John Byrnes Remembers 9/11 and His National Guard Service at Ground Zero

John Byrnes (0:01)

It was that life-changing for America. I mean, not quite the war ramp up that we had, but we went on to a war footing within a month. We had soldiers deployed, and we've had 25 years of after effects. You know, the war in Afghanistan went on a lot longer than anybody would have expected. You know, we get into the weeds about the use of the pretext of 9-11 for the war in Iraq, but it certainly made it a much more sellable project by those who wanted to sell it at the time, like Dick Cheney's, Don Rumsfeld's.

You know, and we fought that war on terror around the globe, lots of operations, lots of folks in the military. You know, since that, you know, we lost almost 3,000, 2,800 and change that day, 343 firefighters, numerous NYPD and Port Authority Police Department folks died that day. We lost in the neighborhood of 8,000 folks between Iran and Afghanistan fighting overseas, and then we lost 32,000 US.

SPEAKER_2 (1:00)

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David From (1:11)

Welcome to the American Potential Podcast. I'm your host, David From. 25 years ago today, America was attacked on 9-11.

For me, I was driving to the congressional office that I worked at, and I was listening to the radio, news radio, and heard that a plane had hit the towers, and they cut to the New York feed, and I listened for the rest of the day, eventually watched it from the congressional office on the TV, and then we all went home early because we didn't know what the world was going to look like. You know, at Ground Zero in New York City, the response extended beyond just firefighters and police officers and EMTs, you know, really folks that we learned to be real heroes. But National Guard members were there too, and today we'll hear from one of them about his firsthand experience of that historic day. So I'm really pleased to welcome my friend John Byrnes, who is the strategic director for Concerned Veterans for America. John, thanks for joining us.

John Byrnes (2:07)

David, thanks for having me on. Happy to commemorate this.

David From (2:13)

Yeah, I think we were talking before we went on, I just can't believe it's been 25 years. You know, it seems like it's such a foundational memory, you know, probably for all of us who were, you know, certainly for you who are there, but just it's one of those, where were you in the world at that time?

John Byrnes (2:29)

Yeah, definitely. It changed people's lives. It changed the trajectory of American history. It certainly changed my life and my life's trajectory. So, yeah.

David From (2:38)

So where were you in New York on 9-11?

John Byrnes (2:42)

Yeah. So I got up that morning. I had a nine o'clock class. I went and I was going to school as an adult undergraduate in Manhattan at City University of New York's Hunter College. I had a three-day-a-week as a National Guard soldier, a three-day-a-week swim regimen where I'd go for a mile swim in the school's pool. I had just completed that mile. I'd showered off and I went outside, walked up the steps from the basement where the pool was, went outside to get a cup of coffee, noticed it was a beautiful day. It was election day, something people forget. It was the New York City primary election, which in New York City is generally the election for most offices. Not a lot of general election decisions made outside of the primaries, a few, but not many. I climbed up another set of stairs with my coffee, sat down in a classroom there at Hunter College. First thing that clued me in that something was going on, the first memory I really have that it was a special day was a series, just a prolonged 10, 15-minute series of sirens rolling downtown along Lexington Avenue outside the classroom. At one point, it was so loud, the professor kind of grimaced and she just was not happy.

She was just frustrated having to talk over these sirens. About 10 minutes later, a young woman in the back of the classroom said, a plane just hit the World Trade Center. She was looking at news on her phone.

So she said a few minutes later, a plane hit the other World Trade Center tower, and as soon as class was over, I was like, I got to do something. So I put myself into action and started preparing to get to my armory and to be part of the response.