On September 11, 2001, I was an active-duty Marine. I had just transitioned from Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, where I served as a combat correspondent, to Fort George G. Meade, MD, where I trained future military journalists from all branches at the Defense Information School (DINFOS).
I was on leave and settling into my new on-base home. I remember waking up that morning, pouring a cup of coffee, sitting down on the couch, and turning on the Today Show. Flight 11 had just crashed into the North Tower, and moments later I watched Flight 175 crash into the South Tower. It seemed unreal.
My first instinct was to call the Marine Detachment at Fort Meade. Surely some action would take place, and I would be needed, but that wasn’t the case. I was told to remain on leave and that they would call me if needed—“Enjoy your time off,” they said. But the image of Flight 175 crashing into the tower was burned into my mind.
I vividly remember not wanting to leave the relative safety of the base. The air felt different. The world felt different. My son was not even a year old yet. I kept thinking, “What was the world going to be like for him?” How would I keep him safe? My first outing off base was to a local mall. I distinctly remember how I felt. I was on guard. I was hypervigilant—paranoid. Everyone seemed like a threat.
That immediate hypervigilance eventually subsided, but the effects of that day never really passed. As military actions escalated, the impact of September 11 continued. As an instructor, I started seeing students I trained returning to DINFOS for advanced training. Many had been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Deployments and combat were no longer hypothetical—they were real, and I was hearing about it firsthand from fellow service members. This made my role as an instructor feel very real—and very important. Students were going to take the skills my fellow instructors and I taught and apply them in the worst possible conditions and under extreme stress. It seemed like an impossible job. How could I prepare them for something I had never done? I had never been deployed or seen combat. I knew nothing about what they might encounter.
I decided to do the only thing I could—listen. I listened to what they had to say. I took their feedback and applied it to what we were teaching. I asked a question: “Does what we teach here at DINFOS prepare you to do your job under real-world conditions?” I used that feedback where I could.
For me, the events of September 11 went far beyond that day. After DINFOS, I received orders to a recruiting command in New England where I served as the Marketing and Public Affairs Chief. I handled difficult, sometimes hostile media queries and interview requests from Boston-based outlets. As more and more service members were dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, public support seemed to be waning. This created a difficult recruiting environment.
I never deployed or served in combat, but I was seeing the effects of the wars firsthand—not just through stories, but through the returning service members themselves. I met a Marine who was so badly burned in an IED explosion that he was barely recognizable. I met others who had lost limbs. It seemed like every Marine I talked to knew someone who had been killed in action, and for a while, I read the daily casualty reports. I couldn’t unsee the burned faces or missing limbs, forget the stories, or escape the weight of those reports. What increasingly troubled me was repeatedly hearing, “Thank you for your service.” I knew the words came from a good place, but after seeing the cost some had paid for their service, “thank you for your service” began to feel painfully inadequate. How could those words possibly account for a life permanently altered—or taken? They couldn’t.
These events, and others, deeply influenced my decision not to reenlist. I had 15 years of service when I left the Marines—only five more to retirement. I still struggle with whether leaving was the right decision. But at the time, I couldn’t escape the questions: Would I make it through those five years? Would I be badly injured—or become a name on one of the casualty reports I had been reading? And what would either outcome mean for my son?