9-11-2001- then, now, tomorrow
This post is the outcome of a conversation with a friend on context and its effect on building, filtering, and biasing our worldview. One topic that arose was an editorial article that I was invited to write shortly after the events of 9/11/2001 and how “locally global” experiences shaped the writing of that article. This post is a recollection of those thoughts and offered in tribute to those men and women who lost their lives that crisp September morning.
Disclaimer – this post meanders through some extended recollections, followed by some thoughts on what we do know. Relax, brew a cup of coffee or select your preferred beverage and settle back for a brief walk through time…
First, some operational background…
The morning of September 11th, 2001, I happened to be serving as an executive officer for the 305th Mission Support Group (now the 87th Mission Support Group following the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) activities). At that time, the support group commander (and my manager) had oversight over five key squadrons, or about 1,100 personnel on McGuire Air Force Base in the center of New Jersey:
- Civil Engineering (305 CES) – we called them for construction, maintenance, & firefighting – in other terms – they get to play with all those cool moving vehicles that don’t carry weapons.
- Communications Squadron (305 CS) – my home – info – satellites, networks, air traffic control, freedom of information act (FOIA) processing & much more – ask me some time.
- Mission Support Squadron (305 MSS) – personnel actions – promotions, testing, performance records, & awards – admin processes and docs necessary to actively employ 5,000+ folks.
- Security Forces (305 SFS) – our first responders to domestic disturbances & external hostile actions, such as folks who called in local bomb threat on 9/11 for which I & others had to evac
- Services Squadron (305 SVS) – base gym, theater, & other recreational facilities; as I learned much later, these folks also oversee mortuary affairs & notifications – very serious matters…
The first plane hits…
I was advised by our non-commissioned officer-in-charge (NCOIC) of information management that an airplane struck the first tower of the World Trade Center. He, our senior enlisted advisor (SEA), and I briefly watched an update on a television in our deputy commander’s office (our commander’s secretary happened to be off that day). As the ranking individual, I had the responsibility to advise our commander, who happened to be in a 1:1 meeting with the 305th Services Squadron commander.
Although I’d served in the role for sometime longer than four months, I’d yet to have sufficient reason to interrupt any meetings held by my commander (at the time I was a junior Captain; my commander was a full-bird Colonel – if you’re going to interrupt a private meeting, you’d better have a good reason…).
Fortunately, my commander had a habit of keeping his television turned on with the volume turned down (one of my many morning duties was to turn prep his office, which included tuning the TV to CNN and setting the volume). I knocked, entered when acknowledged, and simply said something to the effect, “Sir, you need to turn up the volume and watch this“. He asked “is this real?“, I said “yes“, closed the door and left him to confer with the squadron commander.
Approximately five minutes later, he departed for the base command post and the 305 SVS commander for her squadron headquarters. I rarely saw my commander for the next 60-90 days, since he oversaw the night shift at the base command post for the next 2-3 months (another group commander had the day shift). The next six hours or so were a scattered array of actions, followed by a relative lull until approximately 1900 when I returned home, only to watch television and Internet coverage like so many others around the globe.
How 9/11 unfolded for me…
During the first three hours or so, other than answering phones into our group headquarters, the NCOs and I took turns monitoring the television coverage. Yes, we watched the second plane hit the second tower. Yes, we watched the south tower collapse. Yes, we watched the north tower collapse. Yes, we watched footage of the Pentagon attack (the wing that was hit was under reconstruction and turned out to be the home of an organization I visited that summer in their temporary location at Crystal City). We also watched footage of the airplane that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Sometime around 11:30 Eastern or so that morning, our headquarters facility, which was co-located with our commanding unit, the 305th Air Mobility Wing headquarters received a bomb threat. The NCOIC and I exited via the back stairs to our office. We convened with our 150+ fellow occupants in a grassy field (along with occupants of the 305 MSS whose building was also evacuated).
Then, the most seemingly bizarre thing occurred — the senior folks on that grassy field to which we evacuated decided the best thing to do was to go to lunch. The NCO and I were among two of the most junior individuals on that field. At the time, our general urge was to “do something”.
We didn’t know what that something was, however, we figured someone likely had a use for us, since McGuire Air Force Base is the largest active duty facility adjacent to New York City. The NCO and I walked to the 305 SVS (and the headquarters of the same squadron commander who’d been meeting with my commander just four innocent hours previously).
