***I'm not sure what the current situation is vis-a-vis posting. So I just pulled up the Armorer's 9/11 post from 2008. After all, it doesn't change, does it? Just a little edit from "seven years ago" to "eight years ago".....Maggie***
...seven years ago?
I was making my 10 minute commute when I turned the radio on in the car and there was excited jabbering about how an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center. I figured they meant a small airplane or perhaps a news helicopter.
I walked into my company's brand new office spaces downtown and when I turned the corner down the corridor where my office was located there was a TV on the floor, showing the first tower burning, and it seemed pretty clear that it had to have been something larger.
I got to my office, fired up my computer, and opened a radio feed. The second tower had been hit. My first thought was - this is no accident. This is an attack.
I opened up CNN's website, and there was a picture of the Pentagon. My blood ran cold. I had been in exactly that part of the Pentagon the Friday before. Exactly that part. As in, I'd been briefing LTG Maude in the very same conference room he just (though I didn't know it at the time) died in. And because I'd been working a project for the Army G1, I knew several people in that part of the building. In the event, I knew 13 who never went home that day.
My last job on active duty had been as the Plans, Operations and Training Officer for the 5th Army WMD Response Task Force - West. Our job was to coordinate the DoD support to a large-scale attack (usually envisioned as being by a WMD of some variety) against the United States west of the MIssissippi. 1st Army had a similar group who would be forming the core of the response to this attack.
I had spent two years working with FEMA, JFCOM, FORSCOM, the FBI, Secret Service, HHS, State and local governments, law enforcement and other First Responders, as well as NGOs like the Red Cross in training and planning for, well, exactly this. I had contributed to the most recent update of the DoD annex of the Federal Response Plan.
But I was retired.
I picked up the phone, called my branch representative, and told them I was available right now if they needed someone with some experience in WMD and disaster response. Hedging my bets, I called DOMS, the Director of Miltary Support, and told them, too - figuring if someone was going to generate a requirement, it would be them.
Then I went back to work. I'd done what I could. They never did call back. Clearly, they didn't need to. They did a fine job.
In that strange way that lives connect, paths cross, and fate intervenes, the casualty that brought forth for me the greatest reaction was the last one I found out about. LTC(r) Karl Teepe. I first met Karl when he was a Captain working as an ROTC instructor for my father, right before the Auld Soldier retired. He then became one of my instructors. Karl went on in his Army career, retired, and took a job as a budget analyst for the DIA at the Pentagon.
So, today, the Armorer remembers
Karl Teepe.
Read the complete post at http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2009/09/where_were_you_2.html
Posted
Sep 11 2009, 12:17 AM
by
Argghhh! The Home Of Two Of Jonah's Military Guys..