What 9/11 Was Like at West Point

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in a freshmen computer science lab at West Point. The door was open. Around nine a.m., we heard TVs being turned to Fox News in nearby classrooms.

A colonel in a Class B uniform poked his head inside and told my instructor, a female lieutenant colonel, that a Boeing 767 had impacted the World Trade Center. Shock splashed across her face. Her name was Rachel Diane Borhauer and, like most of my instructors at West Point on 9/11, she had ascended the ranks in a mostly peacetime Army.

She regained her composure and went stone-faced. She stopped teaching, flipped on the TV, and allowed us to watch Fox News for the last few minutes. A reporter was talking, but there was no footage of Ground Zero.

I have little recollection of what happened the rest of the day. I don’t remember leaving computer science, lunch, my other classes, cross country practice, dinner, how much homework I completed, or what time I fell asleep. I don’t even remember calling my parents. My memories pick up a few days later.

Someone suggested my “amnesia” was shock. Rather, it was regimentation. In the long-term, the population at West Point was profoundly affected by 9/11. But, in the short term, in the hours and days after the Twin Towers fell, it was a population whose lives mostly continued as they always had. There were no sick days, no cancelled classes, no skipped meals, no hours huddled around a radio or TV.  The Army football team, which was preparing for its first home game, still practiced in Michie Stadium on the evening of September 11. For us, it was business as usual.

True, there were exterior shifts. Within hours, West Point was on lock-down. Everyone was instructed to carry their military ID—you could be stopped and asked to show it — and no one was allowed on or off post. Military police patrolled the streets in humvees.

Several days later, when people were allowed on and off post again, the military police still took precautions. One evening, as I jogged downhill from the golf course, I passed the gate near the Post Exchange.  It was getting dark and someone had erected a light set. The light set illuminated a weapon system. The weapon system was enormous, alien looking, mounted on the back of a vehicle, like something out of a sci-fi movie. I slowed my jogging; the sight of it gave me chills.

***

On the night of September 14, I quit my homework, changed into a formal uniform, walked out of Grant Barracks, and formed up with members of Company B-1. At 9:40 p.m., we marched to The Plain, the West Point parade field. The Corps of Cadets, all thirty-two companies, stood in formation around the swath of manicured grass.

The moon was huge, and the night was very cold, even in my long-sleeved, high-necked uniform. They played Amazing Grace on bagpipes, taps, and there was a twenty-one gun salute in honor of the victims. Afterwards, B-1 marched back to Grant Barracks.

I remember the memorial service, but not my reaction to it. Looking back it’s easy to see that this was because I was nineteen and naïve and not from a military family. I couldn’t comprehend how far-reaching the effects of 9/11 would be.

When I reached my room it was after 10:30 p.m. That meant lights out for freshmen. I changed into my Army Physical Training Uniform—black shorts and a gray T-shirt—and fell asleep on my bunk bed, unfinished homework spread across a nearby desk.

***

A few days after September 14, I was on Target Hill Field with John Ryan Dennison and a handful of freshmen from Company B-1. Dennison, a sophomore, was leading us through a circuit workout. Between every exercise, he made us run from one end of Target Hill Field to the other.

“Hurry!” he yelled. “Faster, faster. Come on!” He led the way in every exercise, completing more pull-ups, pushups, and flutter kicks, and outsprinting everyone down the field. When we ran east, I turned my head right. Over the rain soaked trees, I saw black smoke still streaming from the fallen Twin Towers, fifty miles downstream.

Always, after every set, Dennison said something encouraging: “Nice job,” “You got this,” or “Keep up the good work.” When the workout was complete, he gathered us in a circle. It was dark by then, the moon shrouded behind storm clouds, and we could barely see his face. We were wet and mud splattered, still breathing hard, spitting up mucus. He told us we’d done well, that he was proud of us, and that we should always strive to do our best; the soldiers we would lead deserved it. Then he released us up the hill to Grant Barracks.

