On September 14, 2001, the German destroyer FGS Lütjens asked permission to pull alongside the USS Winston S. Churchill in the English Channel. Her crew held a banner reading, “We Stand by You.”
Twenty-five years ago, on September 10, 2001, I received an American Red Cross message aboard USS Winston S. Churchill.
I was a young enlisted sailor, and when the announcement came over the loudspeaker telling me to report to the captain’s cabin, I had about the same reaction a teenager has when told to report to the principal’s office.
I was informed that my grandfather had passed away.
At the time, Churchill was the newest and most technologically advanced destroyer in the Navy. We had just participated in the International Festival of the Sea in Portsmouth, England, alongside ships and sailors from dozens of nations. We stood duty only once every six days, were welcomed everywhere we went, and were treated almost as royalty.
After the festival, we trained in firefighting, humanitarian assistance, flight operations, ship handling, force protection, air defense, and surface warfare with the European navies.
It was hard work. It was also the most fun I had ever had in the Navy.
My captain told me our operations were not so critical that I could not leave and that I should travel home for my grandfather’s funeral. I told him I would rather stay with the ship.
I was not particularly close to my mother’s family, including my grandfather. I was enjoying the training. And, frankly, I could not afford a last-minute flight home from Europe anyway.
The captain quickly put things into perspective.
My grandfather landed on the beaches of Normandy during World War II. My captain told me that a man who had helped liberate the free world deserved to have his grandson standing at his funeral in dress blues, honoring his life, his service, and the legacy he had left behind in another generation serving his country.
That was an order.
The British sailors working with us arranged for me to be flown by helicopter to London Heathrow the next day. I used a satellite telephone to call my family. That was the last time they would hear from me for months.
America Under Attack
The next morning, September 11, we were preparing for flight operations and my departure.
Then the captain ordered the remaining British personnel off our ship. I was told I was not going anywhere. I had no idea why.
Their helicopter departed. Shortly afterward, the familiar bells rang throughout the ship.
“General quarters, general quarters. All hands, man your battle stations.”
My first thought was that we were doing another training exercise.
I ran from the hangar bay to my general-quarters station and manned the radar. I was sitting behind one of the most advanced naval air-defense systems in the world.
Then the captain came over the loudspeaker. “The United States is under attack.”
Our job was to continue providing the air-defense picture over England and watch for anything unusual. Civilian aircraft were being grounded. We were to remain alert for indications of additional hijacked aircraft.
And then I watched something I had never seen before. The sky emptied.
One by one, aircraft disappeared from my radar screen until the airspace went silent.
Across the Atlantic, Americans had experienced the most consequential 17 minutes of our generation.
At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
At 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower.
Innocence Lost
For Americans old enough to understand what happened that morning, those 17 minutes changed the way our minds processed catastrophe.
At 8:46, people saw an airplane hit a building and thought, “accident.” After 9:03, when an incident occurs in a public place, our first thought is terrorism. In 17 minutes, our innocence was taken forever.
By the end of that morning, 2,977 innocent people had been murdered, including 441 first responders.
Those first responders were not simply caught in the attack. They ran toward it. They had family waiting for them at home. They went in anyway.
One of them was New York City firefighter Stephen Siller. Siller had finished his overnight shift and was headed to meet his brothers for a round of golf when he heard what had happened. Unable to drive through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel because it had been closed, he strapped roughly 60 pounds of firefighting gear onto his body and ran through the tunnel toward the World Trade Center.
He never came home.
September 11 changed the country immediately. Enhanced security became part of nearly everything we did. We could no longer enter many ports without adequate force protection, just as families could no longer meet arriving loved ones at airport gates.
The next two decades of my Navy career would be dominated by the aftermath of that morning.
I deployed repeatedly in support of the Global War on Terrorism. Thousands of American service members would lose their lives. They were all volunteers. Nobody drafted them.
One of them was 29-year-old Navy SEAL Lieutenant Michael Murphy. In Afghanistan in 2005, Murphy’s team was discovered by three unarmed Afghan goat herders. Faced with an ethical dilemma, they chose to release them. Their position was soon compromised, and a much larger Taliban force attacked. With communications failing, he moved into the open to get a signal and call for help, knowingly exposing himself to enemy fire.
Murphy, two of his teammates, and all 16 men aboard the helicopter sent to rescue them were killed.
Murphy ultimately died fighting an enemy that did not share his regard for innocent life.
Remembering Sacrifice
Recently, I attended a Tunnel to Towers event in Huntington Beach. Their traveling museum included a steel beam recovered from the World Trade Center.
I watched people standing around it, and something struck me.
Anyone under 25 years old was not alive when the towers fell. They never had innocence to lose.
They do not remember a world before enhanced airport security checkpoints and a generation of war.
For them, September 11 is history. Normandy was history to me.
And that brought me back to my grandfather.
On September 10, 2001, I was a young sailor who thought staying aboard my ship sounded more important, and certainly more fun, than flying home for the funeral of a grandfather I barely knew.
My captain would not allow me to dismiss what that man’s life represented.
My grandfather had crossed an ocean, landed on the beaches of Normandy, and risked his life for freedoms I had inherited.
Remembering sacrifice is itself a responsibility.
Twenty-five years later, that responsibility belongs to us.
Our children should know how 17 minutes changed our world.
They should know why firefighters ran up the stairs while everyone else was running down.
They should know why the passengers aboard Flight 93 decided that, if they were going to die, they would fight first.
They should know the names of people like Stephen Siller and Michael Murphy.
And they should understand why an entire generation of Americans raised their hands to serve afterward.
Twenty-five years ago, I sat in front of a radar console thousands of miles from home and watched the sky go empty.
The world I knew that morning never returned. We owe it to the generation that came after us to explain why.
Never forget.
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Excellent writing. Thank you, sir.
A dark day indeed. Those of us who remember that fateful day recall exactly where we were and what we were doing. Much like the assassination of JFK, or the tragic flight of Challenger, everyone has a story as to where they were.
We didn’t choose this fight, it was forced upon us. I would suggest that fight is not over and rages today. That struggle being with a 4th century faith and their associated twisted ideology. Can western countries cope with a population that openly supports and plots against our Judeo- Christian beliefs? How is it then we can elect foreign nationals to our elected offices which subscribes to this sinister cult?
This is WHY we fight today against the head of the the serpent, Iran.
As the passengers and crew of United Flight #93, facing certain death in Shanksville, PA., famously said before they attempted to breech the cockpit and overtake the terrorists, “Let’s roll.”
The full story has yet to be told as to the criminal involvement, be it funding, and operational conspiracy with the Saudi Royal Family.