Everybody's got one; here's mine. Might have posted this before, don't feel like digging to find out or to figure out which details have changed in my memory.
We were at MPRC, which is a big, permanent field site, exercises at which were almost like a vacation (at least for HHQ), especially in comparison with the usual tent-and-MRE crap. It had barracks with bunks to sleep in, a DFAC where they could prepare... well, less awful food, a Katusa snack bar where everybody ate instead, a miniature PX stuffed into a trailer, and even an Anthony's that you'd have to be stupid to order from because the pizzas were made up several hours away, frozen, and driven over every morning.
The whole point of an exercise at MPRC is to allow the birds to do actual live-fire training and qualification. So basically, everybody relaxes except poor III/V platoon--but then, the guys that fuel and arm the birds aren't ever going to not be busy, so at least they got hot meals and real beds.
For the rest of us it was mostly R&R. It was a little noisy; the walls were corrugated sheet metal and the birds were taking off and landing constantly--but after six months in an Apache unit, it's almost harder to get to sleep without that racket. I want to say it was the third day or so. I'd started up an ad hoc D&D campaign, using the template characters and the sample map that came in the DMG. I had a surprisingly large group; when there's bars and juicy girls available, nobody wants to sit around rolling dice and marking stats on notebook paper, but lock a bunch of people into a tiny-ass complex in the middle of nowhere...
When the news came in, it was surreal and exciting. Reminds me of being just over the top of the first big hill in a rollercoaster--you're having fun, but there's that feeling in the pit of your stomach. It spread by word of mouth, and at some point there was a short troop meeting where Six told us what had happened--not news to anyone, just making it formal. We didn't stop training, but we doubled our guard rotation and readied live ammo. My troop was using the MPRC downtime to set up a rifle qualification. We tied turbans around the heads of the vaguely man-shaped plastic targets.
For the most part, we were buzzing a little. We had a few guys with family or friends in NYC; they got priority use of the little laptop computer lab our section managed. Other than that, the general feeling, I think, was amazement: those ragheads really picked a fight with us? Man, they must be suicidal. (The sentiment was rarely expressed that politely.)
For me, that going-down excitement/dread ratcheted up when I read Bush's statement about going to war against nations that supported terror. This, I realized dimly, was some heavy shit. All it meant to me on the surface was that once we got back from MPRC, the entire post went on complete lockdown for two weeks. Only personnel allowed off-post were those who actually lived off-post. And even afterwards, traffic through the main gate was glacially slow, what with all the concrete dividers and the searches. During this time I learned how to negotiate a fifteen-foot high double fence topped with barbed and razor wire, because I needed some things I could at that point only get off-post.
It didn't really sink in how much 9/11 had changed everything until several years later, when I got back stateside. During my actual service I only dealt with the service side of it--friends who'd lost friends, losing friends and acquaintances of my own, the strain a stop-loss/stop-movement can put on a unit (the day it was announced, all non-essential company business ceased, and my roommate--who'd had less than a month before PCSing and was now in-country indefinitely--promoted himself to Chief Warrant Specialist Sixth Class and walked around smoking four cigarettes at a time, having already demolished a bottle of Crown after demolishing most--but not all--of its contents).
I didn't feel the fear till I got off the plane in Baltimore. Not my fear, I mean The Fear, the one that radiates from every surface and allows us to devolve into a police state in the name of freedom. What really struck me is that very little struck me. There were a lot of similarities between living at an Army post on lockdown and living in the US.
Arriving at that realization was, for me, when the towers stopped falling.
We were at MPRC, which is a big, permanent field site, exercises at which were almost like a vacation (at least for HHQ), especially in comparison with the usual tent-and-MRE crap. It had barracks with bunks to sleep in, a DFAC where they could prepare... well, less awful food, a Katusa snack bar where everybody ate instead, a miniature PX stuffed into a trailer, and even an Anthony's that you'd have to be stupid to order from because the pizzas were made up several hours away, frozen, and driven over every morning.
The whole point of an exercise at MPRC is to allow the birds to do actual live-fire training and qualification. So basically, everybody relaxes except poor III/V platoon--but then, the guys that fuel and arm the birds aren't ever going to not be busy, so at least they got hot meals and real beds.
For the rest of us it was mostly R&R. It was a little noisy; the walls were corrugated sheet metal and the birds were taking off and landing constantly--but after six months in an Apache unit, it's almost harder to get to sleep without that racket. I want to say it was the third day or so. I'd started up an ad hoc D&D campaign, using the template characters and the sample map that came in the DMG. I had a surprisingly large group; when there's bars and juicy girls available, nobody wants to sit around rolling dice and marking stats on notebook paper, but lock a bunch of people into a tiny-ass complex in the middle of nowhere...
When the news came in, it was surreal and exciting. Reminds me of being just over the top of the first big hill in a rollercoaster--you're having fun, but there's that feeling in the pit of your stomach. It spread by word of mouth, and at some point there was a short troop meeting where Six told us what had happened--not news to anyone, just making it formal. We didn't stop training, but we doubled our guard rotation and readied live ammo. My troop was using the MPRC downtime to set up a rifle qualification. We tied turbans around the heads of the vaguely man-shaped plastic targets.
For the most part, we were buzzing a little. We had a few guys with family or friends in NYC; they got priority use of the little laptop computer lab our section managed. Other than that, the general feeling, I think, was amazement: those ragheads really picked a fight with us? Man, they must be suicidal. (The sentiment was rarely expressed that politely.)
For me, that going-down excitement/dread ratcheted up when I read Bush's statement about going to war against nations that supported terror. This, I realized dimly, was some heavy shit. All it meant to me on the surface was that once we got back from MPRC, the entire post went on complete lockdown for two weeks. Only personnel allowed off-post were those who actually lived off-post. And even afterwards, traffic through the main gate was glacially slow, what with all the concrete dividers and the searches. During this time I learned how to negotiate a fifteen-foot high double fence topped with barbed and razor wire, because I needed some things I could at that point only get off-post.
It didn't really sink in how much 9/11 had changed everything until several years later, when I got back stateside. During my actual service I only dealt with the service side of it--friends who'd lost friends, losing friends and acquaintances of my own, the strain a stop-loss/stop-movement can put on a unit (the day it was announced, all non-essential company business ceased, and my roommate--who'd had less than a month before PCSing and was now in-country indefinitely--promoted himself to Chief Warrant Specialist Sixth Class and walked around smoking four cigarettes at a time, having already demolished a bottle of Crown after demolishing most--but not all--of its contents).
I didn't feel the fear till I got off the plane in Baltimore. Not my fear, I mean The Fear, the one that radiates from every surface and allows us to devolve into a police state in the name of freedom. What really struck me is that very little struck me. There were a lot of similarities between living at an Army post on lockdown and living in the US.
Arriving at that realization was, for me, when the towers stopped falling.