GrogHeads Forum

Inspired by a discussion at CSW, I'm curious which of these "people always say they remember where they were when _____ happened" events means the most to you personally, and why.

For instance, my parents were still in junior high school when JFK was shot, and I was a few weeks from being born when the Watergate break-in happened.

I remember where I was for the Challenger - eating dinner at a friend's house in Heidelberg on my way to a Motley Crue concert. 
I remember 9-11 very well, too: I was watching on TV at home b/c I was working 2d shift at the time and didn't go in until 2pm. We had *just* come back from Germany that weekend before on a vacation trip, and the only reason we came back when we did was b/c of a Nat'l Guard drill weekend 7-9 SEP. Otherwise, I had enough vacation hours to stay in Germany until 15 SEP or so. Of course, we would've been there 'til October

But the one that resonates most with me is the Berlin Wall. 
I was 16 at the time and back in the states watching on TV at grandparents' house in Louisiana and pleading with my dad to buy me a plane ticket to get over there pronto before I missed all the fun. It was my Jr year of high school and we still had friends all over Berlin I could've stayed with; I speak German and would have had no problem getting around

I had lived in Germany from 83-88, had friends in Berlin, knew German families that were split when the wall went up, learned about the German POV when I was enrolled in their schools for 2 years, had actually pissed on the wall in the Spring of '86 (we were there for a Boy Scout campout), really knew what it all stood for after being immersed in it on the front lines for all those years.

My dad was a dual East- and West-European FAO who worked in the nukes business and later in arms control. I was a fluent German speaking American whose father was a G5 with 56th FA Cmd. I knew if the balloon went up there was no way in hell I was ever getting on a NEO flight and would instead end up working for him in the G5 shop and putting all my local knowledge to use rather than figuring out what to do back in the US.  And the symbol of that conflict was the Berlin Wall.

More than almost any other event in recent world history, that's the one that resonated the most with me, because it was so much a part of the fiber of my being for all those years living in and growing up in the Cold War in Germany, and living it from both the US and German perspectives.

Honestly, it was a bigger deal to me than 9-11, in large part b/c I was paying attention to things like Nairobi, Khobar Towers, the first WTC attack, and the USS Cole. The fact that the Islamonutjobs finally landed a blow on US soil was disheartening, but hardly surprising to me.





I've tried to get some non-US-centric events in here, too, but I know those aren't all 'singular moments' - especially Yugoslavia.  I'm cognizant of the fact that we have a significant Limey contingent that reads our site, but can't help that I'm an American at heart and know those events best.  If you've got an "other" then please explain it for us below.

9-11, saw it all go down live on TV.... got to work late that day....

Berlin Wall by far. it signaled a change in the way the world worked since ww2. it was enormous pusher of hopes and dreams. i remember how we all were profoundly moved and cried. it was so incredibly positive, it united eastern europe and western europe again.

Mine was the 1991 televised bombing of Baghdad.  The idea that this was a live invasion being broadcast directly to me...seemed creepy and Orwellian.

The air raid sirens and that early night vision footage of the tracers firing wildly into the air still stick with me.

For me, as a Brit, the Falklands War had a big impact and we followed the events almost as they happend.

After that, I guess it was 9-11. It was such a horrific event and I can clearly remember the wife and I watching the news footage and us both being in tears.

After that, the wall coming down was pretty astounding and offered such hope for the future.

All the other events have memories. Saigon because I had followed the war on TV, but maybe the footage of the Tet Offensive, and the battle for Hue had a bigger impact on me than the fall of Saigon.

Tiananmen Square.

I was in school over the summer and attended a rally organized by several Chinese exchange students. They were horrified that the budding democratic movement that had swept the rest of the world was being crushed in Beijing. I can remember guys who were members of the Communist Party resigning over it.

I also remember chatting with an acquaintance about it, and he (somewhat conspiratorially) confided he didn't think it was a good idea to resign your membership even if you didn't like what was happening.

