This year brings us the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America. On that day, I was observing an Iowa high school classroom as part of the process of becoming a teacher. I’d heard the first reports about a plane crash in New York, the rumors about other crashes and attacks. Later, teachers were told that students could watch the news. A second announcement offered the library to students who didn’t wish to watch.
When we finally tuned in, both World Trade Center towers had collapsed. Unbelievable. Horrifying. A new dread hit me. I was a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard. I’d joined for college money, but suddenly my enlistment had become much more serious. We were at war. My command could call me at any moment.
In the office, I cut in front of the people waiting to make calls. “I need the phone.” The secretary glared at me. “National Guard,” I said. “I need to check if I have orders.”
The Army hadn’t called, but I drove home to watch the news and stay by the phone. War began that day, but I didn’t ship to Afghanistan until 2004.
Readers may remember that I’m a member of the Gentleman’s Coffee Club, a group of older veterans meeting at a Spokane, Washington, Starbucks. Sept. 11 draws comparisons to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. With this in mind, I talked to my friend Stan Parks, a Navy officer during World War II.
“I was 17,” he said of the attacks on Pearl Harbor. “My brother-in-law and I were at a Chicago Cardinals football game. Leaving the stadium, the newspaper boys were shouting, ‘Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.’ We were shocked. It had not soaked in what it all meant. On the streetcar, there was much talk. Some of it was anger, but mostly just shock that it had happened. At home, we listened to the radio until I went to bed.”
Parks is part of the Greatest Generation, those heroes who saved the world from the Nazi and Japanese empires. I had this idea that each one of them heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor and immediately signed up to fight for freedom.
Instead, Park’s story of the attack that launched his generation into war is just like most people’s stories of the attack that sent my generation into war. We were both shocked, angered, and we learned about it through the day’s broadcasts.
I’m an author of several novels for young people. My service in Afghanistan serves as inspiration for some of them. When I began speaking at schools, the high school seniors had been 8 years old on 9/11. Now, none of the students in my audiences were alive to witness the terrible attack that began our modern war.
So I failed to find a unique, and uniquely intense, 9/11 story. However, in talking to Parks about his experience and reflecting on new adults with no living memory of 9/11, I realize all of our “I saw it on TV” 9/11 stories are intense and vital, and growing more and more unique with each passing year.
May God grant that no future Americans ever truly know the fear we felt, the existential worry we had for America’s very survival. Our duty on this and every anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is to remember and honor those we lost and to continue to tell our stories. We need to remind future Americans and the world of the way we united to protect our people and fight to help make the world a better, safer place.
Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
