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On September 11th 2001 I was stationed on the USS Ingraham (FFG-61) with the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) Battle Group. We had just pulled out of ****et (It auto edits the resort island it is Ph-uket) Thailand after a liberty port with a destroyer from the battle group, I can't recall the name or hull number. All of a sudden a day or two out of ****et, everything went dark. E-mail, AFRTS satellite feed, and message traffic. Come to find out, the Skipper and the XO had pulled all the departmental officers into the wardroom, briefed them and found out who was from NYC. He brought them together in his stateroom, explained the situation and gave each of them a few minutes to call their families via the satellite telephone in his stateroom. We all had felt the engines crank up, and our speed increase well beyond our normal cruise. I went to the Combat Information Center, and the LT in CIC told me that unless I was coming up on watch that I needed to clear out and wait for the announcement of an all hands meeting.

The Captain got all 150 or so of us on the mess decks and told us the situation. We went from peacetime navy to wartime in all of about 30 seconds. We boogied off to the the Gulf Of Oman to meet up with the rest of the battlegroup. The carrier was launching sorties already, and the DDGs and CGs were launching Tomahawks all day and night. Our little Frigate didn't have that capability, so we played "Plane Guard" for the carrier during flight ops and then once every couple weeks ran the supply ships in and out of the Strait of Hormuz to pick up fuel, food and ammo. Usually the Iranians play chicken with US ships in the straits. Nobody even got close, they knew we would have shot first at that point in time.

In all, I count myself one of the lucky ones. I didn't lose friends or family in NYC, and I didn't watch my friends die or get injured halfway around the world. My war was a lot of standing watch on a fire control radar system. I don't have nightmares or PTSD like so many soldiers, airmen, marines or first responders. I don't have lingering illness, or TBI or missing parts like so many of them.

I don't know if I really care for the name "Patriot Day." I don't have a better idea right now, but it just seems to ring hollow in my ears... I can't explain why, but it sounds like a name a politician would use.

For those of you, if any, who were there in New York City that day or in the sand and rocks and lead rain in the following years you have my gratitude. I volunteered, but was never asked to do that duty. I am thankful that all of you did.

FC1(SW/SAR) Micah Hanley USN 1998-2007