Tom Sileo (5 page)

“It's just me and my sister, but it must be fun coming from a big family,” Travis said to Brendan.

From the time Travis and his sister, Ryan, were born only fifteen months apart at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune, they were almost constantly exposed to the rigors of military life. With their father on active duty in the Marine Corps until 1988 before transitioning to the Reserves, their family always seemed to be moving around, making the bond between brother and sister even more important. Whereas making new friends at different elementary schools took time, Ryan and Travis could always depend on each other. Their mom, Janet, was the glue that kept the Manion family strong as it moved from base to base.

“How long has your dad been in the Corps?” Brendan asked.

“Twenty years,” Travis replied.

For Brendan, Travis, and their fellow midshipmen, the morning of September 11, 2001, started just like any other. It was a nice, unseasonably warm day, without a single cloud littering the bright, early morning sky.

At the end of their respective classes, Travis and Brendan began hearing rumors about an awful tragedy in New York City. An airplane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers, sending smoke billowing into the skies above Manhattan.

As Brendan and Travis headed back to their rooms for a break between classes, CNN was reporting a “World Trade Center disaster,” which appeared to be an accident, although nobody knew for sure. Given the bombing of the Twin Towers eight years earlier, it was clearly a terrorist target, but the 1993 attack had mostly faded from the national psyche.

When Travis, Brendan, and dozens of other midshipmen arrived back at their dorm, they found plebes who didn't have early morning Tuesday classes gathered around the lounge television, which was showing images of a gaping hole in the World Trade Center's north tower. It was 9:00 a.m., and most of the country was just realizing that something terrible was going on in New York, where a confusing, chaotic scene was quickly unfolding.

Three minutes later, a moment that would be forever etched in the memories of Brendan, Travis, and millions of Americans silenced the lounge. A second plane crashed into the World Trade Center, sending a massive fireball shooting out of the middle of the south tower.

“Oh, there's another one, another plane just hit!” Theresa Renaud, a witness speaking live to CBS News anchor Bryant Gumbel, exclaimed. “Oh my gosh, another plane has just hit. . . . It hit the other building.”

“Shit!” one midshipman in the lounge said.

For the next few seconds there was silence. America was under attack.

None of the students knew what to do other than stay together, watch the news coverage, and call their families. For the next forty-five minutes, frantic students, like the rest of America, watched the surreal, horrific images of desperate victims jumping from the burning towers. At around 9:45, evacuations were ordered at the White House and Capitol after reports of an explosion at the Pentagon.

With all airspace above the United States closed, military leaders, who were scrambling fighter jets, were reportedly concerned about the nation's military academies being a
potential terrorist target. “The Yard,” as the Navy campus is called by midshipmen, had to be cleared as quickly as possible, with no large gatherings of students to serve as potential targets. Midshipmen still wandering around campus were told to return to their living quarters.

As a Navy battle cruiser headed toward the harbor, heavily armed Marines surrounded the academy gates. Travis and Brendan quickly went back to their respective rooms to contact their families.

Travis picked up the phone and dialed his dad.

“Tom Manion,” his father answered.

“Dad, it's Trav,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine,” Tom said. “I'm up in Jersey, about an hour from New York. Are you alright? What's going on down there?”

“It's pretty crazy,” Travis said. “They're locking us down inside our quarters. . . . Something happened at the Pentagon, and they think we could be a target.”

“I just heard about the Pentagon,” Tom replied. “Listen, buddy . . . you stay safe, and I'll let mom know you're okay.”

“Talk to you later, Dad,” Travis said.

He walked back to the lounge, where Brendan and several others were standing in front of the television. The south tower of the World Trade Center was collapsing. The north tower crumbled almost thirty minutes after its twin.

A few hours later, President Bush, who was crisscrossing the country in Air Force One while the Secret Service determined whether it was safe enough for the commander-in-chief to return to Washington, officially placed the US military on high alert.

“Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward,” the president said from Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base. “And freedom will be defended.”

During the nine days after the Twin Towers collapsed, the Pentagon burned, smoke rose from a silent Pennsylvania field, and the entire Naval Academy student body realized that after graduation they would become part of a fighting force that was now at war. Exactly where American troops would be deployed was still unknown, although it was becoming increasingly clear that the most immediate security threat, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organization, was being harbored by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Like most Americans in the aftermath of 9/11, for the students sorrow was mixed with anger, uncertainty, and fervent patriotism. But at the Naval Academy, these emotions were mixed with the burgeoning realization that this generation of midshipmen would be called upon to confront the evil that had reached America's shores.

