25 years after 9/11, Fort Bragg community reflects on War on Terror
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) -- Twenty-five years ago, the Sept. 11 attacks not only changed the way America approached security, but they also launched the country into a global war on terror.
More than 1.9 million U.S. service members would deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. At Fort Bragg, the war's impact is still felt today.
Within 24 hours of the attacks, military Humvees were patrolling the post, and the days of driving onto Fort Bragg without security checkpoints were over.
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"I think what we didn't realize was how our way of life was going to change," said Capt. Michael Mastrangelo of the 18th Airborne Corps.
It was just the beginning of a 20-year conflict that would transform Fort Bragg, its soldiers and the surrounding community.
"Seeing soldiers with M-16s stationed like eight feet apart, surrounding the circumference of the preschool center. So that told you right then in there the military was taking precautions," said Judith Norris, a former Fort Bragg educator.
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For Mastrangelo, 9/11 was personal. He was 14 years old when he watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center from his high school window. His father, Arthur Mastrangelo, was a New York City firefighter working in Brooklyn that day, and sifted through the rubble that fateful day.
"Luckily my father came home, but there was a lot of people, young kids, who, you know, didn't weren't that lucky," Mastrangelo said.
"My father's firehouse lost six firefighters. None of them were ever recovered. And their ladder truck was never recovered."
He said his father responded to the World Trade Center and spent weeks there recovering equipment and digging through the rubble.
The attacks and acts of bravery inspired the younger Mastrangelo to join the Army. At 18, he enlisted.
"In 2007, I deployed to Afghanistan, the Kunar province, with the 1/73 Airborne Brigade Combat Team, and it was a long deployment, a pretty difficult deployment," Mastrangelo said.
Across the country, service members struggled to adapt to a new world.
"The nation as a whole was trying to figure out what's happening, why was happening, how are we going to overcome this," said retired Lt. Col. Carmelo Crespo.
Between 2003 and 2011, approximately 1.5 million Americans served in Iraq, including Crespo, who first deployed in 2005.
"In my first deployment, I was the logistics planner at the strategic level. We were, for example, one of the missions was the first elections in Iraq. We were planning the complete execution of the elections and how that was going to be supported logistically. And the second mission, it was more a retrograde or a deployment, redeployment back of our stations or a new mission, new assignments like Afghanistan," Crespo.
Crespo deployed once again in 2012.
"I remember President Obama gave the instructions to extract the forces within 45 days, and I went out to be able to provide all the support and logistics sustainment for the Special Operations Command To extract all this squadron arms and equipment and then distribute the equipment," he said.
The war on terror transformed everyday life at Fort Bragg, from constant deployment to tighter security.
"What was interesting is that the Marine base, at that point, you did have to go through security to get on the base. But that was not true for us at Fort Bragg. It was a totally open base," Norris said.
Norris, who spent 27 years at Fort Bragg in education, remembers days of gridlock as security checks took over.
"People did not get there on time, even if they started one or 2 hours ahead of time," she said. "We were kind of ahead of the time in comparison to the county schools at that time. They didn't necessarily have a counselor in every school, but we did."
She recalls that Desert Shield and Desert Storm were the first rapid deployments since Vietnam, and the community was not prepared for overnight deployments. By 2001, experience and community support had grown.
"If we had had anything that helped us when 911 happened, it was the fact that by the time we got to 911, if you were still associated with the military, you understood how great this whole community, both on post and off post, were in supporting them."
Twenty-five years on, the story of Fort Bragg and the war on terror continues to shape lives every day.
"When I look back to that 14-year-old kid and think about, I'd think about everything that, you know, it was a huge decision for me a couple of years later to join the Army," Mastrangelo said.
