Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/News/August 2011/Op-ed

I was in a middle school science classroom in Connecticut. I didn't have much of an idea of what was going on until I got home, so I was happy they canceled mine and everyone else's lunch detentions for an all-school teacher meeting. I can still remember exactly where I was sitting when they made the announcement, and I can still remember coming home to the awful images we all saw on our televisions. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 17:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was in third grade. I remember sitting through class that day as almost everyone left one by one. An administrator would come to the door of our classroom and quietly would ask for a student. That kid was gone for the rest of the day. After school, I remember coming home. My mother only told me that "something very bad happened" (Remember I was 8). I saw the footage of the World trade center coming down on the TV of the family across the street when I was over to play with them. I doubt I will ever forget the image of the building coming down. I am originally from only one county away from Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Friends of mine are certain they saw flight 93 going over head, as they were outside their private school. Its a day that I will never forget and that will define my generation --Guerillero | My Talk 19:02, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was working in the Pentagon the morning of the attacks. I helped out a little over at the initial triage area in the Pentagon courtyard near the impact site. Some of the people who came out of the damaged area of the building were in fairly bad shape. Two guys who came out about 15 minutes after the impact were two of only three survivors from their office of around 20 people. I then went outside and tried to help out at one of the triage areas on the river-side of the building. As you may recall, that day was an exceptionally clear day with brilliant sunshine. Outside there was a severely burned Army lieutenant colonel laying in a stretcher. I leaned over him to try to shade his burns from the sun. I remember he was grunting softly in pain. Ambulances came and took the injured to the hospital. Then, I went home. Cla68 (talk) 22:25, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
At the age of 15 in 2001 I remember being obsessed with Toonami and proud to have finally reached the age of the Gundam Pilots in the show Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. That Tuesday morning I was riding with my mother to Cathedral High School. As usual we had the radio on in the van, and coming over the two hills on Arizona street that lead toward Mesa street I hurriedly hushed my mother and turned up the radio, as Bill and Mellisa had just reported that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. At the time I was thinking this was probably some noob in a single engine plane who wrecked do to unfamiliarity with the navigation controls and a last minute panic that prevented him from moving the plane out the way of the building. By the time we arrived at my High School though that perception had begun to evaporate; the radio had reported an unconfirmed hit on the Pentagon. By the time I got into the building the TV sets we had in each classroom were tuned to CNN. I was watching the burning tower when like so many others the other tower was struck. I think it was at the moment that shock set in, and it became clear to me and my class mates that day that this would be the only news in the nation for the next 24 hours. During third period we got word that a plane had gone down in Pennsylvania, initially reported to be in Pittsburgh, at which point I felt an indescribably sense of sheer terror since most of my extended family is concentrated around Pittsburgh. As it happened the plane crashed to the south of the city, not the north, and so no one I knew in PA died as a result of the crash there. (Incidentally, we learned a few weeks later that our last unaccounted for family member, a member of the United States Navy who at last report had been assigned a tour of duty in the Pentagon, had been transferred out about a month before the attack; at which point we realized that we had dodged two bullets.)

By days end, we faced a new problem: with the US-Mexico border shut down many of my clasmates who lived in Mexico but commuted across the international bridges to go to school in America were suddenly trapped on the US side of the border, homeless, and without any supplies for the coming of the week (change of clothes, personal care products, etc). Our principle asked that those with means please consider offering our less fortunate classmates room and board in this difficult time, which several of us did. The following morning, at the Chamizal National Memorial, Mexican officials raised the National Flag of Mexico up on a football sized flag pole located on their half of the memorial, then lowered the flag to half staff, where it remained for a good many days as a sign respect for the attack in America. Copies of El Dario, the newspaper in Juarez which is available in El Paso carried headlines of the attack and pictures from both the US and Mexico side of the border. In the weeks following the attack a moving scene unfolded on the border, as Mexicans and Mexican Americans began to buy up US flags and other patriot standards. Cars on the road in both Mexico and the US began carrying plastic US flags made to be held in place in car windows, and a great many vehicles with license plates registered in Chihuahua started sporting bumper stickers reading "God Bless America" and "United We Stand". It struck home at the moment how much the attack against the World Trade Center was attack against world, and the unprecedented show of unity I was that day is something that stayed with through the years. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:37, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was just a kid, and I was at school when the planes hit, but when I got home, I remember BBC News showing the aftermath of the collapse of the Twin Towers, and replaying earlier footage of the events earlier in the day. But my most vivid "9/11 memory" is much more recent. Of all the pictures, that of people jumping out of the windows from the top floors of the World Trade Centre haunts me, and I have to fight the urge to vomit whenever I think of it. I'm very rarely moved to tears by something I've seen on the TV, but I found myself literally weeping—at the desperation that those people must have felt at having no choice but to jump hundreds of feet to such an awful death, at the terror of watching a building collapse knowing there are dozens of people in it, and at the tragedy that so many families don't even have a body to bury. The bravery of the firefighters, the police officers, and (I never knew this until I read this Op-ed) the Red Cross volunteers and I'm sure many others, who raced to the scene of such horror is truly extraordinary.
We are often told that 9/11 changed the world, but we must not let it change us. We must go on with our lives, because to dwell on the grief, or to live in fear, would be to concede victory to those behind these attacks. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:37, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]