Editor's Note: Today marks the 13th year since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Our Facebook fans shared where they were on that tragic day.
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NAS New Orleans on a combat search and rescue exercise. We were gearing up and pre-flighting for a day flight with several other units. Someone initially came out to the flight line and mentioned a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center buildings.
We figured it was a Cessna or something so we kept prepping for the mission.
Later, they came out and told us to seal it up and get off the flight line. Once we saw what was happening on TV, we all were shocked. Everyone wanted to get back home (and to our base).
It was troubling but also we knew we should be packing and getting ready to go overseas somewhere. There was an element of, "How dare they attack us on our own soil?!”
They shut the exercise down, of course. When they did let us fly back home, we felt like we were behind already because anyone at home had already packed and were ready to go.
I’d been to Panama in 89, Desert Shield/Storm/Northern and Southern Watch, Bosnia, and several other places over the past 20+ years. While I’ve never “enjoyed” going to a war zone, we signed up to protect our country and do our jobs and all those things we trained to do.
So most of us were driven to get over there and get to work.
It was nice to see the country patriotic and together for a while at least. It’s a shame it took something like that to get us there.
Virgil Poulsen
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Working at the Crestview airport. Very surreal. The day the "earth stood still."
John Kiger
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I was in Germany. I came home from school and the news of what had happened was all over German TV. There wasn't any channel that didn't cover it!
I'm not an American and I wasn't affiliated with any Americans at the time, but I cried when I saw the disaster on TV.
And 13 years later, I still get sad every year. It's just so unbelievably sad!
Nicole M. Pettay
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In the Pentagon. After I got my 4 employees off of the floor and able to walk, I was thinking we need to get out of the building before the next plane hit. Pretty scary.
George Wallace
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: WORD ON THE STREET: Where were you on 9/11?