A Day in the Life As a Soldier
September 11, 2001
Early Tuesday morning i just dropped my kids off at school it was a beautiful day here in New York, the sun was shining and the neighbors were extremely friendly it was almost too perfect. I went to my daily job at the Air trafic control center. I walked in around 8:20 a.m. my boss who is usually a really funny guy to be around walked up to me and he started yelling. I was so confused when i asked him what was going on he said “flight 11 heading for Los Angeles was hijacked.” i stared at him i thought he was kidding but then i noticed the plane was heading for New York. I told my boss “well maybe they didn’t have enough fuel so they are going to New York to refuel”. That is when he told me that they had not gotten a radio transmission saying so. I really started to worry this was my first year on the job and i was only 20 years old I didn’t know what he expected me to do so i sat down in my seat and waited for news. Then around 8:40 we got a second hijacking on the NORAD flight heading for Las Vegas. we had no idea what was going on and before we knew it two more were hijacked they were all picking up speed and climbing to dangerous hight’s. I knew this day wasn’t going to end very well i sat back and prayed for the best. Hours later we the T.V. and radios were blowing up we couldn’t believe what we were seeing and hearing one of the planes crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centers. We watched as the smoke came from the building and that made us wonder where did the other three planes go. We called up the Air Force and we told them to “scramble the jets we need to protect New York”. By then it was too late another plane crashed into the South tower. After this one we knew this is real and that we needed to protect what we can with what we got. There was still two other planes out there and we had no idea where they were heading. An hour later we got reports of a plane hitting the pentagon. By now everyone was in panic we didn’t know what to do there was still one plane out there and we needed to find it before it hit something like the others. Later on we heard about a plane crashing in a Pennsalvania field. The direction of the plane before it crashed in the field was heading for Washington D.C. we thought it was going for the white house. we also thought maybe it crashed there cause the passengers tried to retake the plane. We watched the towers burn and fall all i could think about was the people inside and the people on the planes. After the towers colapesed i went home to check on my family they were ok we live miles away from the towers in a little Apartment building but it was still great to find out they were alright.
November 2, 2001
Its been almost a month since the attacks on the twin towers and the world is still in shock as bodies from this event are still being dug up. When i went to work the next day i quit my job and i enlisted in the Navy i was going to be a Navy Seal. Training starts in december but it is 6 grueling months of hard labor that i don’t mind at all as long as i get to kill the men responsible for this. I have been mad at the world ever since 9/11 i guess thats why i joined i wanted to protect my country. I didn’t know why i joined the Navy Seals i think that i joined them cause i want to get the leaders behind this not just any person who bought a gun from the Black Market and made the mistake of shooting at us. When i got my admision papers in the mail my wife looked at me and cried and i told her i will be back. when my mom found out it was a little harder to explain why. When i told her i signed up she asked “why” I asked her “why not?”. When I was a kid all I ever wanted to do was join up and help but now when its finally reality i’m scared. When i told my dad what i was doing he looked at me and smiled cause he knew i was doing the right the thing by joining. He served in Vietnam and my grandpa was in WW2 joining up was like a tradition in our family. I was the first one in my family to join up as a Navy Seal.
December 21, 2001
This is my second week here at Cordanado, CA. Were at a buds acadamy which stands for Basic Underwater Demolitions. I don’t have any friends here at the training camp i really don't know anyone’s names besides the officers. if you don’t address and salute them its time for more push ups or a 5 mile run what ever one he chooses. The neighboring training camp the Marines own the one once in awhile we look over at there training camp and laugh and say “they think they got it so hard”.
January 8, 2002
I’v been at this camp for a while now and they are finally letting us shoot. My weapons are a M16 and 45 pistol. When we got to the training area they had us firing all sorts of guns. They had everything from the black market which plays a important role in this war. First we shot our own guns then we moved on to the anti-tank weapons and the weapons the Taliban use like AK-47s or RPG. After we were done there we went down to the range we were sitting on a hilltop and the targets were a thousand yards away and hidden in the valley. In front of us there was three different types of sniper rifles. there was the SVD from Russia the Remington 700 from American, the Berret 50 cal., and then the AS-50 from Britain. I have never shot long range before so I knew this was going to be interesting. The SVD i scored low percentage and the Remington was the same. When I got to the 50 I amazed my instructors I hit every target right off the bat and the ones I missed i made ajustments to the wind. The AS-50 I scored highest in my class with 100% accuracy. That gave me the job as a team sniper with the AS-50.
Febuary 14, 2002
Today basic training ended so they gave us a week to go home and vist our family.