Thread: Beauty Will Rise- 911

With the tenth anniversary of 911 approaching I thought this would be appropriate to watch and remember. Prehaps even share your memories of that day.

"Beauty Will Rise" - Steven Curtis Chapman - YouTube

I remember standing in an office building about ten stories high watching plane after plane line up to land at the Dallas-International airport. Hour after hour, they kept coming...it seemed to take forever and then it all stopped. And all was deathly quiet. I lived by the airport at that time and it was so odd not to hear the roar of engines for weeks. I hated those planes and complained about them every time I was on the phone..now I would have given anything just to hear them again. A few nights later I was standing on the balcony and a fighter jet zoomed past in all its glory...and I was afraid.

God bless America and his people, Israel!

I was sitting in a Warehouse on Camp Lejeune that morning on phone watch while the rest of the unit were all on a field exercise. I was still on light duty from the surgery i'd had a few weeks prior. It was me, Andy, Gunny Bryant, and Lieutenant Franks. The Lieutenant's boots were covered in mud and he smelled really bad. He was supposed to be in the field with everyone else but he'd lied and told the Colonel that morning saying that there was some important piece of gear that was mission specific that needed to be retrieved from the warehouse. All really wanted was a break, a hot shower, and a real cup of coffee instead of that stuff they give you in the field.

Gunny was listening to some country morning show on the radio. He was crotchety as usual complaining about everything and everyone and going on about how he's the only one in the entire Marine Corps that wasn't incompetant. He'd gotten remarried recently and now we were all about to deploy on a routine mission to the mediterranean / middle east. It wasn't exactly how the average newly-wed person might imagine spending their first year of marriage. But then again, we weren't people - we were Marines. Held to an invisible higher standard that loomed over our lives with requirement and expectations which were met out of pain and consequence, if not the prescribed Honor, Courage, and Committment forced into our psyche.

I'm not sure. I think Gunny and the Lieutenant started arguing as if I wasn't sitting two desks away surfing the web and babysitting the phone.

"Leave us." Gunny's voice came from behind me.

I didn't look back. I just grabbed my pack of cowboy killers and went out to the loading dock for a smoke. Andy followed even though he didn't have to. He was a Sergeant then. Maybe he didn't wanna stick around for the argument or maybe he felt bad that Gunny made me leave and not him. He wasn't a smoker. No, instead he just took out a big wad of dip from his can of copenhagen and stuffed one side of his lower lip full of it. Both of us glanced at each other and laughed silently. But before we could say a word to each other:

"Corporal, get in here!" Gunny stuck his head outta the little office area looking for me. "You have a phone call!" He continued. "And d'you wanna tell me why I'm the one doing your job answering this phone?!"

I hurried back into the office and grabbed the line. The Lieutenant was crashed out on the old couch and Gunny was sitting back at his desk with his back to me. He forgot to put the bottle of whiskey back in his desk drawer where I 'couldn't see it' and the room still smelled like ash.

"Hello."

"Hey Nick, it's me, Tara!" I smiled as I'd heard her voice. "How's everything at your new unit?"

"Good, good... n' You?" I'd thought about all the times I'd never had the guts to dance with her. Even that one time she'd drunkenly tried to drag me out onto the dance floor herself.

"That's great! Everyone here still misses you -but Nick, that's now why I'm calling." She'd started whispering. "Are you listening to the radio right now?"

"Yeah, um, Gunny's got the John-boy and Billy show on right now and-"

"-Nick, no. Not that, try to put it on the news really quick. There's something you've gotta hear."

"What? What is it?"

"They said a plane just crashed into the Empire State building in New York." It took a while for her words to make sense to me.

"N-New York?" My home town. "Y-You sure?"

"Yeah, We're all listening to it right now." She'd whispered again.

"Andy! Change the station. Put the news on!" I turned to him and yelled. He looked at me like i had 3 heads. "A plane just crashed into a building in New York!" I'd yelled. Andy got up in a panic and went over to the radio and started turning the dial.

"Tara, I'll call you back!"

I went up to Andy and started turning the dial myself.

"THE HELL D'YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" Gunny roared at me.

"Gunny, we have to put the news on. They said a plane just crashed into a building in New York!"

"Look, I don't know what's wrong with you two idiots, but you're not touching my damn radio. Got it?" He'd said before realizing the whiskey bottle was still on the desk.

