Eleven years later: Marines remember 9/11

Eleven years later: Marines remember 9/11
2nd Marine Logistics Group
Story by Lance Cpl. Paul Peterson

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. - They saw the tragedy unfold through the windows of their childhood schools in New York City. They have grown, and all of them followed their own paths into the Marine Corps, but the images still burn in their memories.

Three Marines from 8th Engineer Support Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group took a break from their daily jobs to meet here and remember the day 19 hijackers etched Sept. 11, 2001, into the collective memory of Americans.

“It was surreal,” said Pfc. Lawrence N. Ellington-Farley, a Brooklyn, N.Y., native and an administrative clerk with the battalion. “It was like the day before didn’t even happen.”

He was an 11-year-old student enduring another day of classes when he saw a plane crash into the World Trade Center.

“If you looked out the window, you could actually see people jumping or falling out of the building,” said Ellington-Farley, whose father was one of the first responders at the scene. “That is something I don’t think I will ever forget.”

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people and stripped the New York City skyline of its iconic Twin Towers. The legacy of the attacks still troubles the Marines of 8th ESB who experienced the event within the city’s limits.

“I have a little girl and a wife back home, and it always worries me because you never know if something will ever happen like that to New York,” said Lance Cpl. Angel Anaya, an embarkation specialist with the battalion.
read more here