Gathering at the same television set where they had watched the attacks unfold in real time, one group of future military leaders,
including Brendan and Travis, watched President Bush address a joint session of Congress on the evening of September 20, 2001.

“Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution,” Bush announced. “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.”

“Hell yeah,” one midshipman agreed.

Travis and Brendan were silent.

“And tonight, a few miles from the damaged Pentagon, I have a message for our military,” the commander-in-chief said. “Be ready.

“I have called the armed forces to alert, and there is a reason,” the president continued. “The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud.”

The “hell yeahs” around the room stopped for a moment when President Bush pulled a shiny silver badge out of his pocket and said:

       
And I will carry this. It is the police shield of a man named George Howard who died at the World Trade Center trying to save others.

             
It was given to me by his mom, Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son. It is my reminder of lives that ended and a task that does not end.

             
I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.

             
The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

After the murders of thousands of good Americans like George Howard, the responsibility of preventing another terrorist attack would soon fall on young military leaders like Brendan Looney and Travis Manion.

As the stirring speech concluded, many of the Naval Academy midshipmen were applauding along with the politicians on
the screen. Brendan and Travis sat quietly next to each other, reflecting on the enormous challenge that they and their peers now faced.

Thirty miles from the US Capitol, where the commander-in-chief spoke into the shadows of a devastated city and country, a young generation heard its call to arms.

2

EARN IT

I
n October 2001, with the US military preparing to invade Afghanistan and the stakes for Travis and Brendan suddenly much higher, their frequent runs became even more intense. On their seemingly endless routes, one would always challenge the other to go further.

As they ran through the academy's heavily guarded campus, Travis asked Brendan which branch he hoped to serve in.

“I'll probably go Navy,” Brendan responded. “What about you?”

“Marine Corps. . . . I hope to go that route,” Travis said, knowing that becoming a Marine Corps officer like his dad was far from guaranteed.

“I hear ya,” Brendan said. “With the way things are going, I can't even imagine what will be going on when we graduate.”

“Who the hell knows,” Travis said.

Letters laced with anthrax had just been discovered in post offices in Florida, New York, and Washington, DC. One chilling message was sent to Tom Brokaw, the eminent NBC News anchor:

       
09–11–01

       
This is next

       
Take Penacilin Now

       
Death to America

       
Death to Israel

Like the rest of America, which worried about everything from more hijackings and anthrax to a nuclear suitcase bomb being detonated in a major city, Annapolis was gripped by fear. Because the Navy campus was full of future military leaders, authorities believed the academy could be a prime target for terrorists planning to make another grand statement while also achieving an important wartime objective.

Travis and Brendan's class of 2004 still had time to prepare, but the graduating class of 2002 was only months away from going to war, which had changed the entire campus mind-set.

On the first Saturday of December 2001, with American bombs pummeling the mountainous region of Tora Bora near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding, President Bush entered the Navy football locker room at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. In just a few minutes, the Midshipmen would square off against their West Point counterparts. Even though Navy was winless and Army had prevailed in just two contests going into the season's final game, the 2001 matchup, held as Ground Zero still smoldered less than three months after 9/11, was one of the most significant Army-Navy games ever played.

Standing a few feet from Brendan, the president thanked Navy's coach after being presented with a football autographed by all members of the team. After a few words of encouragement and a handshake with his former GOP presidential primary rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, President Bush headed over to the Army locker room, where Operation Desert Storm hero and West Point graduate General Norman Schwarzkopf was meeting with the Army squad.

The president, who had taken office less than a year earlier after one of the closest elections in American history, was in his
first weeks as a wartime commander-in-chief. But in his address to the Army players, he left no doubt that the war on terrorism, as his administration called the new conflict, would be part of America's fabric for many years to come. President Bush told the Army Black Knights that though Navy's players were their rivals on the field today, they would be their brothers in arms on the battlefield tomorrow.

Back in the Navy locker room, Senator McCain, one of the academy's most famous graduates, delivered an impassioned speech to the players representing his beloved alma mater. While McCain's words were potent, Brendan and his Navy teammates only needed to look into the eyes of the sixty-five-year-old senator, who had endured years of brutal torture and solitary confinement while being held captive in a North Vietnamese prison, to know that this landmark game was one step on a long journey toward becoming warriors.

Travis was in State College, Pennsylvania, to compete in the annual Penn State Open wrestling tournament. He would have to rely on accounts from friends, including Brendan, to truly understand the atmosphere that day at “the Vet.”