After 9/11, drawn to serve in the war on terror

Name: Patrick Weir
Age: 40
Hometown: Montgomery, Ala.

I had a lot of plans on September 10th, 2001. School, a girlfriend, traveling. On September 11th my plans changed.

I am a Flight Medic in the United States Air Force Reserves. I had trained for this type of thing for several years. I never thought it would happen, and when it did, it was much worse that I'd been trained to expect. I realize now that I had no frame of reference before this event.

Since then, I have been to Afghanistan and Iraq bringing home the wounded. I have seen men, women, children, soldiers and enemy combatants. I have helped take care of them all.

These events and this mission forced me to put up or shut up almost immediately. I have seen the aftermath of attacks. I have held the hand of a scared brother or sister, broken into pieces, many miles from home. I have seen airplanes stacked to the ceiling with human beings in the depths of misery. I have seen some who will never return. I will carry them with me forever.

What can I take? What is the price of war? Who can you trust? I have answered some of these questions and some have no answer. I am a medic. I am part of the solution. The main thing that I have learned from all of this is what blind rage can do. It brings nothing but suffering.

***

Name: Steve Brennemann, TSgt USAF
Age: Not supplied
Hometown: Belleville, Ill.

At the time that the World Trade Center was destroyed I was a Staff Sergeant in the United States Air Force. I had been in the Air Force for ten years. Most of that time had been spent at Scott AFB and at Elkhorn, a small Detachment of Offutt AFB.

The year just before had been spent in Ui Jong Bu, South Korea working for the 2nd Infantry Division. With that exception my Air Force career had been sleepy. I went to work, came home, raised my children and occasionally had to go on "business trips" lasting between one and four months.

Korea was my first short tour and my first taste of a combat unit. The taste was bad. I was happy to go home in 2001 and get back to my nice boring routine.

Then September happened. For the first time in my life I looked up and saw a sky free from jet contrails. I saw people jumping out of windows and knew that it wasn't part of a movie. I saw jet airliners hitting an oddly familiar skyline and a building that I had never been in, but whose shape was more familiar to me than the shape of my own, newly purchased home.

I had to explain to my daughters why all this was happening and what it meant for our family. What it meant was that, for the first time in my ten-year career I was expected to be a soldier and not an armchair Airman. The President told us to be ready. We never needed an explanation as to why.

The changes came fast and hard. We got a physical conditioning program with teeth. We got convoy and weapons training. We deployed with the Army, Marines and even the Navy. I heard the term Purple Suiter for the first time.

The changes are still happening. I have two campaign medals now and have met and worked with people from every continent on the planet. I have traveled more in the past five years than in the first ten.

I have seen the work we have done in Afghanistan and Iraq first person, laid some of the bricks myself. We have done more good there than the media has reported. We are laying the foundation of a new Middle East and a new world. That takes time, sweat, tears and blood.

For America, it will take patience. I never looked for war. It found me all on its own.

I am amazed by my family's ability to endure the long hours, the incessant deployments and the constant worry. We do not do this for the money. We do it for our families. We do it so that our children will have a better world to live in than we did.

I do it for all my children: the ones stateside, the young Airmen that serve under me and those young Afghanis and Iraqis that I have come to love as my own. I continue to serve. As long as I have something to contribute and can accomplish the mission I will continue to.

(Please note this submission is uniquely my opinion and should not be construed to be the opinion of the United States Air Force.)

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