I was working on putting an addition on a house in Manasquan, NJ and had to go to Town Hall to pick up some permit updates. I heard there that something had happened but there was only one TV in the place and the Mayor's office door was locked so they couldn't get in to watch. I jumped back in my truck and hurried back to the jobsite - the house was right on First Avenue across the street from the beach.
The owner - my client - had the TV on and when I saw what happened, I went up on the beach (just around the corner) and this is an approximation of what we could see from there on the beach - nearly 60 miles away. It was a crazy day. This is an example of the local news I saw on TV:
I was on the Advance team setting up for a BrightStar multi-national wargames exercise. We were into day two of Day/Night shifts and I was the nightshift NCO in charge of the communications where we were staying at the InterContinental at the Pyramids. I was asleep and got a call to turn my TV to channel 4 and they hung up. I got to see plane #2 slam into tower 2. Forty minutes latter our armorer's truck showed up at the hotel compound and we took over security for the hotel. The hotel had 90% of the rooms with US military personnel and I was the ranking NCO. They suspended shift rotation and we sheltered in place at the hotel. We spent eight days in the hotel while the people at Cairo West assembled the chow hall and living quarters. Unless the military personnel were on guard duty we had everybody stay in their rooms. The exceptions were the 5 officers, my commo Major and 4 lieutenants, the Army MP E-6, and me, a GA Air Guard E-7. My biggest job was keeping my Major in check. All 4 LT's would ask advice from me. The chanting riots in the squares in the middle east? One of them was just outside my second floor balcony on the other side of the security wall. When the cameras were on they were chanting but as soon as the cameras went off it got quiet. I would fuck with them. I had a universal door key and a list of all the vacant rooms. I would go full battle rattle dress with my M16A2, dark glasses, face scarf, and appear on the balconies of the vacant rooms during the chants. That screwed with those that could see me. Then I would go to a different location and do it again.
ReplyDeleteWhen we moved to Cairo West the hotel troops were responsible for packing up the vacant rooms. I packed up my buddie's room and skipped the two 1-liter water bottles in the fridge. I later found out they were 151 proof rum. Oops, my bad. My saving grace was that I showed up with 2 cases of Scotch. That exercise turned into a real world mission where we directed incoming military flights to various positions throughout the middle east. It was supposed to be a 3 week deployment that turned into a 3 month deployment. I had 3 weeks of comp time built up in my civilian company for this deployment. I expected the paychecks to stop after 3 weeks but I got extended for the 3 months I was deployed. The paychecks kept coming and the tax-free status was applied from day 1. When I got back state side I was the poster child hero of Dunn and Bradstreet Software for 3 months. D&B Software broke up on September of 2002.