TruthTramp

September 11, 2012

about

September 11, 2001

About four years ago, I was transiting through LA to visit an old friend Jeanie Gaudette. Jeanie and I had met during our time in the Navy. Jeanie was attending UCLA and taking a terrorism class that I thought I’d pop in and check out for the novelty of it. We sat in class and immediately the professor brings up 9/11. He asks “How or was your life permanently altered by the events of 9/11?”, Jeanie and I exchanged glances as people raised their hands and shared stories… I couldn’t help but raise my hand.

The thing is no one had ever really asked me that nor had I really thought about it. Then listening to all the stories in this one class all the way in California, kind of floored me. I thought ‘fuck man, this really did alter not only my entire reality, but that of our entire country and planet, and I hardly think about it… can hardly remember the details.’  I have orally relayed my version of the happenings surrounding this day but never written them…

2001

I can not recall if it was the eighth or the ninth of September when it was announced to the ship’s crew of the USS George Washington that we would be heading out for an unscheduled deployment that would last approximately two days. As we were trained, we asked no questions gathered our gear and loaded onto the ship. We had just come out of a rehab period for the ship and were scheduled to do ‘work ups’ which is months of mini-deployments to test the ship and crew for what the Navy calls sea-readiness, these are standard pre-deployment.

So we either pulled out on the ninth or tenth of September, regardless, the morning of September 11…. I awoke to some anxious energy, we had been traveling north from Virginia at such a speed the entire ship was shuddering. I was perturbed because I heard some mention of some crazy shit happening somewhere… I missed the details through my grumbling and just remember thinking how everyone is always ‘up in arms’ (literally) and that nothing ever really happened.

I was on a P-way cleaning detail with Lindsay Riddick and remember discussing  my eye rolling denial as someone came to remind me I had a photo shoot, a Chief’s re-enlistment. I grabbed my gear and headed to the re-enlistment, I walked into the room and saw that everyone was crowded around the TV. As I approached the crowd someone stepped aside and my eyes landed on the television just as the second building was collapsing. I couldn’t stop my hands from plastering to my gape jawed face as the utter horror and shock swept over me. The first. the very first thought in my head was. That is demolition, they blew it out from the bottom… murmurs repeating my thought crawled throughout the room. As we continued to watch, CNN announced to us that the USS George Washington was on it’s way to NY harbor.

I’ve never photographed a prouder re-enlistment a prouder Chief, than I did that day. The pervasive energy of the day was. This…. this is what we train for. This is our moment to defend what is ours. Great is the pride of the United States Military.  Great is our nation… and let them come fuck with us. we will destroy ‘them’.

Yes that day I thought about how we were not sea ready . we had no weapons. we had no aircraft…. they flew on some random ones, and i felt like it was all staged. it was the only one time we ever pulled out unscheduled. that’s about as far as I got… that day. It was my mom’s birthday and I was eightteen years old…. and that day I knew I was going to war.

Four days later I was standing in the hanger bay having a deep discussion with Sandra Harrington… we were talking about the events and the unknown, how we didn’t bring enough socks and miracles… there was an unbelievable sun setting before our eyes over the sea and just as the sun beamed gloriously through the clouds they announced we were heading back to Virginia.

Subsequently I completed countless workups and two six month deployments to the Persian Gulf. I spent nearly three years of my life on the ship out at sea. Five years four days of my life in the US Navy. I have many navy stories… but this is the one from which they all seem to stem.

I was out of the navy nearly four years when it hit me, like a pillowcase of soap bars, that the ship was on it’s way there, before the 9/11 attack. and the implications of that