Memories of Sept. 11 still vivid

Perspective.

It’s a word that often comes to mind this time of year. While growing up, I would hear my parents and teachers talk about the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and how they would never forget where they were that day. My grandfather said the same thing about Pearl Harbor. While I was able to grasp the concept, I didn’t have the perspective to understand just how it feels to have a memory like that.

During my time living outside of Alaska, I had the opportunity to work at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash. I felt lucky to be in Shop 64, Shipwrights, assigned to the SSBN-732, otherwise known as the USS Alaska. The Alaska is an Ohio-class ballistic missile nuclear submarine, one of the big boats that make up our nations’ triad of nuclear missile deterrence. The Alaska was the first boat to get upgraded to the new Trident II (D5) missile and I was part of the team that had almost totally torn her apart and refitted her for these new missiles as well as a total overhaul of nearly all her components.

It was nearing the end of the project. The Alaska was no longer in dry dock and was now tied up alongside a pier for the final months. I was proud to be one of the few to have been assigned to her from the moment she first arrived to the day she was scheduled to leave for sea trials. One particular fall morning I reported for work early, as we were working extended shifts in order to make our deadline. Like I did every morning, I walked onto the “turtle back” (the flat top of a submarine where you are standing on top of all the missile tubes) and gazed down the row of closed doors.

So large, black and ominous — one couldn’t help but feel the immense power this machine represented. A man-made leviathan with seemingly unlimited power that was designed to silently hide in the deep and help keep my country safe. To stand there was to know that I lived in the most secure, best-protected country in the world. The sun was just starting to come up over the mountains on the other side of the Puget Sound and although the morning air was still crisp and cold, I could tell it was going to warm up considerably. That day, Sept. 11, 2001, looked to be a good day.

I had work to do on the turtle back that morning and I dove into my task, glad to be working outside the submarine instead of somewhere down below. At some point (I can’t really remember what made me finally notice) I stopped working and looked around. Something wasn’t right. The boat should have been swarming with sailors, yet I was all by myself. I looked around and noticed the pier was unusually quiet and empty, too.

Setting down my tools, I walked across the gangway to the barge that was tied up next to the Alaska, where many of the sailors were berthed and where some of the offices for the project were located. The break room had quite a few sailors in it watching television. I asked the closest one what was going on and he mentioned that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.

I figured he meant a Cessna or some such and my curiosity was piqued. A minute or two later, I overheard somebody mention “jet” and became much more interested. How terrible, I thought, that such a mistake had been made and a jet had gone down over New York. We watched the television for a few moments to get the news and then, realizing we had a job to do, we went back to work.

That’s when the second plane hit.

All work stopped. Civilian work crews mustered in their respective shops and were told to go home. I drove directly to my son’s day care, picked him up and went home to follow the story on television. When people started jumping from the buildings, I couldn’t stand to watch, but I did. I watched all day as the buildings collapsed, the news came in about the attack on the Pentagon and the plane that went down in that Pennsylvania field. As I watched I knew that I was now living in a country at war.

Within a day, work resumed. I had been working at PSNS for years, but the place I now returned to was foreign. U.S. Marines now augmented the civilian security forces. The gates had sandbags and .50-caliber guns. Our badges no longer allowed us to be simply waved in. If we had to drive on base, our vehicles were subject to random searches. As I walked through the shipyard, I saw Marines at every dry dock, watching the boats out in the water through binoculars. Word came down that the Navy was worried about terrorists driving a motorboat filled with explosives into a caisson (the gate that seals the dry dock off from the water).

The thought of the Puget Sound exploding into a dry dock with enough power to knock an aircraft carrier (we had one in dry dock) off its keel blocks made me shudder. Once, the idea of somebody doing something so terrible with nothing more than a small boat would have been laughable. Now it was real. Log booms were placed in the water around the shipyard. Heavily armed patrol boats skimmed through the water and ran up on any boat that got too close. Young sailors were handed helmets, pistols and rifles and placed on the tops of those boats tied up to piers. I could see snipers positioned on the tops of cranes. But the oddest thing I recall was those empty skies.

Days later when planes were cleared to began flying again I remember glancing up and seeing the contrails of a jet. I stopped working and just stared. When I brought my eyes down, I noticed several other sailors and workers watching as well.

Work resumed. The project was accelerated as the Navy now wanted the U.S.S. Alaska ready and at sea as soon as possible. We worked in two, 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. We worked quieter than usual for a while as each one of us metabolized this new reality. Many of the civilian workers pondered ways to rejoin the military and get into the fight we knew was coming. I thought about how I now understood the stories my grandfather told me; the stories of how young men enlisted in the military by the thousands after Pearl Harbor. I shivered at the thought about what it meant that the Navy wanted to get its fresh, modernized nuclear missile boat out to sea.

One day after catching the news on a break, I walked down below decks to “Sherwood Forest” (the large room surrounding the missile tubes) and yelled loudly, “Listen up! The U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division has left, destination unknown! Here we go boys!” The sailors whooped and cheered. One yelled, “Get some, Army!” It was good to see morale returning at the thought of finally taking the fight to the cowards who had attacked us.

Years have gone by and, for many people time has taken the edge off the memories. For me, not so much. I still can’t watch video of the planes hitting the towers. I can’t bear to see the pictures of those poor people who jumped.

On the other hand, these stark images are a reminder of the real human toll paid by our nation. I have watched the event become politicized and find it shameful. I have seen Hollywood make fiction movies about it and thought, “Too soon. I’m not ready for that.”

And now I have perspective on what it means to witness an event so terrible that the moment is forever frozen in your mind. Never forget. Never forget.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column under the tagline “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.