Once we arrived, we called our commander in the base command post, advised him of our status, and asked for guidance. He suggested offering our services to the 305 SVS folks, which we did. From there, we were able to broker a couple of key inter-squadron conversations while the services squadron commander and deputy commander wrangled with yet another lunch issue.
The story (as relayed to us at the 305 SVS HQ), is that the dining hall staff opted to go home out of concern for their safety, which left many hungry airmen standing at the dining hall. So while the commander and her deputy dealt with that rather critical matter, we coordinated some lower-level activities (including restoring a copier to service, if I recall correctly). Sometime later, we returned to our headquarters and ate lunch after the evacuation order was lifted.
I recall answering phones and responding emails on the afternoon of 9/11 – other specifics of that afternoon are long since buried in some distant part of my memory. I also remember driving home and for the first time ever, having to show my identification card to enter the base housing facility across the highway from the base. Like most other folks that evening, we ate and moved from huddling around the television set to the home computer and back again.
How 9/12 unfolded for me…
Although everyone expected heightened security the next morning, none of us were prepared for what turned out to be a 3-hour journey to make what typically constituted a 10-minute drive (including crossing the highway, and passing the base security checkpoint getting to our desk). I moved approximately two blocks in an hour, at which point I returned home and walked to work. I called my neighbor after arriving – he was sitting in traffic. Following that first day or so, my memory is relatively sparse, except for some key events that shaped my writing of the editorial article.
The empty field hospital…
One post-9/11 events that shaped my context was the erection of a 200-bed field hospital adjacent to the base gym. That field hospital never treated a single survivor, since none was to be found in New York City. The field hospital was dismantled approximately thirty days later — until then, the site served as a very vivid reminder of a few terrible men with access to some good intelligence, a practiced plan, low-tech weapons, determination, and patience.
Some related actions & the first casualty…
Many of friends and colleagues, especially among the executive officer pools, were pilots. Their flight activities were grounded along with all other American aviation. Their chance soon came vis-à-vis our movements into Afghanistan.
One of these fellow executive officers was the former supervisor of the first casualty of Operation Enduring Freedom (due to a heavy equipment accident, as described near end of this article). This same executive officer happened to be with our base commander, Brigadier General Richard Mentemeyer (now Major General Mentemeyer) on 9/11/2011.
General Mentemeyer was slated to fly to Washington, D.C. that fateful day to discuss housing (McGuire was to be a test site for military leased housing). That flight was cancelled. The deputy commander went out to inform General Mentemeyer his flight was cancelled, and more importantly, why. My colleague recalled never seeing a general officer run before, and most certainly never running while in dress blues…
Due to McGuire AFB’s proximity to New York City, our facility was chosen as the rally point for the FEMA emergency response teams (each served a 10-day or 2-week stint in New York). Each team generally consisted of 10-15 folks from around the country who would assemble, gather equipment, and make the drive up to NYC to relieve the current team.
My role was to assist with, and to a lesser extent, coordinate the financial and materiel support provided via the 305 Mission Support Group to the FEMA emergency response teams (likely Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, however, my notes on such matters are government property…).
Such support included quarters, vehicles, sustenance, and communications equipment. This support coordination often took the form of large meetings involving squadron representatives and other representatives around base. As a result of our group’s support, our commander received a helicopter tour of Ground Zero sometime in October / November 2011.
Children, in the end it’s always about the children…
One of the other more interesting activities which I directly supported involved school-age busing. Turns out everyone cares about their children, especially in times like those. However, the base school buses were leased via one of the nearby school districts, which used them to transport their students at other times during the day.
As you may recall, nearly three hours was required to gain base access the first days after the 9/11 attacks. This time was gradually reduced to an hour, and eventually approximately fifteen minutes after someone had the wisdom to divert all truck traffic to another gate. In the interim, however, many buses were delayed, as were the students aboard them.
This issue raised the ire of many parents, who called the school district, who called the support group (since the security forces effecting this policy belonged to our group). My commander was in the command post negotiating bigger issues, which left me the buses.
Fortunately, we were able to work through it, but it was most definitely one of those “surprises” that stood out in mind. McGuire Air Force Base is also physically co-located with Fort Dix (and to a lesser extent, Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst), facts which were leveraged during the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) activities.
Fort Dix happens to be the home of a federal correctional custody unit, another fact I discovered when taking a wrong turn shortly after arriving one day. Fort Dix also happened to host the Pop Warner football league for folks assigned to Fort Dix and McGuire AFB. One of my children happened to be in the Pop Warner league that year and it was football season.
