9/11

Today is the anniversary of September 11. Can you believe it's been 7 years since the world turned upside down? I remember exactly where I was - in Germany. We'd been there less than 2 weeks, and so I knew absolutely no one. Chris was in the field (of course), and I was in my empty house with nothing but government furniture and a tiny TV that we had bought so I wouldn't be bored while Chris was gone. I'd arranged for the cable to be hooked up that morning (with the time difference the attacks didn't happen until the afternoon), but it wouldn't be on until around 5 or 6 in the evening. In the meantime I got one German news channel. I was sitting at the table doing a puzzle trying to pass the time, with the TV on for background noise. I remember looking up at it at one point and seeing footage of a plane smashing into the first tower. I just stared at it, that couldn't be real, right? And I couldn't figure out what was going on because everything was in German. Then they had a press conference with the President, and it was dubbed into German, so I still didn't know what was happening. After some frantic phone calls stateside I got a handle on what was going on, and then my cable came on so I was glued to the TV for the next several hours. Chris came bursting in the door at around midnight, they had brought all the guys in to pull security at the gates. He had to be near the phone at all times, and the only phone jack was downstairs, so we moved the mattress into the living room so we could watch the news and hear the phone.

The post literally went on total lockdown. The only people allowed through the gates were soldiers and family members who lived off post. And each and every car was taken apart and searched, the wait was something like 3 hours. I was really glad I lived on post and didn't have a car yet, so I couldn't really go anywhere anyway. The commissary had no fresh meat or produce for a while, because no shipments were allowed in. We didn't have mail for a few days either. And there were armed soldiers outside of every building on post. I literally had to show my ID to use the bathroom at the PX. It was a little like living in the Twilight Zone. After a while things calmed down a bit, but we were never the same. We went abruptly from a peace-time Army to gearing up for war, and everything became frighteningly real. Suddenly the possibility of my husband actually going to war became much more likely, and it was scary. Now I've been a War-Wife almost my entire married life.

It's hard to believe it's been seven years. There are soldiers in the Army now who weren't even in high school when the attacks happened, yet here they are, willingly joining up to serve their country when they know they'll be sent to war. And that right there, is why we are going to win the War on Terrorism. Terrorists may be willing to die, but we are willing to fight. General Yamamoto once said, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." Damn straight.