100th ARW command chief shares how 9/11 taught him, ‘Find your ‘Why’’

Editor’s note: To mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, this is the first of two articles commemorating Sept. 11, where RAF Mildenhall members share their personal experience of what happened that fateful day, and how it affected their life and military journey.

In September 2001, James Wall was 18 years old and in the Delayed Entry Program waiting to join the U.S. Air Force. His older brother was in the U.S. Marine Corp and his grandfather had served in the U.S. Army. His original motivation for joining was to earn money for school to advance his education.

That motivation changed Sept. 11, after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and on Flight 93 outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Although he’d previously moved out of his family home before then, Wall was temporarily staying with his mom until he received a date for his basic training.

World changes forever as the nightmare begins

“It was about 8 a.m. when my mom woke me up after she’d switched on the news first thing that morning. We immediately started watching the TV in the living room as a lot of things were happening in real time. I think oftentimes people forget that we watched quite a bit of it live – there was a delay between one tower being struck then the other tower being struck and the airplane crashing in Pennsylvania,” said now-Chief Master Sgt. Wall, 100th Air Refueling Wing command chief.

“I remember it being a Tuesday, and I was waiting to hear from the recruiter as to whether or not I was able to ship off to basic training soon. Watching events unfold was very shocking. Although at the time we didn’t sense the gravity of what was occurring, we just knew something pretty bad was happening and felt pretty bad for the people who were involved with it,” he said.

Wall recalled how at the time it was just him and his mom in the house.

“I think she immediately sensed just how enormous this was going to be for our country, and for the population of Americans in general,” he said. “Just given the fact that she was more mature and experienced than me, she had an extreme reaction to what anyone in New York City was facing, and anyone involved in those attacks. I just remember being in shock.”

The command chief shared how it was an unsual “in-between time.”

“We have a lot of media thrown in our faces nowadays, but we were watching this on a 10-channel TV in my mom’s living room, so you couldn’t flip the TV station without seeing it – it was on every channel, and it was all anyone talked about on the news,” remarked Wall.

After watching more of the events unfold on TV, Wall said he and his mom reached out to his brother and sister to check they were safe.

What next?

“It was a terrorist event, so there was a little bit of wondering, ‘Is this it, or is there more?’ I think a lot of people were touching base with family members, seeing where people were at, particularly when your family lives scattered in different locations, asking whether everyone was safe where they were, or if anything else was happening that I didn’t know about,” he said. “I hung out with a couple of friends that night and were just trying to grasp what had occurred. It’s unusual at a fairly young age to have to wrap your head around the fact that you probably just saw the new Pearl Harbor, thinking, ‘Where do we go from here?’

“That initial day, you could only take in so much information before you were in overload. Then, you try and show empathy and put yourself in other people’s shoes, and you definitely feel emotional about that, especially as at the time, no one knew who was responsible.”

Shock as Twin Towers fall

“Accidents happen all the time; it takes a minute for the news reporting and other people’s perceptions to kind of settle into you. Then, you realize the magnitude of the response that the city of New York was facing as firefighters and EMTs were running into the buildings, putting themselves in danger,” he said. “I don’t think anyone predicted that the buildings would collapse. You’re trying to take in data and put that in some context to try and understand what’s happening.

“I never thought it was going to kickstart the next 24 years of my life, or that we would subsequently spend 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq, all from the catalyst of this one event,” said Wall. “They initially didn’t know if it was some kind of pilot error or aircraft error. There was a lot of speculation in those first hours. Then, they kind of slowly started to piece together that this was coordinated and that we were under attack as a country, so I was running through those scenarios in my head. It’s an unusual thing to sit through.”

Prior to Sept. 11, Wall explained that his family were heavy advocates for him wanting to join the military. They thought it was a very positive move, especially as his brother and grandfather had both been in the military, and his mom had previously thought about joining.