Turns out, he was probably right, considering the ruthlessness used to crush the movement and the endurance of the regime. Such a great opportunity lost. What a shame.

Quote from: Keunert on July 22, 2013, 03:19:55 PM
Berlin Wall by far. it signaled a change in the way the world worked since ww2. it was enormous pusher of hopes and dreams. i remember how we all were profoundly moved and cried. it was so incredibly positive, it united eastern europe and western europe again.

The night the wall came down I was in a bar. Tons of drunk, noisy kids in there and *none* of them gave a rip.

I couldn't figure out why, except that youth, alcohol, and hormones will trump international politics pretty much any day of the week.

For me it was the Kennedy assassination.  My school was seven blocks from the White House in downtown DC.  Next door was a building with a bomb shelter for 800 people.  Kept expecting to hear the sirens to go into the bomb shelter.  Knew that the Sovs kept one missile sub in the central Atlantic, and that bombers could come over the Pole and from Cuba.
We all practiced some duck and cover.

9\11

Like most of us, I remember that morning in great detail. We were stationed in Alaska, up and getting ready for work when the first airliner hit. We were stunned, watching the news, then the second tower was hit. It was probably one of the most emotional days of our lives, aside from deaths in the family, and I remember how stunned we felt the rest of the day, in between bouts of sorrow and anger.

I'd have to say 9/11 because I also watched it on TV as it was happening. I had a day off and my (not-yet)exwife called me from work and asked what was going on so I turned on the TV just in time to watch the second plane hit the WTC. I thought I was watching a replay of the crash but couldn't understand why there was already so much smoke coming from the other tower. Then I realized that I was watching a live broadcast.

Later on, when I saw the reports about the third plane hitting the Pentagon I knew that things would never be the same again.



Berlin Wall would be a close second since I grew up in an East-West Paradigm.

9-11 for me.  Was sitting in Economics/Politics class in highschool when another teacher ran in and told us to turn the news on.  Saw the second plane hit and the towers come down live.  I had always enjoyed history and learning about the world but that event really reinforced the my desire to learn about why they world is the way it is and what has gone on before us that impacts us now and in the future.

Could be I've erased some of 9/11's trauma from memory. I do recall we were all pretty freaked for a while, too.

9-11 for me because I was in Manhattan about 1/2 a mile from the World Trade Center. Those of you who know me know I don't need to get into it any further than that.

^ You, of all of us, must have the deepest memory etchings. I wish you didn't.

Me too.

the Panama invasion as far as first major events that happen in life.  one of my dads clients at the time was noriegas finance minister.  his daughter was getting married the weekend we invaded.  my mom canceled the trip at the last second.  >:(  we would have stayed in the hotel that was assaulted by Rangers.  what could have been the best trip ever ruined....

9/11 was intense too. i was at university learning for the final exam when all of a sudden nervosity hit the library. everybody was standing up and went to the tv in the cafeteria. most were shocked, some stupid boys cheered or acted like this was nothing. but most of all there was shock and silence. i have to admit that i was thinking more about what the rection would be and not about the victims. i believed that we witness the start of another war.

i remember that the first gulf war destroyed my hope of world with less conflicts that emerged after the fall of the Mauer in Berlin. but then those wars were not on the same scale like Iran / Iraq or Vietnam. 9/11 was the start of terrorism on a different scale than known before. and i guess that is something the world has to deal with in coming years.

Quote from: Keunert on July 23, 2013, 06:02:31 AM
i remember that the first gulf war destroyed my hope of world with less conflicts that emerged after the fall of the Mauer in Berlin. but then those wars were not on the same scale like Iran / Iraq or Vietnam. 9/11 was the start of terrorism on a different scale than known before. and i guess that is something the world has to deal with in coming years.

Honestly the world is pretty much as it is pre-9/11 with the exception of the 9/11 attack.

There are a bunch of scattered bad guys trying to do us harm running from shadow to shadow.