The freshmen of Company B-1 talked about that workout for days: “Oh. My. God. Epic.” “That guy’s a bad ass.” “Shit!” “Dennison made me throw up. Twice.” I, myself, recounted the taste of bile as I sprinted across Target Hill Field, the way my legs and arms throbbed the next morning.

Dennison melded empowerment with seriousness, a sense of urgency. I’d met people who were serious and urgent, people who maintained a straight face and barked orders. But they never stopped to say “Nice job,” “You got this,” “Keep up the good work.” I would follow those other people, but only because I had to. But I’d follow Dennison because I wanted to. That was the first time I understood that becoming an officer would put me in a position of leadership, but it would not make me a leader. Other people make you a leader because they’ve chosen to follow you.

I never imagined that this man who gave me one of my earliest insights into leadership would die five years later in a firefight in Iraq, in a war that started on October 7, 2001, a few days after we convened on Target Hill Field.

***

A few weeks after 9/11—before the invasion—we were no longer on lock down. Sometimes I would overhear snippets of conversation from upperclassmen as I walked to class—“Man, we’ll be in Afghanistan next year,” “You think they’ll graduate us early? I heard they did that once”—but the war seemed distant; I assumed it would be over by the time I graduated.

I didn’t fully understand the conflict; in early October I called my father and asked him to explain the difference between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. In the middle of our conversation my phone card ran out of minutes. Perhaps if I hadn’t been a freshman, what was going on would have made more sense. But I didn’t have time to watch television and I wasn’t allowed to have one in my barracks room. I didn’t even get the paper.

My biggest concern was not 9/11 but more immediate things: keeping a low profile, not getting yelled at, trying not to drown in survival swim class, passing my courses, and making it to Thanksgiving—the first time I would be allowed to return to Minnesota.

***

On October 19, twelve days after the U.S. government launched military operations in Afghanistan, my mother came to West Point for Freshmen-Parent Weekend. That morning, I shined my shoes and polished my belt brass and went to meet her at the Most Holy Trinity Chapel on Washington Road.

When I walked in the door of that cavernous place, with it gothic revivalist architecture and stained glass windows, the wind rushed in with me. I took off my white hat and, as my eyes adjusted, I saw her, facing away. She was wearing a leather jacket, her reddish black hair bobbed, and when she turned to face me, her eyes were wet. I assumed she was crying because she missed me, because she’d never gone a week without seeing me before that summer. But now I know that she was crying because 9/11 had happened and her nineteen-year-old daughter—who barely understood the difference between the Taliban and Al Qaeda—would likely be deployed.

We left the chapel and drove into Highland Falls, a village of 4,000 people outside the south gate. It was the second time I’d been off post since Basic Training. We bought caramel apples from a farmer’s market and had lunch at McDonald’s. She kept asking me, “Have you had enough to eat? What else can I get you? French fries? Pop?”

After we were done, we drove to her hotel in Nyack.

It was warm inside, and we gravitated toward the king-sized bed. The TV was on, but muted, and it flashed images of firefighters and rubble and smoke.

“It was horrible,” she murmured, casting a glance at the screen. “I was watching CNN when the second plane hit. It was live. People in windows were waving T-shirts. And then they started jumping. And I watched the building collapse a floor at a time.”

She told me this story in a hushed, whispered way, as we lay side-by-side. The room was dim, lit only by grayish-yellow light from outside and the flicker of the TV.

She told me other stories, too. About her friend Lidwina who’d passed away in late August at the age of ninety-eight. How Lidwina had had cancer and heart failure and osteoporosis when she died but had only said, “Things could be worse.” How Lidwina had contemplated why she was still living: “God must have a reason for this.  I wonder what?”

I listened to all of her stories in a hotel room in Nyack as though they were bedtime stories, something I could not touch, not real. And then we ventured out again into the blazing autumnal world, shivering, in search of coffee.