I was active duty Navy, teaching heavy caliber guns and VBSS tactics, I had just stopped to get my morning coffee at the 7/11 in SpringValley, Ca. on my way to work at the 32nd Street Naval Station San Diego, it was still a little dark out and a slight chill hung in the marine layer, I had heard on the Jeep radio that a plane had hit the towers and I remembered the story about the bomber that struck the Empire State building in the 50's due to bad weather. I figured that a small plane had just got off coarse in fog or something, I remember thinking, "gee, I hope everyone will be ok..."
Not sure if I paid for the coffee or not because I had just started filling my cup when the TV that the clerk had tuned into the news behind the counter, showed the 2nd plane hit and a moment later my pager (yes a pager) went off... I honestly don't remember if I paid him or not because after that shit became a blur...
Upon arriving at my duty station at Fleet Training Center SD, we took a quick muster of all personel and got our assignments, I remember scrambling around the gun school looking for a TV so that we could get the news on for updates (pretty sad, but the fastest way to get intel was to watch TV), 1 hour later I was manning a 60 in a sandbag pit at the south gate. All of my students that lived on base, went into barracks restriction, those that lived off base were on 24hr notice for recall. Spent the next week on base wondering "what the fawk just happened" either on armed perimeter watch or in the barracks watching CNN with my students.
Surreal couple of months, even Christmas was muted and a little weird, had a call up/deployment looming over my head for a longtime...
atriot:
