Here we go.

I was on a US Naval ship that had been deployed for 4 months. We had been doing OPS in the Persian Gulf. Mostly intercept OPS with any vessels trying to leave IRAQ. We would intercept them and take those ships back to an anchorage location in the Northern Gulf area.

We had been relieved and were on our way back to the Red Sea to transit through the Suez Canal back into the Med. The plan was some liberty in Turkey, Italy, and Siciliy before returing to the US.

I'll never forget that afternoon our time. I had just knocked off my division and noticed that one of the taskings I had assigned wasn't completed. I had gone down to the berthing to chew some butt of my Petty Officer in charge. When I got there I noticed the lounge in the berthing was full of people watching TV. I thought they were watching a porn flick which is normally the only time the lounge is that full of sailors. As the senior guy of 70+ people in the berthing, when I arrived they looked at me and said "Boats, look at NYC."
We had live satelite feed.

Between the time I left the berthing and entered the senior enlisted lounge the second building was hit. Remember at this time we are off Yemen headed to the Red Sea doing about 30 knots. I turned to my fellow senior enlisted and said we are going to turn around. They didn't believe me but within 30 minutes we did.

On October 7th, 2001 I was on the flight deck at 8:00pm in the Indian Ocean. It was a glorius night, no clouds, all stars. We were about 2 miles from the USS John Paul Jones when the first tomahawks were fired into Afganistan. I turned to someone as the Tomahawk went over the horizen and said alot of people will die shortly. There was utter silence.