Remembering the fallen of 9/11

[Cloud23465]

I would like to take a moment of silence to pay my respects to those who lost or gave there life trying to save those from the tragic events of 9/11. We will never forget...

[cpneb]

I would like to take a moment of silence to pay my respects to those who lost or gave there life trying to save those from the tragic events of 9/11. We will never forget...

A little something I posted last year.... Even more poignant for me since my semi-son was hit by an EFP overseas earlier this year, and he's still recovering from it, assuming that anyone ever recovers from TBI.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3145161/

Remember those that have given their lives since then as well: they knew the risks, and they went in where even angels feared to tread....

[Fireand'chutes77]

Summer has come and passed,
The innocent can never last,
Wake me up when September ends.

Like my fathers come to pass,
Seven years has gone so fast,
Wake me up when September ends.

Here comes the rain again,
Falling from the stars,
Drenched in my pain again,
Becoming who we are.

As my memory rests,
But never forgets what I lost,
Wake me up when September ends.

- Green Day

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September 14th, 2001
United States
Washington D.C.
White House
3:01 AM

A lone Secret Service agent leaned against a tree trunk in a copse of maples, fifty feet from the West Wing exterior. Light morning haze filtered through the trees under a soft, clear moon. Diffused blackness. Usually, light drifted from the high, open windows of the President’s office, chasing away some of the gloom. Tonight, however, the windows of the building were cold and black, covered with heavy blast panels.

Pure white moonlight played with the shadows, turning the wood into a ghostly mass of light and dark bars. Nothing moved. The area around the complex had been cordoned off for blocks, so even the ubiquitous grumble of D.C. traffic had vanished. A solitary high-pitched siren wafted in from crosstown, mingling with the crickets before fading into the night. In the silence, water in the presidential pool next to him tickled at its concrete sides. On the other side of the trees, a cicada screamed dryly. It was followed by another, another, until a whole chorus screeched tone-deaf into the morning. Then, just as suddenly, they successively broke off, leaving only their haunting calls to echo in the agent’s mind.

A knot in the tree prodded him in the back. He shifted, scattering small pieces of bark across the shoulders of his expensive black sport jacket. Taking a long, slow gulp from a matte-finish thermos of coffee, he rubbed his forehead tiredly. The entire Service had been on twenty-four hour alert since the attacks; he’d only gotten four hours of sleep yesterday.

The things we do for honor… Ah, well. At least the pay’s good…

He looked up at the moon. It peeked through a shifting gauze of thin clouds, scattering luminescent beams. The USSS man’s eyes slowly adjusted. Deciding he no longer needed night-vision goggles, he tilted them onto his forehead. Blinking to acclimate, he massaged the back of his neck.

Exhaustion faded slightly as the caffeine hummed through his veins. Shifting again, he glanced through gaps in the trees toward the Ellipse. White steam, similar to a lake’s in winter, hovered over the grass, a result of cold air meeting the warm mass of mown earth. Across the South Lawn, he could see smoke drifting from beyond the Potomac, lit up by orange worklights twinkling in the faint mist. Even now, three days later, a thin line of gray smoke twisted up from center of the impact site, lit up by the floodlights before losing itself into the night.

A breeze wafted in over US 50, dispelling the moist, balmy September air with a chill. Water in the air condensed into dew, settling on the agent’s forehead and bare hands. He shivered, yanking on the lapels of his coat. The gusts gradually bent the smoke in his direction. He crinkled his nose. The haze now reeked of charred rubber and burnt earth.

Stiffening, the wind chattered the chain-link fence surrounding the pool. The galvanized steel links rattled hollowly like a hall of skeletons. Startled, the agent jumped, now fully awake. He was trained, of course, no greenhorn, but there was something about this he really didn’t like…

In the inky blackness of the trees, a twig cracked. Expertly, he knew that it was human-made and to his 10 o’clock. Hands now slightly clammy, he hoisted his service Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun to his shoulder and flicked off the safety.

“United States Secret Service!” he called into the night.

“Relax, Finnegan, it’s me,” a weary voice drifted back. Out of the woods floated a Caucasian head and hands, the black Secret Service jacket still swallowed up by the gloom.