Meanwhile we go bankrupt spending billions of dollars listening to everyone's phone calls. The result? We learn that 99.9% of Americans aren't terrorists, though if you pretend hard enough they all *could* be.

For me, there's been three particularly memorable moments that resonated with me. 


3.)  The Challenger disaster:  It was the first major incident that truly had an emotional impact on me.  It gets relegated to third place, however, because I think I was too young to fully appreciate what it meant (I was only nine at the time). 

2.)  9/11:  I very much doubt I can say anything about that day that hasn't already been said by others a thousand million times before.  Suffice it to say it affected me deeply, and that I've never been quite the same since that terrible morning almost 12 years ago. 




As for my #1 moment...  It isn't actually listed among the choices, although it's closely related to one of them:  I speak of the Soviet hardliners' failed coup against Gorbachev, and the subsequent destruction of the USSR. 


When the Wall came down in 1989 (a few weeks shy of my 13th birthday), I was not quite mature/intelligent enough to realize that a tipping point had been reached.  At the time, my thinking was just because Communism was crumbling in the other Warsaw Pact countries, I didn't see any reason why the Soviet Union itself would be affected. 

I had basically grown up indoctrinated (because of both the media and our education system) in the belief that the USSR was this towering monolith that would last virtually forever.  It was honestly inconceivable to me that anything could bring about its fall (much less internal forces) in my lifetime -- the Cold War was a fact of life, and would remain so til long after I died.  (The true significance of things like the GDR's implosion, the restiveness in the Soviet Baltic republics, and Yeltsin's election as president of the Russian Federation was lost on me at the time.) 

Thus, it was only when the hardliners launched their failed coup two years later, and the subsequent announcement that the Soviet Union would officially cease to exist at the end of that year, did it hit home for me that the monolith had fallen, and that the Cold War was actually over.  I still remember how utterly stunned I was by events, and especially by how quickly everything transpired.  For several months, I was honestly more than half-convinced that it was all some elaborate hoax/prank (although to what end I couldn't begin to imagine). 

It was only after we were well into 1992 (at which point Russia, Ukraine, & co. were fully operating as independent nations) that the reality truly began to sink in for me.  I still remember the curious combination of shock, disbelief, awe, and giddiness I felt during that time. 



EDIT:  Grammer and speeling is gud. 

Quote from: Martok on July 23, 2013, 11:36:50 AM(I was only nine at the time). 

who let the kids in here?!?!

Heh.  I don't think I'll ever get used to my being one of the "young-ins" on this site. 

Quote from: Martok on July 23, 2013, 12:10:37 PM
Heh.  I don't think I'll ever get used to my being one of the "young-ins" on this site.

I prefer to identify "young-ins" as 'hoodlum-punks'

That's a great post up there Martok...I felt very similar at the time being close to your age. The Tianamen Square massacre almost hypnotized me. I remember thinking how unbelievable it was...

I suppose for me it was the Falklands Is - the first time id really seen soldiers getting off ships, and planes in combat over a war zone, i was only 10 in '82 but i remember been shocked as we all watched in school the Sheffield getting hit by the Exocet

Secondly, simply because it seemed to be a cornerstone of my childhood and early adult life was Margaret Thatcher leaving office and then the Conservatives losing office

Thirdly, and although i dont claim to be a royalist, the total shock and 'that cant be right' of seeing the news headlines of Princess Diana's death in Paris

and fourthly, but i suppose most 'holy shit' was 9/11 - watching on a massive screen in an exhibition hall in the Docklands, surrounded by US exhibitors and visitors even more dumb founded than i was and then hearing sirens i didnt even know existed as Canary Wharf got evacuated.

What struck me then and now is my father ringing me to see if i was ok, he knew i wasnt in New York, he knew i was safe but it was so profound, so earth shattering that i think he just wanted to ring and say 'are you ok, we love you' and im sure i wasnt the only one that horrible day

True story: on 9/11 I was on the phone with The Girlfriend (who later became The wife) as everything began to deteriorate. Then the phone went dead. The night of 9/11 I spent at my Mom's and there was still no phone service. It wasn't until I was finally able to get home on the night of 9/12 that I was able to speak to her again. She ran down the street as I walked from the train and hugged me right in the middle of the street. For about 36 hours she thought I was dead. I won't ever forget that.

