story8374.xml

story8374.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-10-05

I'm a United States Marine. Stationed In Camp Lejeune, NC we deployed to 29 Palms, CA for CAX(Combined Arms Exercise). After a 2 months of training in the hot, dry , mountainous climate We packed up our stuff and headed back to go home. It was Sept 11th at approx 2 AM and we were on several buses headed to Victorville, CA a former Air Station. We arrived and processed all our info and sat down in the air hanger waiting to fly out. I fell asleep on the ground. The cold concrete being the most comfortable thing I could find. I was awoke at around 6 AM by out Sergeant Major. Screaming for us to get up and circle up around him. I jumped to my feet and we all centered around him. He turns and the Commanding Officer walks out from behind the giant hanger door and stands up to talk to us. He starts in saying that a plane was hijacked and crashed into one of the twin towers. We turned to each other in disbelief. At first we all thought it was a trick. Some kind of speech to make us cautious to fly on a plane. But then it sunk in that it was real. The CO would come in every couple hours or so and kept us posted on the status of the situation. No TV , no Radio. we were totally not clued into the situation whatsoever. The whole became more vivid when they started handing out live ammunition and posting marines on different areas of the flight line. I posted at the front gate for some time. Rifle in hand and ready for anything. After 3 to 4 hours there I left and got some rest from standing there in the hot sun guarding the gate. We were rotating in and out to different areas. My final post was guarding the plane itself. 4 days later we boarded the plane and took off. those days at Victorville have been the only time in my 2 and a half years in the marine corps that I thought I was protecting anyone. It may not seem like much and I knew it wasn't but that is one of the reasons I joined.