I remember 9-11 like it was yesterday. Well, most of it anyway. My son & grandson got here from Arlington around 11:00 pm on the 10th. That was the last day of his assignment as Commander of the Third Relief, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery where he made his last walk on the "Mat". He had 2 weeks off before he was to report to Benning as a drill sergeant. That morning my then 5 y/o grandson was sitting in my lap watching cartoons. The phone rang & it was my mother in law. She told me to turn the news on, something was going on in NYC. I switched the channel & saw where a plane hit one of the towers. I was thinking an airline pilot had really screwed up or they had bad trouble with the plane. Then the second plane hit the other tower. Then I knew we were under attack & knew exactly who did it. I kept watching & then they hit the Pentagon. Right then I knew my son & a lot of other sons were going to war. I jumped up & went to wake Andy. I shook him & said we are under attack, they hit the Twin Towers & the Pentagon. He jumped up & came to look at TV. He was telling me that was the side where construction was going on. That the killed & injured would be lower than if the hit somewhere else on the building. He had friends that worked in the Pentagon, he tried calling & couldn't through. Then he called the Tomb Quarters with same results. We all watched as the Towers came down.That night after dark we went outside to smoke. It was the most eerie feeling I've ever had before or since. There were no lights of planes in the sky. Where we live in Southside Virginia is directly under there "highway in the sky" that airliners use. Most nights there are 6-12 planes in the air at once. It still gives me cold chills. As for my son going to war, he did in 2005. He spent 13 months in Ramadi, Iraq when that hellhole was the most dangerous place on the planet. He came home alive but no ways close to the person that he was before he went. And all for nothing.