And as he tried to put it in the drawer the phone rang again. I ran over and answered:

"Good morning. 22nd MEU. How may I help you Sir or Ma'am?"

"Nick! It's me again!"

"Tara?"

"Nick! It happened again! They said another plain just crashed into another building!"

"Gunny, PLEASE!" I yelled across the room. "They said it happened a second time!"

"Oh for God Sakes you idiots!" Gunny stood up from his chair extremely annoyed that we were trying to interrupt him from his favorite morning show. "Can't you understand that there's no way any of that is true? Why, if that were true this entire base would be going into alert status right now and we'd be hearing alarms all over the place.

Everyone's eyes widened a awkwardly as we listened to the uncomfortable silence all around us.

"Seeeeee!" Gunny smiled sarcastically with his arms flailed out and sat down in his chair rolling his eyes again putting his feet up on the desk. The room was still uncomfortably silent as he took a sip of his coffee. "Corporal, you're from New York, right?" But I didn't answer him. "Well why don't you use the DSN line to call your family up there and see for yourself that everything's okay?" He'd said with a slightly different tone in his voice now.

Immediately I sat down and began dialing numbers. I thought about calling the mother I never spoke to since our argument about me joining the Marines but I changed my mind and called my best friend Michael instead. The line was busy. I waited a few seconds and tried calling Michael's mom Eileen -more busy signals. I called Michael again -Still busy. I called Michael's brother Steven -BUSY. Steven's friend James - BUSY. James Girl friend Jenny? BUSY! Michael again? BUSY! I was running out of numbers when finally I called my mother. When I heard the busy signal i dropped the phone and ran out and jumped off the loading dock despite my recovering back surgery and to my car nearby. When I realized Andy had ran after me I opened up the passenger side door and he got in as we both listened to the news for about 2 hours straight.

I don't think either of us said a word at first. And some how 2 hours later me and Andy were still listening to for the alarms Gunny said we'd be hearing if any of this was real.

When we went back to the warehouse Gunny was pacing back and forth in the office. We thought he was going to yell at us but he didn't. He just looked at us with bloodshot eyes and flung a stack of papers on the desk in front of me marked "ORIGINAL ORDERS" in a big red stamp.

Suddenly what was supposed to be a routine patrol mission to some part of the world we'd never been to looked like it wasn't going to be so routine after all.

I was in third grade, and didn't even know until after school that day. Being an eight year old, I didn't understand nor care as it didn't affect me at all. Throughout my entire school life, it was never discussed to the students by staff, not even once. There may have been the conspiracy theorists (I know one, good friend, but a bit of a skeptic on everything), but I only remember my American history teacher asking us to write a brief paragraph about ourselves and what we were doing on the day of the attacks on the first day of my sophomore year in high school. But now, I realize the importance of this tragic event. I just watched NBC's special about it, and I'm struggling to hold back tears.

My brother was only three, and my mom did everything she could to keep my brother from seeing the news about it; she kept him in the living room, Teletubbies, Good Night Moon, anything to keep him out of the kitchen and seeing the TV. Even though he didn't know about it, a week later, when planes had returned to the sky, we were at my grandparents'. My brother was playing out in the yard when a plane passed over, which is normal. He screamed and went running to my mom on the porch immediately. My kid brother, mostly ignorant about everything around him (be it girls liking him or world events), had somehow connected the plane with something bad. Even now, he doesn't quite understand, and thus doesn't care much.

Something odd about this, despite all the destructive, emotional crap I watch, read, and play, none of it actually captures the heartbreak or the terror that 9/11 caused. It's all fiction of course, and I know the difference between fiction and reality, but I still find that odd. The closest anything has ever gotten to making me feel like 9/11 has now is the Halo: Reach announcement trailer. Again, that's all fiction, so it doesn't matter in the remembrance of a tragedy such as 11 September, 2001.

Originally Posted by terrib

... And all was deathly quiet. I lived by the airport at that time and it was so odd not to hear the roar of engines for weeks. I hated those planes and complained about them every time I was on the phone..

The quiet was the worst. It's funny how an irritant can be missed. The empty skies that week were symbolic of a space in us. Limbo. A void waiting to be filled again. The space where Normalcy once was.

The planes eventually came back. A bit of that quiet remains.