Do you remember where you were that day

[Lovingthesunshine88]

Do you remember where you were that day 18 years ago? 9/11

I was 13 and had just started high school i was doing swimming when PE teacher got called out, when she came back in she told us to get changed and make our way home if possible and said the world was under attack by terrorists.

Obviously this was scary to hear at 13 i hadn't heard of terrorism. I remember getting home and my mum watching it on TV in utter shock. I was such a sad day and still makes me feel sad 18 years on thinking of all those innocent people losing their lives

I was at secondary school, in an RE lesson.

The head of RE came into the lesson and announced there had been a terrorist attack on The World Trade Centre.

I was at work (military ops room), the only person who had a radio, really cheap tinny thing on as background noise. All of a sudden one of my officers came barrelling in shouting "turn the fucking radio up" I remember it was Chris Moyles sounding more adult than I'd ever heard him. There was 8 of us, crowded round my tiny fist sized radio listening to the world change.

The CO sent everyone back to their rooms/messes. I was a sgt then. They opened the bar at 3pm and about 30 of us sat around the TV, drinking, watching events unfold. Much later that night one of my dearest friends, an old soldier, Senior, built like a tank suddenly started silently crying. He said "you know it's war now, there's no going back from this." I was so shocked, and he scared me. There was some bravado - Young Sgts trying to act all hard and worldly but he silenced them with a look (and a few choice words). To this day I remember his face. He knew what was coming. And he was right.

Whilst I didn't lose any friends or relatives that day, I did in the years that followed. 9/11 left its mark.

I was having lunch with workmates (lemon chicken sandwich) in a golf course cafe near work and we rushed back to try and contact our NY team colleagues who had a large office opposite one of the towers.

Needless to say it took some time to establish they were all ok.

I was working in a day hospital for people with dementia. We were watching the news and some of the patients became very distressed trying to work out what was going on.
We couldn’t understand what we were seeing really so I can understand how confusing it must have been for them.

The day everything changed.

I was at home and heard the newsflash, I think Neighbours was on. I watched everything unfold, nothing was the same after.

I was 16 and at school... wasn't sent home early, didn't have an assembly telling us that the world was ending...

...I found out when I got home and found my American cousin who had been visiting and was meant to be flying back home that day sitting in the living room. Naturally I asked her what she was doing there, for my dad to then berate me for not answering my phone (for some reason) and direct me to the tv.

I lived in Germany at the time and was coaching a group of teenagers swimming every Tuesday. As I had some time between work and training, I went to the supermarket.
There, they had a radio station on and they said a small plane had hit the WTC, but it is thought to be an accident.
Went back to the car and drove to the pool. In the car park there I caught the news that a second plane has hit and that it was now thought to be a terrorist attack.
As this was in the days pre-smartphone, we didn't get any more news until the next group walked in. One of the boys in that group said "Now the second tower has collapsed as well", which I found odd, as I hadn't heard about the first tower.
On the way home I made a pit-stop at a petrol station, thinking that prices would go up immediately. Probably a bit irrational, in hindsight, but I was pretty cash strapped at the time. At home, we immediately switched on the television and watched all night long.

Went to NY for the third time last year and visited the 9/11 memorial, I echo what was said upthread: If you go to NY, go there. It is heart wrenching, I was sobbing my eyes out at some recordings, but I believe, it is something that needs to be visited.

I’d taken my 3 kids to nursery and for some reason hung around outside the room with my youngest
We got back-I was gasping for a smoke and a cuppa tea
Went to turn on crossroads and it wasn’t on-just a skyline on every channel but nobody was talking
This went on for hours so I knew something had happened-just didn’t know what
It all came out over the next few days
I didn’t even know the buildings existed til then

I was still on summer hols from uni, I was at my then-boyf's mum's house watching Neighbours when they interrupted the programme with the news flash. I remember I called my mum at work and told her to turn the radio on and what had happened; she just couldn't believe me at first. It was so surreal. Of course, the real horror didn't hit until later when you saw them collapse and then the real life stories started coming in.

I do think it’s strange the small, insignificant things you remember from that day. Like the posters who remember what they had for lunch.

For me it was listening to the radio on the way home from work, I listened to Chris Moyles and that day there was no talking, the radio station just played music which sounded strange.

And the main thing I find striking all these years later? The vast amount of emergency service workers and volunteers who have died and are dying from cancers relating to 9/11. The deaths didn’t stop that day.

Yes - I remember exactly where I was at school and what we were doing

I was in Hungary, about 2 hours train ride from Budapest, staying in a tiny farming village and doing an archaeological excavation.

We went back to the hunting lodge where we were staying for lunch, and were greeted by someone who'd stayed behind. He was white and shaking and said that planes had flown into the twin towers. We thought he was joking at first but then saw how upset he was. It turned out he had family working there (I think it turned out that they'd had the day off so they were safe).

