A Veteran’s Loss of Innocence

Sept. 11, 2007 - After hearing initial news of the September 11 attacks, my sister tried calling me to see whether my Marine Reserve unit was being sent to a war that may, or may not, have just begun. She got a busy signal. She later told me this first busy signal got her anxious and prompted her to keep calling back; still she couldn't get through. Finally, after giving herself a moment to calm down, my sister realized that in her nervous haste she was calling her own phone number.

Looking back now from the sixth anniversary of the attacks I can say it was when she finally reached me, and I heard the panic in her voice, that I first realized I was no longer a Marine living in peacetime. In the uncertainty of those first moments, as I took stock of my Marine gear in my parents' garage, the military as I knew it was gone forever. I had no idea how much I would miss it.

When I enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1999 I was hard-pressed to think of a situation in which the U.S. military's reserve forces would face large-scale mobilization, as they had during the Gulf War. The monthly training weekends were excuses to get away from jobs or college classes, and spend a few days enjoying life in an adventurous culture outside the mainstream.

We were in awe of Marines who'd been to Kosovo, Somalia and Kuwait.  In boot camp my senior drill instructor laid out a display of his Gulf War pictures and souvenirs in our barracks as a motivational tool. To see a Marine wearing a Combat Action Ribbon was a rare and thrilling experience.

Yian Huang Botti says a call from his sister was the first indication, post 9/11, that he was "no longer a Marine living in peacetime."

Conversations about tactics and equipment would often begin with the phrase, “if we go to war,” or “if we get deployed.” Of course, today it’s no longer a matter of “if” but “when.” No matter how hard we trained or how much we learned, at the end of the day reservists could go to sleep knowing the likelihood of combat deployments was a distant one.

One day in 2000 my platoon sergeant half-jokingly said that all of the college kids who enlisted to get some extra cash for school were going to pay it back with some kind of mobilization one day.  No one took him seriously at all.

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