Pathfinder International editor, Mal Robinson, looks back on 9/11 on the 18th anniversary of the attacks on US soil and what the fall out since meant for him.
“It will be and always will be a case of “where were you on 9/11?”
For me, it was a usual day working as a Chef in a pub restaurant, a mundane day at that, another 12-hour shift, grafting and sweating away. It was a job which had gotten out of hand if you like. It was only supposed to be a part-time affair, whilst I studied at University.
Yet the banter and the buzz of the kitchen meant I spent more time working, than I did attending University. The effects of not attending University meant I was losing focus in life and heading nowhere fast.
You could say that day’s events helped serve as a wakeup call, the first of many, to get my career kick started once more.
Service had not been going long, when the manager came down from his flat to notify the skeleton kitchen staff of an incident at the World Trade Center and that the US were under attack in what looks like World War III.
Being only 22 and my head in the sand, I wasn’t fully aware of the World Trade Center buildings (I recognised them later) at the time and thought the boss was blowing it out of proportion. The radio was full of the stories and it sounded horrific, yet still I could not picture what was going on to the extent it was. This was the days before TV’s in restaurant/bars and before smart phones, so access to a TV was limited in a kitchen.
Eventually, I made it back home to see just what everyone was going on about and on seeing the TV images of the day unfold; I instantly stood in horror at what everyone was panicking about. It was around 10pm after a long day at work, but I was fully awake and rooted to the spot.
Little did I realise that the events on this day would impact on my life, more than I would know.
18 months later I had enlisted to join the Royal Air Force, looking back now, partly motivated in retaliation to the September 11 attacks and having a feeling of wanting to do good in the world and help repair order if you like.
Allied forces would go on to invade Afghanistan in response to 9/11 and in 2006 I first played my part in the war on terror with a four-month tour in Kandahar, followed by another tour in 2008 in the same province.
The two tours were broken by a stint in Iraq (also in 2008) and I can’t help thinking that the conflict in Afghanistan, helped trigger the Iraq situation a lot easier than no war in the region. For me then September the 11th was inadvertently a day of reckoning for me for the instigator of two conflict zones.
Having been to the two war zones and having left the RAF, I then was contracted by a civilian company to work in Kabul, Afghanistan for 8 months in which I spent the tenth anniversary of 9/11 on the streets of the Afghan capital undercover in a local driver’s wagon, thinking at the time, “this was not a good place to be on this day, on this anniversary!”
My suspicions were confirmed a day or so later, when my team were caught up in an attack on the US Embassy in Kabul, rocket propelled grenades hurtling down the street towards your vehicle. The attackers were dressed as women in a bid to get close to the vicinity and eventually were killed by US Security staff.
My time in Afghanistan and Iraq has certainly shaped my life in some way. Experiences of good, bad and evil have taken place before me and the after effects were a souvenir of the conflicts that have followed me around since coming home.
Yet now as I still recall those images on the TV in 2001 in New York City and beyond, my experiences were nothing in comparison to those that perished and those who were injured that day 18 years ago. They are experiences that were worth enduring to try to ensure nothing of this wicked stature would take place in the future.
The thing is, I would do it all over again if it meant freedom and the good in society prevailed.
9/11 – never forgotten.”