United 93 and Our "Survivors Guilt"
One year, during Easter break, I learned a valuable lesson. Every year during Easter, my cousins and I would go to my Grandparents house in San Simeon for the break in the school year. My cousins and I were practically the only kids in the area, as it was a very small coastal town, populated almost exclusively by retirees like my grandparents. It was a great time to spend with my cousins and my grandparents. Rock hunting along the shore or rabbit hunting in the hills, it was a great place to be a kid, and the company was as good as it gets. My grandfather was a walking encyclopedia. Every rock had a story, every plant a potential use. Glass floats found on the beach were given a sense of reality as he told us how they were made and where they came from and how long they had probably been floating before we found them. The chief is what my dad and uncles called him, but he was always just granddad to us kids. He was a hero in the world during a time and in a culture that was without the virtue of heroes.
One day I came back from the beach by myself and as I came into the house and slammed the screen door behind me. My grandfather was sleeping on the sofa, but when the bang of the screen door reverberated through the house, he leapt up off the sofa exactly the way that 80 year old men dont and electrified cats often do.
I will never forget the look of stark terror that was on his face, and although he was looking right at me, it was as if I wasnt there. In just one moment he had gone from snoring and sleeping away the afternoon on the sofa to standing in a cold sweat, looking confused and terrified.
That metallic screen door sound as it slapped the inside of the doorframe had just the right timbre, just the right pitch to send a nightmare loose into the mind of my sleeping grandfather. In one moment it was 1968 and he was sleeping on the sofa. The next, he was years in the past on the little tin can of the USS Fletcher, below decks and being shelled by the battleships of Imperial Japanese Navy while running through the slot. Of course at the time I knew none of this past history, all I knew is that I was going to catch hell for waking my grandfather in the middle of his afternoon nap.
You have to be careful honey, that screen door does something horrible to your grandfather. So promise me youll be more careful with it, ok? My grandmother said into my ear in a quiet whisper as she leaned down to guide me out of the room as my grandfather tried to compose himself as he sat down, head in hand, somewhat embarrassed to have been caught so emotionally exposed. I nodded yes to her in return, all the while wondering when the punishment for my act would come. But there was to be none. It was a simple accident and she knew it, it was one that she herself had caused several times over the years, witnessing over and over again, recognizing but never knowing the cause for the involuntary screams of a man who had survived what so many others didnt and the damage the guilt that survival had left behind on his soul. That sound, that sudden metallic clang made in the afternoon of the happy years in soft retirement along the California shore during the 1960s was just enough to transport a man back into a creosote, sweat and black coffee soaked moonless night that that was long over on the calendar, but never more than a moment away in his resting mind. A dark night in the uncertain summer in the South Pacific when all that stood between life and death for those below decks was the all too thin grey bulkheads of a very small ship. An inch of steel and the roll of the dice of fate is all that anyone below decks on that ship had to protect them from the strike of the deadly long lance. This was the enemys backyard, and they didnt call it Iron bottom sound because of the minerals found there. It was because so much of our navy had already been sunk there and the floor of the sea was littered with our ships that were far bigger, far more capable than the little USS Fletcher.
That night of monotonous terror that lived in the memory of my grandfather and the war itself were long since over and well in the past, but they had really never left the mind of the man who had witnessed it first hand. The watch he stood that night had never really ended and that screen door rang like the dinner bell for the beast I accidentally unleashed that ate into his soul.
He had lived through it, and yet, so many others with him that night had not. The guilt of survival was far more punishing to him than what the enemies aim had brought. It ate at his soul like acid on a metal plate.
You see, time does not heal all wounds; it merely schedules them for surgery and forgets to provide the anesthesia.
Yesterday, I thought about my grandfather and the incident with the screen door when I grappled with the question of whether or not to go see United 93 this weekend. I dont for one second believe that my life is anything at all like my grandfathers, yet I too suffer from a bit of survivors guilt. Once upon a time, I was a road warrior and I have on occasion flown out of Boston on Tuesday mornings. I have over 500,000 miles on United Airlines and therefore the world of air travel perks decision making would have put me on a United Airlines flight before all the other possible choices. I believe that in the past, I probably have flown that same flight, on a different day and a different year.
