9/11 Remembrance: From Back-to-School to Active Duty

Today we mark 25 years since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

On that day, a sleeper cell of mostly Saudi Arabian Al-Qaeda terrorists – many holding advanced degrees – hijacked four American airliners in flight with passengers on board, to target the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. (technically in Washington, D.C.) and, according to subsequent intelligence reports, possibly the White House or the U.S. Capitol building in the nation's capital. Three of the four targets were hit: at the Twin Towers in New York City and at the Pentagon.

But, the fourth possible target(s) were not stricken due to the heroic efforts of passengers and crew aboard United Airlines Flight 93 who – after hearing news reports of the first three strikes on their cell phones – stormed the terrorists in the cockpit, resulting in the crash of the plane in a field in Shanksville, Pa.

The Al Qaeda terrorists had trained rigorously in U.S. flight schools so they could fly their planes in suicide missions precisely into their designated targets. They took their orders from Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden who was provided safe harbor in the mountains of Afghanistan by the head of state, Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

At the World Trade Center in New York City, 2,606 people died when the Twin Towers collapsed, including civilians, 343 firefighters, 23 NYPD officers, 37 Port Authority police officers. The first responders were running up the tower stairways to rescue victims when the towers went down. At the Pentagon, 125 people were killed in the building in addition to those on the plane. In Shanksville, Pa., 44 people died aboard Flight 93. Altogether 246 passengers – including many school children on field trips – died aboard the four planes.

It was the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil in American history. And, according to the Miller Center, the "most lethal act of politically or ideologically motivated mass violence recorded globally in modern times."

On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, when I worked at The Georgetowner, I contributed this remembrance of the day to the article The Georgetowner Staff Remembers September 11, 2001, published September 9, 2021.

Here's what I recalled of that time:

From Back-to-School to Active Duty

Christopher Jones, managing editor

Blue skies and a crisp, clear back-to-school Tuesday morning in Van Ness. Faculty launching courses and preparing students for camping trips. Another teacher bursts into my class to say the World Trade Towers were just hit. A few weeks earlier my wife and I had taken our own kids to the towers to see the Hall of Nations and to cast our eyes down on “all the little ants” below from the top deck.

A special assembly was called as panic quickly spread through the school. Clusters of screaming and crying children and adults reacting to news of the Pentagon being hit by a plane (true) and the State Department also being hit (false.)

Cell phone communication out. Traffic at a standstill. Bridges clogged with harried office workers walking home to distant suburbs. All U.S. civilian planes grounded. F-18s overhead. At work, my wife could see smoke rising from the Pentagon. Who will pick up our kids from school? Will they be seeing all the images of people dropping or leaping to their deaths as the towers burned? Are these attacks just an opening salvo to chemical or biological strikes?

At the Pentagon, a sailor who had just weeks before trained me on software had died in the attack. Another friend, a Green Beret, watched the plane roll into the Pentagon and burned his hands as he helped rescue survivors.

One parent of a former student (whose birthday is September 11) had died on the flight that hit the Pentagon. She was a flight attendant, and many students were on field trips aboard that plane. News of our New York friends didn’t reach us until the next day. One, who had survived Al Qaeda’s 1993 truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center made it out just in time from the 86th floor of the south tower. Others were covered by debris but lived.

At the Pentagon, the Navy’s new offices were destroyed. After volunteering for active duty from the reserves, I left teaching to begin my posting at the Office of Naval Intelligence. The reports I read as we tracked threats from Al Qaeda and hunted UBL (then referred to as Usama Bin Ladin) haunt me to this day. As do images of planes flying near tall buildings. Thank you to all who keep us safe.

By Christopher Jones