Creepy… Relieved, Finnegan lowered the MP5 from his shoulder and safed it. “…Sorry. Can’t be too careful.”

“’Course not… That’s our job,” said the second agent, coming stand by him. He carried a Remington 870 pump-action. He stood from a moment, free hand stuffed into his coat pocket, rocking on his heels, breathing deep lungfuls of night damp through his nose. Satisfied, he pulled a box of cigarettes out of a breast pocket and stuck a cancer stick in his mouth. “Want one?” he said, keeping the stick expertly balanced in his teeth and proffering the white box.

“No thanks, Bob… Don’t smoke,” said the junior agent.

“...Younger generation...” the senior agent muttered, lighting up. The Bic flame and flaring cigarette tip gleamed off his opaque sunglasses. He took a long draft and held it before letting the acrid smoke jet out through pursed lips.

Smoking definitely looks cooler in the movies, Finnegan decided. You don’t have the smell.

Bob silently took a few more puffs. Smoke drooled out his nostrils. “Any activity?” he asked at last, pointing toward the darkened West Wing with his smoldering cigarette tip.

“Nothin’, sir,” said Finnegan, “And I’ve been standing here all night.”

“Huh…” Bob said, leaning against a tree beside him. He cracked open his shotgun and began toying with the high-power shells. “I can’t tell you myself,” he continued slowly, nodding toward the presidential residence, “Even if I knew, but… I think there’s something up. Rumors. There’s gonna be something major going down overseas…”

Finnegan digested his words. “Hope it’s for our side…” he murmured at last, gazing toward the dark-cloaked façade...

[TransWarpDrive]

'Chutes, cpneb, thanks for the stories. Very well done, and quite fitting for a 9/11 commemorative thread. Keep up the good work, guys.

[cpneb]

'Chutes, cpneb, thanks for the stories. Very well done, and quite fitting for a 9/11 commemorative thread. Keep up the good work, guys.

I'd like to keep this thread going through the week, at least, in honor of those no longer here who never got to see Kim Possible or who saw the show and left us in Afghanastan and Iraq an elsewhere, taking care of business.

[TransWarpDrive]

Fine with me; it's fitting that we pause and remember all who died on that tragic day six years ago.

[jeriddian]

Absoutely,

I was busy at work, driving from one hospital to another when it was announced on the radio that the second tower had been hit. That's what I remember doing. Fifteen minutes later I was in the emergency room at the Odessa hospital, watching the television with everyone else as the towers collapsed.

[TransWarpDrive]

I had just gotten to work, and had opened up the receptionist's desk and turned on the phones that morning (it used to be part of my job to help the receptionist, back when we had one). When she came in at 8:30 AM, she said to me, "Oh, (TWD), they just crashed a plane into the World Trade Center!" I thought she meant a light aircraft had crashed into the roof of one of the towers. I tried to access a news page on the internet when one of my co-workers got a portable TV going in the main conference room. By then the second plane had rammed the south tower, and CNN was repeating that footage several times when I first started watching. We moved the TV into the lunchroom as they needed that conference room for a training seminar (yes, they were trying to go about business as usual that day - for a while, anyway), and for the next few hours, most of us stood or sat and watched the news reports about the attacks. I know I was shocked when I first heard of the plane carshing into the Pentagon - I thought, "My God! What is going on today??" Things only got worse; I remember sitting there watching as both towers collapsed. When the south tower fell, CNN had a camera close-up on the fires in the north tower. We heard a rumble and saw part of the south tower falling behind the north building. They switched cameras to a long shot of both towers, only there was just a pillar of smoke and dust where the south tower used to be. It took me a minute or two to realize that the south tower had collapsed.
However, when the north tower went, we had a perfect view of it. I remember the camera was close in on the top of the north tower. All of a sudden, I saw a puff of smoke (or dust) belch out from the top of the tower, then the building began to collapse in on itself. As the tower collapsed, I became aware that my heart was racing and my left arm, which was resting on the table next to me, was trembling. It took me a few minutes after witnessing those horrors to calm myself down and stop the arm from trembling.