I stopped living the road warrior life in 2000. In my time as a road warrior, I have witnessed passengers in the midst of a psychotic episode being subdued by the crew as the person tried to open the door in flight. Ive missed other flights that have crashed, killing other co-workers, but nothing has effected me like the story of United 93. To me, it is not an abstract story of other peoples suffering. It is the sense of guilt that comes from the surviving of it all that eats at my soul.
United Flight 93 claimed the lives of several of my companys employees. They were people just like me, who were doing business one day and returning home the next, doing by air what most people do with the crosstown bus. But for a small change in my career decisions and personal desires during the preceding 12 months before 9/11/01; one of the September 11th flights might very well have been a flight that, I too, would have been on and most certainly would have died like all the others. I cannot look at any pictures from that day without thinking, it couldve been me on that plane. Its very unsettling to see your potential death scene replayed over and over.
I once missed a flight that a co-worker had managed to catch, on which he was later killed. Yes, that event bothers me too, but September 11th is something else altogether. It wasnt an "accident of icing" that caused the deaths on that September day; it was a deliberate murder. They were trying to kill us; it was something deeply personal that a regular plane crash, no matter how close a shave it was, could ever be.
Like most people who fly commercial and maintain some form of private pilot rating, I often find myself on long flights daydreaming about the what ifs. People who are pilots like myself often ask ourselves if theres a problem with the pilot, could I get in the cockpit and fly this plane?. This is absurd, but we ask it to ourselves as if it was a real possibility. We ask ourselves if we know the location of the flaps and landing gear on a 737 like it might be important to know that sort of thing, as if holding a private pilots license holds you responsible in some way to the airline.
We ask ourselves what would we do first and what would we do to be sure, to be certain that the plan would land, even though we never flew anything bigger than a Cessna 172. Before September 11th, it was just a way to kill time, a harmless Walter Mitty-ish daydream to help kill the choking tedium that comes with long distance flights in coach while pressed up against the fuselage with a kid kicking the seat back, wishing we were anywhere but 30,000 feet in the dry air over Kansas with another 3 hours to go before we are released from our imprisonment..
We all know the plot to the movie Airport and we all think we are the Dean Martin character in the movie. Life however, is not a movie plot, life is often cruel and unforgiving and things in the world often fall right to hell, even for very good people and innocent children.
It is because of these mid-flight Walter Mitty adventures that I knew the morning of the massacre that the hijackers had used the Hudson River as a visual reference to guide them to Manhattan. I knew it before noon on that very day. I knew it, because I had seen it outside my window on many flights, and I too knew that as long as I followed that clearly defined river, that I could find the fabled island of Manhattan. There was no need to practice using navigation aids like GPS. Just look out the window, follow the river, and look out for the big buildings and dive when the time is right. It was as simple as that. I knew the moment I saw the attack that they had planned with ruthless efficiency to attack on just the right day a clear autumn day with both ceiling and visibility unlimited, and using just the perfect visual landmark, a wide straight river that crossed right in front of the path of the aircraft to ensure that they could get to their target on their limited skill set. I knew that they had planned it well enough to know that it really doesnt take a whole lot of training to steer and commercial airliner in mid flight. It takes training to land and takeoff, and they had no intention of doing either one. I fully recognized the cleverness of the attack. No bombs to be sniffed, to guns to be detected, just raw muscle and simple, supposedly harmless, box cutters tied to the applied use of terror physical against the passengers. I knew, that even though there were many hijackers on a flight that only the ones who took over the cockpit and actually flew the plane knew the full intentions of their mission. The bully boys that kept the crew and passengers at bay outside the cockpit were as surprised as anyone that they were actually on a suicide mission.
Until September 11th, all hijackings were just bad TV drama. You land somewhere, make faces at the camera, express grievances, and they may kill a passenger or two, only to be let off the hook by the well meaning folks at the UN. On September 11th. The bully boys thought they were getting their name in lights, but only the hijackers cockpit crews knew they were the New Divine Wind
After United 93, that all stopped. Admit it; that every time you get on an airline today, you check out the passengers as potential threats. You size them up. Is that guy a cop or a whackjob? What kind of shoes are those? Is that person acting in any way that might give away their actual intent? You are polite to all, but inwardly suspicious of everyone at the same time. Theres not as much small talk on airlines these days. You dont offer to play a game of cards with the person sitting next to you anymore. You sit, you scan, you watch. You glance at the crew, and you nod to them in acknowledgement of what you both know but dare not express out loud.