Quote from: Gusington on July 23, 2013, 01:13:13 PM
That's a great post up there Martok...I felt very similar at the time being close to your age. The Tianamen Square massacre almost hypnotized me. I remember thinking how unbelievable it was...

Thanks Gus.  Yeah, the Tianamen Square massacre (and the protests preceding it) had a definite air of unreality to it as well. 

Quote from: Gusington on July 26, 2013, 01:21:18 PM
True story: on 9/11 I was on the phone with The Girlfriend (who later became The wife) as everything began to deteriorate. Then the phone went dead. The night of 9/11 I spent at my Mom's and there was still no phone service. It wasn't until I was finally able to get home on the night of 9/12 that I was able to speak to her again. She ran down the street as I walked from the train and hugged me right in the middle of the street. For about 36 hours she thought I was dead. I won't ever forget that.

Damn; I didn't know that.  (Of course, I realize you understandably don't talk about that day much...)  That must have been hell for her, not knowing. 

No, I wouldn't forget that either. 

Quote from: Gusington on July 26, 2013, 01:21:18 PM
True story: on 9/11 I was on the phone with The Girlfriend (who later became The wife) as everything began to deteriorate. Then the phone went dead. The night of 9/11 I spent at my Mom's and there was still no phone service. It wasn't until I was finally able to get home on the night of 9/12 that I was able to speak to her again. She ran down the street as I walked from the train and hugged me right in the middle of the street. For about 36 hours she thought I was dead. I won't ever forget that.

I haven't known you long enough gus and would never ask you to recall the day but from comments on here I assume you were closer than most?

Quote from: undercovergeek on July 27, 2013, 04:54:13 AM

Quote from: Gusington on July 26, 2013, 01:21:18 PM
True story: on 9/11 I was on the phone with The Girlfriend (who later became The wife) as everything began to deteriorate. Then the phone went dead. The night of 9/11 I spent at my Mom's and there was still no phone service. It wasn't until I was finally able to get home on the night of 9/12 that I was able to speak to her again. She ran down the street as I walked from the train and hugged me right in the middle of the street. For about 36 hours she thought I was dead. I won't ever forget that.

I haven't known you long enough gus and would never ask you to recall the day but from comments on here I assume you were closer than most?

He was very close.

Nuff said

Hey Brits!

When you guys think of the Falkands, is there a particular encapsulating moment that stands out?  Is there the iconic photo or moment that y'all recognize as "THE FALKLANDS" the way the flag going up on Mt Suribachi wraps up Iwo Jima for us?

There are a few.

The Marines 'Yomping' overland.

The battle for Goose Green.

The terrible pictures of RFA Sir Galahad ablaze.

The final raising of the flag at Port Stanley.

Too many really - but those stand out to me.

Fall of the Berlin Wall & the Collapse of the USSR was the biggest military/political event of my lifetime.

My Dad within 30 days of the collapse of the USSR showed me a history book published before WW1 showing all of the cultural and political fault lines going through the Balkins.  He predicted that the next set of wars would take place there.  He also said that the world politically & militarily was going to go back to where it was prior to WW1 with lots and lots of small wars.

Personally in terms of "remembering where I was" that was 9-11.  I was teaching an 8:00am college class.  I got in early that day as usual.  Less than half the class showed up and I could not figure out why.  I was answering a student question after class and a young co-ed came in and told me that we had been attacked in New York and that "I guess we are at war or something."  I told her not to ever make flippant comments like that.  The next day the Provost asked the faculty to not count absent students who missed class that day.

But I remember all of these events very well (excepting the JFK murder because that is a little before my time of remembering stuff).

bump...  b/c I know we've added folks since this discussion 5 years ago :)