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I was at work at Quantico Marine Base when someone in our Operations Section told everyone that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. While we watched on TV, the second plane hit and we knew that it was a terrorist attack.

We stood up our Emergency Operations Center and prepared to respond to any nuclear, biological, chemical, or other attack while contacting all of the other military agencies in our vicinity. We even had an armed Rigid Raider patrol boat on the Potomac River to protect the water side of Quantico.

When I got off duty that evening and was heading north on Highway 95 I saw that an accident had just happened in front of me along the center median. The wrecked car had a news cameraman in the driver's seat and we opened the door for him and got him out of the car and laid him down on the grass to see where his injuries were and called 911. While we were talking to him, a young woman in a miniskirt came stumbling out of the woods along the median, injured and in shock - she had been thrown out of the car when it rolled and landed into some brush.

We treated her as well as we could until the ambulance got there - she was definitely more hurt than her cameraman. The cameraman said as he was loaded into the ambulance that "they will be on the news tonight". I told him that I didn't think so - the other events of that day were much more important.