I know the story of United 93, but the written word doesnt tell the story like a movie does. Movies are just a step away from dreams, or in this case, a nightmare. Movies imprint on the mind in a different way that the written word. For weeks after September 11th, I dont think I was able to sleep more than a few hours at a time. I always snapped bolt upright in a sweat at the scene of the aircraft hitting the towers and knowing, really knowing what that scene really represented. It wasnt a machine crashing; it was people in the act of dying. They were dying deliberately and by the design of a group of madmen. In those months of no sleep and nightmares, it always felt that in my dreams, the planes werent hitting the WTC; they were hitting me for my crime of not being there.
The worst thing that the massacre of that day has left me with is a nagging sense of guilt that lingers in the back of my mind. Somehow I have been left somewhat hollow by the experience. After the day the massacre had occurred and dice of fate had been thrown, I had gone on to see more sunrises and sunsets, while others in my company, had not. I do not know how to explain it or account for it; I just know that it is simply the way it is and over time I will learn to accept it for what it is.
I have done nothing in my life that should rationally cause a case of survivors guilt over the events of September 11th, but I cannot shake the horrible sense that I have let those people down in some cosmic way. Its not rational to feel this way, I recognize that, but I cant shake the feeling that in our day-to-day luxury of life that we have lived since that September 11th, that weve missed the point of what they so clearly understood in moments before it all ended for the people on United 93.
That we are under attack by madmen who want nothing more than to simply kill us all.
They wish not to negotiate territory or borders. They simply wish to kill us all. Its is not our support of the Jews which has caused their grievance, its our very existence. Their God has forsaken them, and rather than face up to the shame generated by that fact, they choose instead to seek vengeance against those that appear to have found Gods favor. They hate happiness and freedom in every form, and wish only the worst conditions on all mankind. We can no more accept the Jihadi conditions for our surrender than the people of United 93 could just sit in their seats.
The United 93 movie represents something else besides a just a movie. Its the ugly and cold metric of commerce. There are a number of people in the business of producing movies who are betting that Americans wont go to see this movie. They believe that people do not wish to be reminded of that day. They do not think that Americans will go to see what happened. If United 93 were to fail, it would give rise to the myth that Americans do not support the war, which is becoming less a call for leaving Iraq, and more often than not is now a call to return to the days of the 1990s, when threats were ignored and allowed to fester into the embolism of 9/11.
They find it very easy to make a movie that drives a wedge into the country and destroys the morale of free people while it gives comfort to our enemies, like Fahrenheit 9/11, or creates a series of unsustainable paranoid theories like Syriana. But to make a movie about the first battle in the war against terror and show citizens as heroes, that is simply beyond the people who run Hollywood. Its extremely important to me that United 93 does well at the marketplace, because if it were to fail, it would give comfort to those who say there is no heroism in fighting back, that there is only heroism in defeat and dissention.
If United 93 fails at the box office, the war on terror will be re-written in our popular culture the way that returning Vietnam vets were re-written from normal people into murdering psychopaths let loose on the general population. Like it or not, what passes for popular culture very often serves as the basis of history. Popular culture is often the lens by which historical events are later interpreted.
If we are not careful to support this movie because of our collective sense of survivors guilt, then the failure of United 93 will serve as a springboard for furthering the cause defeatism that permeates most of modern era popular culture. No matter our victories in this war of which United 93 represents just the first, popular culture is already working to marginalize them as inconsequential. A defeat at the marketplace of United 93, will further make the case for those who think we must lose to win in their perverted logic in the worship of failure.
I do not know yet if I can go into a theater this weekend and watch a movie like United 93, but I do know that whether I choose at this point to see the movie or not, I will be buying a ticket to ensure that the legacy of that story is given the respect that it deserves by popular culture.
Hollywood knows nothing and cares not what tale is that is actually being told on the screen, but it does respect what happens at the box office. It will notice either a success or a failure and will react accordingly.
Like the sound of the screen door was eventually to be accepted as just a noise by my grandfather, I will also learn to look at movies about 9/11 as just a movie without an overwhelming sense of survivors guilt. Someday I will look at pictures of the 9/11 massacres and I wont feel that somehow that I failed the people on those planes.
UPDATE: Reviews for 'United 93' can be found here.
