American memories already wear the scars of where each person was and what each was doing when news of last week’s terrorist attacks broke.
I was aboard an American warship, the USS Boxer, a place that would seem to be a great vantage point for the start of a war. The Boxer is a Navy vessel designed for shuttling U.S. Marines, helicopters and howitzers to hot spots around the globe. The ship and two escorts were returning from a six-month deployment that included desert training in the Middle East and a hurried departure from Jordan due to a terrorist threat.
As all aboard the Boxer were about to find out, the Middle East had just beaten them home.
The ship and its escorts had picked up hundreds of relatives at Pearl Harbor Sept. 6 for a cruise the rest of the way home to San Diego, a public outreach known as a Tiger Cruise. This lets family members experience some of what their sons and daughters, fathers and mothers have been through. At the same time, the Marines and sailors can relax among people who don’t want to kill them. I was there to see my son, Cpl. Christopher N. Werland, a radioman with Romeo Battery of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, numbering about 2,200 Marines and sailors.
But the relaxation didn’t last long enough.
‘Terrorist attack’
Word came when the Boxer was still three days from its home port. As we waited in a line snaking through crowded passageways for yet another helping of institutional food, the captain announced over the intercom: “We have a report that two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in what is believed to be a terrorist attack.” His voice was amazingly calm.
Some people in line reacted in disbelief, thinking this must be some kind of drill. Others tried to clarify with each other what they had just heard.
The early implication was that these were small aircraft. Correction of that came later, along with word that another plane had struck the Pentagon. From that point we all waited with eager dread for each new unbelievable morsel of news.
Here we were aboard the Boxer, with its weary crew and Marines hoping for just a little peace, good food and a comfortable place to sleep after a long, wearing trip, and they were hearing in dribs and drabs that the safe harbor of America no longer existed in the way they had left it.
At a table in the cafeteria, one Marine angrily asked, “Why don’t we have any damn terrorists?”
Fresh television news didn’t appear on the ship’s video system until the vessel drew close enough to California to pick up a signal, on the Wednesday afternoon after the atrocities. (The satellite TV system was down.) Until then all aboard could only wait as a written chronology created from Internet reports scrolled slowly over the few available TV screens, offering little new information.
Then there was the strange turnabout of Marines and sailors with family in New York and Washington, D.C., trying to find out if their relatives were safe. When good news from those families did finally come down through the chain of command, it was perhaps the only time that enlisted men would ever hug their superiors.
A full military hug
Upon getting news that his parents, scheduled to fly out of Boston, were safe, a Marine thrust out his hand to the messenger, 1st Sgt. Tim Britt, then lunged into a full hug. Just as quickly the young man raced to the smoking deck outside to tell his buddies.
Once one channel of live TV news did arrive, knots of people formed around the screens on that Wednesday. But perhaps more interesting were the number of people who didn’t want to watch, though watching did take effort. One big-screen set in the cafeteria and other televisions in scattered bare-bones lounges near berthing areas didn’t allow enough room for many people to hear or see much.
Many service people simply talked of seeing family and friends again. One Marine spoke about how the infant daughter he left was now walking. Single service people couldn’t wait to hit the dance clubs in Oceanside and dump all the emotional ballast.
For people who have been living on edge for six months while the rest of us worked and played, this kind of shock, guaranteed to change many of their lives, seemed just too much.
Nerves on edge
A sergeant had gathered with other Marines around a table for poker in a TV room the night before disembarking Sept. 13. Pushed beyond the brink by the sight of devastated relatives holding pictures of lost loved ones, he snapped at a Navy medical corpsman.
“Turn it off! I don’t want to see it! Turn it off!” the sergeant ordered.
“Hey, just play your damn cards,” the corpsman responded. “I need to see this.”
The only video alternative available was a series of John Wayne movies or some mindless comedy. The news remained.
Once ashore for their homecoming, it seemed that the reality and anxiety and anger of it all was starting to sink in, with many fearing their well-deserved leaves would be canceled. They’re home again, but none knows for how long.
———-
Ross Werland is deputy editor of the Tribune’s Health & Family section.
