I wasn’t doing anything important or world shattering when the towers fell. I was just sitting in a chair, playing a game and listening with half an ear to the TV late night news to beat off boredom. Just another night in my unit by myself.

Then the news flashed a breaking news banner and a news reporter came on and their face was strange. They were shocked and scared and behind it all was a faint hint of horror.

This was very strange because I had never seen a news reporter showing a face like that even when a terrorist had blown a plane full of people out of the sky or some other disaster had happened when a lot of people had died or been injured.

Then an image that will always be burnt into my memory was displayed in the background. A shot of two very tall skyscrapers in a city but one of them was burning. Oh hell. A fire started and we are going to see a real life Towering Inferno like the movie from the 1970’s.

But no, they were talking about a plane and an explosion and that the plane flew into the tower. That couldn’t be true. Accidents like that don’t happen.

Then the view changed and they showed a second plane flying into the second tower and exploding into a fire ball. Debris was scattered everywhere. I was shocked that a second plane had hit the tower right next to the first tower. I was starting to feel ill that this was no accident.

My game was nothing at the moment and I was locked on the TV. People were speculating on who had done this or why. All we knew is hundreds of people were dead in the planes and an unknown number of people in the towers. People were saying that the tower could have up to 30,000 people in them that day. The sheer horror of possibly having 30,000 people killed was starting to set in and then it happened.

The second tower gently, slowly, and sort of majestically collapsed in on itself and then collapsed violently to the earth.

I felt sick seeing that tower collapse because I knew they were thousands of people in it and hundreds of emergency personnel were actively trying to save as many of them as they could but they were all snuffed out in a cloud of debris, dust and flames.

The emergency personnel in the first tower were scared and panicked but they kept trying to save as many as possible, knowing that at any moment the tower would collapse as well. The bravery we all saw that day lives on in each and every one of us and humbles us all.

And as we all feared, the first tower too can down in dust, debris and flames. Taking the lives of more thousands of people who couldn’t get out in time and taking so many brave souls with it.

I was sitting in a chair in a unit half way round the world and I felt a loss that I couldn’t understand at first. But it was the injury given to a country that would scar it for ever more. This injury was felt by people who were not there and could only watch and grieve for what was lost.

There were two other planes destroyed that day, one that flew into the Pentagon and killed hundreds of people there and a plane that crashed into a field, killing all on board.

But the two towers left me with a memory of the best of people and the worst all at the same time.

So yeah, that’s where I was when the towers fell, and I will never forget that day.