seeing the smoke still billowing up from what were once the great towers of the World Trade Center. It burned for days as I recall.
"New York City, USA - September 29, 2001: American army soldiers and construction workers are working on the scene at Ground Zero, just 18 days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack which collapsed the World Trade Center and killed thousands of innocent people." ShutterWorx
LOWER MANHATTAN
Soon after arriving, I settled in and took to the streets, spending time first at the Red Cross recovery station where volunteers were taking DNA swabs from family members who were frantically searching for their missing loved ones.
Closer to “Ground Zero,” I witnessed dazed shopkeepers returning to their now non-existent buildings or damaged storefronts, staring at the thick powdery gray ash and tiny strips of paper that literally covered everything for several blocks from the attacks.
Warplanes from the offshore aircraft carrier USS George Washington roared overhead, making wide sweeps over the city during their constant patrols, because – remember, at that time – the nation was anticipating equally devastating follow-up attacks.
Then physically at “Ground Zero,” I stood between what was left of the two towers and the destroyed buildings adjacent to the towers. At nearby St. Paul’s Chapel, the church in which George Washington worshipped on the morning of his inauguration in 1789, the tombstones were covered in several inches of gray ash, and the graves themselves were covered in ash and strewn with pieces of burned paper.
Everything smelled like an electrical fire, and in the days that followed the smell worsened In the weeks following, when asked by reporters to describe what I saw, the one thing that struck me was the fact that on TV and in the newspapers – today also on the Internet (Remember, in 2001, the Internet was nothing like as mainstream as it is today) – the one-dimensional images we all saw and continue to see, did not and do not begin to adequately illustrate how horrible it really was: Impossible to describe. I won’t attempt to describe it here either.
WARS TO FOLLOW
Then there were the subsequent overseas wars as America and her allies relentlessly tracked, pursued, closed with, and eliminated Al Qaeda and its affiliates on every front in every corner of the globe.
Many of my friends have since served in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them experiencing high-intensity combat action not known by Americans since the Vietnam War, though our nation had experienced shorter lived conflicts in Grenada, Lebanon, the first Gulf War, and elsewhere around the world.
I was in Iraq twice during the war. My good friend Col. (Ret.) Steve Vitali, U.S. Marine Corps, was in Iraq once, and then he deployed to Afghanistan (see Summer 2021 edition of THE SOUTHERN EDGE).
TRIP TO SHAW AND MEMORIES OF BABYLON
The memories for Steve and I both came flooding back in August 2021 during a short trip together from our mutual hometown in Columbia to Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter where Steve was briefing a group of Air Force logistics officers and senior staff NCOs.
Steve’s briefing focused on the Marine Corps’ mission and what the Corps brings to the multi-service Joint Task Force, a force whose members today work far closer together than they did in the days prior to 9/11.
Like so many of my military friends, especially those of us from Marine Infantry even Army Infantry and the various special operations communities, Steve and I both have myriad “war stories” that overlap or otherwise make shared connections because of places in time, and particular units.
Enroute to Shaw, the subject came up about the ancient city of Babylon, the ruins of which today may be seen near the town of Hillah in Iraq’s Shia-populated Babil Province.
Steve had actually been to Hillah. I had not, though I was once several miles from the ruins of Babylon during one of my two trips to Iraq. That particular journey was in 2007 during the early days of “the surge” against Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
Ruins of Babylon, Mesopotamia, Iraq
Ancient Babylon
GURKHAS AND A LOW FLYING PLANE OVER THE DESERT
As American and allied forces began aggressively “surging” against AQI’s strongholds across the country in the spring of 2007, I was frequently traveling along the various main supply routes (highways or MSRs) with a group of British contract-security guys – mostly former Royal Marines, British paratroopers, SAS commandos, and a few of their fellow Gurkhas.
The Gurkhas were special Nepalese soldiers with a very colorful history. Gurkhas had been attached to the British Army since the 19th century. Brave to a fault, the late Indian Army Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, once said, "If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha."
The Brits loved having Gurkhas around. I did too. Extremely loyal, always smiling, and famous for their wickedly curved kukri knives, they would – as one British security contractor said to me – “prevent AQI from cutting our throats as we slept at night.”
One morning during a long road trip in three large up-armored gun trucks (two of which were loaded with British contractors and one which was loaded with Gurkhas) traveling from the city of Baghdad to Basra in the south, we passed somewhere near the ruins of Babylon. I could not see the ruins nor anything else for that matter: Nothing but endless desert in every direction for 360 degrees, the gun-truck in front of us (I was in the second vehicle) and the truck with the Gurkhas behind us.
Somewhere along the route, we stopped and dismounted. Everyone took a moment to stretch their legs, breathe some fresh air, and break open some cold bottles of water from the coolers.
We felt like we were on the end of the earth, and we really were. All at once, I looked to the north and saw a tiny speck just above the horizon. The speck drew closer and seemed to gradually grow into a giant airplane with four huge jet engines mounted beneath its wings. It was in fact a C-17 cargo plane flying low over the desert floor, north to south, rapidly approaching us as it was probably following the same MSR we had been traveling along.
Impressed by the size, noise, and power of the plane, the Brits began cheering and pumping their fists into the air, as did the Gurkhas. As did I.
As the huge aircraft roared over us, I could clearly see “U.S. AIR FORCE” on the left side of the fuselage. But what truly struck home was what was painted on the tail of the aircraft: In big letters, it said CHARLESTON (where the aircraft was based) and had my state's well-known palmetto tree flag painted on it.
That moment, in the middle of a war with foreign forces, in the middle of the desert, on the ends of the earth, and with a plane roaring above us emblazoned with that particular city name and flag, was, as you might imagine, emotionally stirring for a boy from South Carolina.