‘Four years and done’ turns to ‘25 years and still going…’

“They just wanted me to get some experience out of being in the Air Force that would set me up for the rest of my life. When 9/11 happened, I knew my mother had concerns – there’s no two ways about it. You’re processing two things simultaneously – what I thought was gonna be four years then go to college, was now turning into another thing,” said Wall. “It took her a minute to wrap her head around it, but she never put any of that weight on me; she didn’t feed into anything I was feeling. She just stood by the statement of ‘When these things happen, it’s time for us to stand up and do something about it. This is why people serve.’ She felt it was an honorable thing I was doing.”

After nine months of being in the Delayed Entry Program, Wall said he’d been constantly asking when he could go to basic training. He just wanted to get the process started so he could join the Air Force.

Then 9/11 happened

The very next day, Sept. 12, 2001, at 8 a.m., his recruiter called to tell him he finally had a date to attend basic training, and he would be going to then-Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, on Dec. 3, 2001.

“I freely admit, never once on Sept. 11 did I think, ‘Oh the recruiter is probably gonna call now!’ There was too much going on. I couldn’t wrap my head around it; it was a really hard perspective as a young man as to what was going to happen moving forward,” said Wall. “After finding out I had a basic training date, I was a little apprehensive about the experience in general. There was still so much unknown about what would occur after 9/11.

“Nobody had said anything to me about deploying, or what that looked like until after I arrived at Lackland,” he said. “We hadn’t officially entered Afghanistan at that time, and there were some months in between 9/11 and when I joined, but that was ramping up.”

There was still a lot of uncertainty as to what the future would hold, and Wall explained that most of his apprehension was for the experience of basic training in general.

“All you have is TV and books and stuff like that, and definitely framing your basic training experience off ‘Full Metal Jacket’ is probably not the right way to go into it. So, you just try to relax into it,” he said. “I’m a firm believer of if you say you’re going to do something, then you do it. So, I had no hesitation that way, but I knew it would be an unusual experience for sure.”

Reality hits home as future uncertain

On joining the Air Force, one of the first people he got to know and become friends with was a young man named Carl Anderson.

“He ended up losing his life in Iraq within our first year in the Air Force, and that, combined with the tone and ramp up in ops tempo, along with the expectation of what we were going to be doing, meant my first year in the Air Force was non-stop,” said Wall. “It was an emotional rollercoaster. I probably crammed four years of job experience in that first year, then on top of that proceeded on my own first deployment – that’s equivalent to 10 to 15 years of a lot of people’s careers. From basic training to my second base was about 15 months, with a deployment in between and the loss of a friend.

“The way that all of that shaped my leadership philosophy was with a profound sense of, what we do is inherently dangerous regardless of AFSC, experience, and why any of us joined or did not join to do,” he said. “Essentially, that’s the basis of what we’re here for – readiness is hugely paramount, as well as proficiency in your job, being useful, and having empathy and support for your teammates. Taking care of each other is probably the number one thing that can make any team, or the Air Force, successful.”

For those Airmen who don’t have a memory of 9/11, the command chief said he does what he can to make them aware that life is hard at times and things can change direction fast.

“Knowing who you can reach out to in times of need, who’s got your back and how open are you with them about what could or could not occur if another 9/11-type event were to happen is probably the best thing you can do moving forward for what is more than likely to occur at some point,” he said. “In the current ops tempo we’re facing for Operation Epic Fury, I don’t know that anyone predicted that last year, but that’s just part of what it takes to be an American Airman – we’re going to get sent places to do hard things, and that’s going to come first.

Find your ‘Why’

“But it’s the motivating factors you have for yourself – how you find your ‘Why’ in those moments – that’s going to matter. You need to have those discussions with yourself, your family and your friends early on. For me, it was 9/11, and that launched a whole career all the way up to my last deployment as a senior master sergeant with 18 years of service. It won’t necessarily happen that way for everybody, but you still have to be ready for it at all times,” said Wall.

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