My 9-11

I can clearly remember sitting at home on the couch in Yorktown, VA when nearly every TV channel redirected to the breaking news of a 747 colliding with a World Trade Center Tower....and then another into the opposing tower.

I don't exactly want to draw this out to be a seven page report-slash-tribute. My intent for choosing this topic is that I'd like people to know my position at the time of 9-11 and my position when I joined the Army in November 2003.

Watching 9-11 happen on TV was a complete shocker to me. I felt a personal attack was being carried out on me. I know and knew then that none of it had anything directly to do with me. But I felt it in a more personal way than I had ever felt anything, of national interest, before.

Days went by after 9-11 happened and there were signs on the road, commercials on TV, radio shows, bumper stickers, and t-shirts all in tribute of those who were lost in the 9-11 tragedy. The true impact of this attack was being shown everywhere I looked. Our people, the people of this great country, were coming together to mourn...to tribute...to remember.

I can remember when we sent troops to Afghanistan to hunt down those responsible for the attacks on our country. I was driving down a long stretch of interstate shortly after we invaded Iraq in March 2003 and came up on a convoy of Army trucks...there must have been 25 or 30 of them. I started to think about where these guys might be going and if they'd be heading out to fight for our country anytime soon and started to get that welling up feeling you get just before you cry.

Out of impulse, I threw my flashers on and slowly passed the entire convoy of trucks while I honked my horn, pumped my fist in the air out the window, and cheered for them. Every driver I saw in those trucks and every soldier who poked his head out from the canvas in the back of those trucks smiled and waived.... They new that they were being supported.

In alot of ways, all a soldier needs in order to complete his mission is Outstanding Leadership and the support of the people he's fighting for.

I joined the Army in November 2003 because I wasn't financially stable and had trouble paying my bills. It was a means to an end. I didn't join the Army because of 9-11. But I felt better about my decision to do so because I knew I'd probably get the opportunity to serve my country in atleast one of these ongoing wars...... I was right. I have served in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Iraq.

And I would do it all over again so long as it meant that I'd be actively protecting the freedoms and liberties that we, as HUMAN BEINGS ... not just as Americans, are entitled to.