We could only get Hungarian or German news so had both playing with two people sat translating for us. The translators kept stopping as they were watching the horror unfold, it was the strangest time. Nothing else changed for us so it seemed like a bad dream.

We flew back about a week later and had to go to the airport earlier than planned for the extra security. It turned out that the only extra security measure was an extra metal detector arch things and not being allowed into the airport unless you had a flight booked.

At work in Canary Wharf. We did get evacuated - no one really knew what was going on and I think I there may have been an alarm set off.

The streets were absolutely dead by acout 3.30pm. Incredibly eerie.

I should have been working there.

A 'sliding doors' moment a few months earlier sent me on a different path. I turned down the job i was offered in Tower 2.

My thoughts are always with those that lost their lives and their loved ones.

Exactly, we were living in the US but west coast so had the surreal experience of waking up (clock Radio, remember them?) and realising something had happened but takes a while for the words to make sense when you are only half awake. I turned the tv on in the bedroom to find out what had happened and seconds later the tower collapsed. We saw the site a few weeks later (already booked) and paid our respects

Ps my DD's American school did open ... the teachers were a bit shell shocked to be honest but very professional.

I was at work when one of my colleagues DW called to let him know. He came off the phone and told us, another checked the internet and said it's true. Not that we would not have believed first colleagues wife but it was just so shocking. We spent the rest of the day in shock, watching news and footage. It really is one of those defining moments that you'll never forget where you were that day and that changed the world forever. I had to go to NY about 2 weeks later, I'll never forget how welcoming everyone was in the midst of such devastation. One of the airport staff on our arrival said 'thank you so much for coming, if people stop coming they've won and we can't let them beat us' His words have always stuck with me

Didn't hear anything about it until I bumped into the other paper girl and she showed me the pictures. Truthfully I was quiet detached from it .

I was 7 months pregnant with my DS, I was at work in Central London and we always had a television on in the office. I remember just sitting with my colleagues transfixed with disbelief that this was happening. My kids have asked me about the pictures they have seen and the snippets of film that have been repeated over the years but I don't think they will ever truly understand how devastating it was to watch it all unfold over a number of hours not knowing what was going to happen next. Buses and trains were suspended and my husband drove across London to pick me up and take me home - I remember going to my MIL and talking about it in disbelief she was very ill with end stage cancer at that point and died four weeks later, she never got to meet her grandson. When 7/11 happened a few years later I was heavily pregnant with my DD, irrationally I vowed never to have another child as both times I have been pregnant the worst terrorist attacks seem to happen.

I was on a bank trading floor in Canary Wharf. Trading floors are busy, noisy places, after the first impact the room went deathly quiet and we all watched the second impact as it happened on the Bloomberg screens.

After a couple of minutes it went absolutely crazy with clients calling, people trying to get hold of friends and colleagues in NY, security updating us over the tannoy. We didn’t get evacuated and we were all worried it might move to London. As a trader, DH was asked to work all night to cover our NY desk who obviously weren’t working. As sales, I went home at normal time and sat up all night until he came home safely.

I will never forget it.

I was on the phone to a friend and she told me to turn on the TV as a plane had flown into a tower in New York. I remember the confusion and the reporters saying it was probably an accident, until the second plane hit.

The next day I went down to stay with my friend in a remote part of Co. Cork - she had no TV. I was frustrated at not being able to get the news for the next few days.

I had been up the WTC when my family visited New York ten years previously. The funny thing it only hit me a few years later that that was the same building that collapsed.

I was 15 and had no idea until my mum got home from work. Nobody mentioned it at school, I went home and was reading on the sofa when mum came home and turned on the TV. Seeing the people jumping still haunts me.

I was 12 and in school. We had no clue what had happened, nothing was mentioned in school from what i remember.

It wasnt until i got home i found out about it. My dad had picked me up and we had gone to Staples, we got in and my mother was on the phone to my nan freaking out with the tv on.

My uncle was meant to have been in one of the towers that day for a meeting, but had taken the day off as my aunt had flown out to see him. No one could get hold of them for ages. Finally we found out they were ok.

Every Tuesday at 2pm (fourth period home tech!) i said to my friend this time last week we were here oblivious, this time two weeks ago, three weeks ago etc. It used to drive him nuts, but i just couldnt get my head around that we were sitting in school when this huge event happened.

@Queenofpi me too! And someone waving a white flag out the window, that haunts me to this day.

Yes it is still as fresh in my mind as if it happened last week!!. I was a George manager in ASDA and we had a big visit from head office coming up the next day!! I went into the clothing warehouse which was the only place we had a radio on!! One of the warehouse girl said a plane has gone into the World Trade Center in New York I said don’t be silly what would a plain fly into the twin towers for. Another girl walked in from her tea break were she had been upstairs watching in TV in canteen and said the same thing. I went straight upstairs just as the second plain hit I phoned my husband felt sick I just knew the world had changed and would never be the same again.