Airmen serve in Iraq to honor 9/11 victims

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Melissa Phillips
  • 407th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs
ALI BASE, Iraq (AFPN) --  Never in a million years did Kara Gaines dream she would enlist in the military and follow in the footsteps of her retired Air Force father.

That was until the senior airman with the 407th Expeditionary Communications Squadron here watched in horror as terrorists rammed three planes into some of the nation’s most-beloved symbols of democracy and freedom Sept. 11, 2001.

“I started thinking right then I wanted to do something for my country,” said Airman Gaines, who is deployed here from Lackland Air Force Base, Texas.

That day her sister was supposed to visit the Pentagon, less than 12 miles from where Airman Gaines worked as a concert organizer. After the confusion settled down and phone lines reopened, she was relieved to discover her sibling was fine.

It was not until a few weeks later she got an e-mail that almost knocked her out of her chair. Unknown to her at the time, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon carried several school students.

Flight 77 that tore into the nation’s military headquarters contained precious cargo: Two bubbly 11-year-old girls who for the last three years had attended summer camp at Springhill Recreation Center in McLean, Va., where Airman Gaines was the director.

The two were flying across country to take part in a science expedition, but were trapped into history as one of more than 3,000 people who lost their lives in the 9/11 tragedy.

These were the same girls who used to challenge Airman Gaines and other counselors to a soccer match -- and win. One of them wanted to be a teacher; both were active in the center’s activities.

Images of them laughing and playing sports under the hot, summer sun continually flashed through her mind like a viewfinder gone haywire.

It took her more than two years to make the leap into military service. After being dragged around to seven Air Force bases throughout her childhood, her first inclination was not to serve her nation in that capacity.

What catapulted her past her desire to maintain her personal freedom in the civilian sector?

“I felt like if you mess with our country, (the military) will get you,” Airman Gaines said. “But if you mess with (my) children, I will come get you.”

Although she knows she will never be on the frontlines battling insurgents, the services she provides as a communications specialist allows the people who are going into battle to access intelligence information and maintain vital communications links with the world and their families.

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel justice is done,” she said. “However, my service to the military has helped in some way.

“There was no other way to help protect my country from outside forces, except to the join the military,” Airman Gaines said.

That same sense of purpose was also the deciding factor for another Airman to return to military service.

“I began to cry (when I saw the planes crash into the buildings on the news), because I knew there was no way to call and find out information,” said Staff Sgt. Richard Blackstone of the 407th Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron, who also enlisted because of 9/11.

Sergeant Blackstone had friends and family who where located only two buildings away from the World Trade Center.

“I was working in a pro golf shop, and it was the first day the phones were dead,” said Sergeant Blackstone, who is deployed from Seymour Johnson AFB, N.C. “I felt totally helpless watching something so tremendous and not being able to do anything.”

He already gave 10 years to the Air Force in security forces, but he felt the strain of a work schedule that kept him away from home three to four nights a week. Compounded by constant deployments, three years before the tragedy he separated from the Air Force to spend more time raising his two children.

However, after the disaster and with his wife’s support, he enlisted again and requested the same fast-paced, highly tasked career field.

He said he would do it all over again.

“I absolutely feel strongly about serving,” said Sergeant Blackstone, who is deployed here for six months versus the normal four most Airmen spend in theater.

“If I can help in any way, keep people safe and give them a sense of security, then I have done my job.”

Now more than ever, he recognizes that service to the military is also a burden shared by deployed Airmen’s families.

“The one thing that is so important for others to understand is that our families are just as deployed as the military member,” Sergeant Blackstone said. “Without the support of family and friends, the war on terror might have different results.”

Honoring the families affected by 9/11 is one of several reasons that drew Staff Sgt. Gregg Magi, a 407th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron firefighter, to deploy here.

Sergeant Magi said he knows those sacrificing extend to the far reaches of the world, as coalition forces from Italy, Japan, England, Australia, El Salvador and others serve here beside American forces, and leave behind their families as well.

“It wasn’t just an attack against New York, it was an attack against the whole world,” Sergeant Magi said. “I wish the victims of 9/11 could see all the people of the world serving together to prevent a future attack where thousands of more lives could be destroyed.”

A proponent of civil service, Sergeant Magi has served in the Navy along with a short stint in the New York City police department before he found his true calling as a lieutenant in the Fire Department City of New York.

As a part-time fireman with the New York Air National Guard, he begged to come to Iraq.

He has been fighting the demons of 9/11 ever since he helped search for victims at Ground Zero for six months after the twin towers collapsed. He was on duty during 9/11, but his unit was called to Harlem to put out a fire. He did not arrive at Ground Zero until the towers collapsed.

Once considered an engineering marvel, he found the Twin Towers transformed into a pile of rubble.

He, along with the many other FDNY firefighters, had a front-row seat to the horror scene unfolding before them. Three hundred and forty-three firefighters lost their lives trying to save victims from the resulting fires and those trapped in the collapse.

“We were in a state of shock,” Sergeant Magi said. “It looked like a combination of the planet apes and a nuclear attack.”

For months afterward, he attended too many funerals and inadequately tried to comfort more widows than he cares to remember. He said he lost count after the number was more than 30.

“I’ve seen families destroyed,” Sergeant Magi said.

A while after the tragedy, he ran into a high-school friend who lost his wife at Ground Zero. Sergeant Magi asked how he was doing and joked around about not wanting to go to the gym that day and just enjoying his pizza.

Normally an upbeat, boisterous New Yorker, his friend quietly said, “I go to the gym every day. I’m all my children have left.”

Sergeant Magi said he could not help but be affected by the heartache in his voice.

“It hits you like a sledge hammer, and it stays with you,” he said.

He said he has since heard from other classmates that his friend still cries every morning for his dead wife.

It is a memory he cannot shake, along with the feeling of shoveling through ashes to look for human remains -- searching for any small piece of bone to hand back to grieving families. He never found anything other than scraps of clothing.

Sergeant Magi said putting the horror of the tragedy behind him will take awhile, but one thing that has helped was volunteering for Operation Reach Out, a volunteer-run program here which dispenses clothes, food and water to local families in need near the base. Many people who live in this area are nomadic and reside in tents. Many lack basic necessities like water and shoes.

At one camp, Sergeant Magi gave a little girl a stuffed animal, and she immediately darted inside her home with it.

“As we were driving off, she came outside and had a death grip with both hands on that panda bear,” said Sergeant Magi, who said she looked like a child on Christmas morning. “It was almost like she was afraid someone would take it back, and she had never received anything like that before in her life.”

It was a moment he said he will treasure forever.

“I wrote my friends and told them about my experience; I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” he said. “The way I see it, this is a two-part war: Attack the enemy, and win over the hearts of people who are being lied to by the insurgents.”

For the three Airmen here who put their hands high into the air to volunteer for a tour of duty in the dusty, hot desert, they know they are not alone -- the pain of 9/11 does not stop at the U.S. border.

“Everyone lost people they knew in 9/11,” Sergeant Magi said. “It’s a privilege to be part of a team of people from the United States and all over the world serving together to combat terrorism.

“This battle still has to be fought, whether it’s fought in Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere. When it’s all over, the world will be a safer place,” he said.