The football field happened to be adjacent to the de facto take-off pattern for aircraft departing McGuire AFB (home to a transport wing and a refueling wing). Sometime in late September / early October many aircraft were departing each evening carrying supplies and personnel for our response in Afghanistan.
A base gym on Fort Dix happened to be very near those fields. Given practice was typically around 1800 or so, it was convenient for me to workout at that gym during football practices. In addition to being the only Air Force member in the facility most times, I also had the opportunity to interact with junior enlisted troops. One soldier succinctly captured the emotive feelings purportedly felt by many – “nuke ’em till they glow and shoot ’em in the dark”.
I recall having mixed feelings – although I sometimes shared that sentiment as an American, I also recognized that such sentiments left unchecked could easily lead to violations of our rules of engagement (ROE). Unfortunately, such events did materialize far away from the gym and the football practice field.
Some other relevant events…
We later also experienced a shooting at Fort Dix on 10/13/2001.
One of the pilots on the refueling planes departing McGuire each evening was later a classmate during my doctoral studies. Some interesting stories from that classmate on the logistical tail necessary to support our initial engagements in Afghanistan.
Perhaps most significant, at least to me personally, involved supporting our wing commander, General Mentemeyer (i.e., my boss’ boss and with 5,000+ folks in his command, along lots of very capable airframes). Unlike myself, his wing execs, all pilots, were not heavily steeped in most computing technologies (although I’ll gladly let them have the stick while flying!).
Turns out General Mentemeyer created a video message for his 5,000-person wing from his deployed location. His deployed staff compressed this file into a multi-disk zip file, which they emailed as individual attachments due to firewall limitations. Somewhere along the way, the relationship between these files was munged up (and yes, YouTube wouldn’t have been an option, its yet-to-be-created non-existence notwithstanding).
Some hours before the video was to be shown to base personnel during a “wing commander’s call”, one of the wing-level executive officers visited me to ask for assistance with reconstructing the video. Some minutes later after an Internet search on the finer points of multi-disk zip archives, and some technical hacks, and we had a working video to show to the 5,000+ folks in the general’s command.
The executive officer was very grateful (he was able to keep his job…), as was the general, who later ensured I received a citation for my activities at McGuire Air Force Base (which included drastically improving the image transmit capability of a classified video-teleconferencing system and managing the installation of a rather cool satellite dish, among other communications-related activities).
Society, cameras, security, and accessibility…
One of the more interesting side effects of 9/11 was the creation of a “dome of protection” vis-à-vis the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act and other security measures. The net effect was a fundamental shift in who we are individually and collectively as Americans. One of the more subtle shifts was in the near disappearance of publicly accessible cameras.
Although I’ve long since lost my complete list, two cameras of note do come to mind — clearly, the World Trade Center cameras are lost forever. More interestingly, we, the global community, lost access to the cameras showing images the cadet common area at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), which were turned off around 9/18/2011 for operational security reasons.
Many other cameras have been removed from public access. So although we are now a more monitored society, we have ironically become a less open society, at least from this perspective. I enjoyed seeing the USAFA Terrazzo cam. I enjoyed seeing the WTC cameras (or similar skyline views) – are we to be so concerned about our safety that we shirk our freedoms?
Leaves and our changing context…
One of the more striking events, however subtle, is that I was so caught up in supporting our team’s response to 9/11 (and the associated long hours and weekend duties), that I completely failed to notice the seasonal fall transition.
I recall pulling my car over to the side of the road one day after realizing the tree leaves were brilliant shades of red, orange, and yellow. One day, on 9/11/2001, those leaves had been green. That day, these trees were preparing to drop after their last shades of fall glory. The leaves had changed, and as the emotion felt at the time, so had we as a people and a society.
So what now…
Ten years have transpired since I wrote an invited editorial article in the context of the above (and many other details which I am now forgetting). Are we heading in the right direction as a country? I suppose from the perspective of terrorist attacks, the answer is yes. Can we answer in the affirmative with respect to our treasure, our infrastructure, and our investment in future generations?
Open government initiatives, and open data initiatives, e.g., USAspending, are creating avenues access to data to answer such questions. Capabilities such as MindMixer are creating avenues of dialogue towards increasing the people’s access to government at all levels. An increasing number of officials are also engaging via social media. Will such engagement between the people and politicians suffice? Too early to tell — we’ll have to wait a few more years.
My suggestion — engage in communication with your elected officials on these and other matters — oh, and get out the vote.
- Related posts…
– browse Perspective channel or 10/11/2011 entries
– print
entry written by Chris Augeri
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