Brendan Looney was heading out to football practice at the US Naval Academy in the spring of 2001 when he heard the quiet strumming of a guitar as he walked by a room. Travis Manion was playing the opening chords to the Dave Matthews Band song “What Would You Say.”
“Hey, man, that’s pretty good,” Brendan said. “I saw them at Nissan Pavilion—it was one hell of a show.”
“That’s in Virginia, right?” Travis asked, laying the guitar on his lap while looking up at Brendan. “You from around here?”
“Yep, Owings, Maryland, and now Silver Spring,” Brendan said. “What about you?”
“Philadelphia,” Travis said. “About forty minutes away in a place called Doylestown.”
“Uh-oh,” Brendan said. “Eagles fan?”
“Yep,” Travis responded.
“Shit,” Brendan said as the young midshipmen shared a laugh. “’Skins all the way.”
The die-hard Washington Redskins fan knew this Philadelphia Eagles supporter was on the wrestling team, but he couldn’t remember his name, so Brendan decided to introduce himself.
“I’m Brendan Looney,” he said.
“I’m Travis Manion,” said Travis. “Great to meet you.”
“Good to meet you, too,” Brendan said. “I gotta get to practice.”
“Me, too,” Travis said. “Football?”
“Yep,” Brendan answered. “You’re wrestling, right?”
“Yeah, I had to retire from football,” Travis said. “I knew I’d never be good enough to make the Eagles, and I didn’t want to end up on a team like the Redskins.”
After another laugh, the varsity athletes headed to separate practices. The Naval Academy freshmen (or plebes, as members of the youngest class are called) might have played different sports and rooted for different NFL teams, but each had just made a new friend.
Few wanted to line up across from Brendan at Navy football practices. As a slotback for the Midshipmen, who famously specialize in running the option, Brendan’s job was to blast anyone trying to tackle the ball carrier with a crushing block. He wasn’t a starter, but in practice, he was among the team’s most feared players.
Before Navy and the Naval Academy Preparatory School (NAPS), Brendan played high school football at DeMatha Catholic High School. In the Washington, DC, area, “DeMatha” was synonymous with “powerhouse,” as the Hyattsville, Maryland, all-men’s school has been a force in high school athletics for decades. Two of its most notable football players are Brian Westbrook, who starred for many years on Travis’s Eagles, and his brother, Byron Westbrook, who went on to play for Brendan’s Redskins.
Ben Mathews, a Navy linebacker, became friends with Brendan after observing his almost superhuman work ethic in the weight room. After introducing himself and quickly realizing that Brendan was a warm, friendly guy, Mathews wanted to see if he could keep up with his teammate’s workout regimen, which included countless squats.
The experiment ended with Mathews throwing up on the weight room floor. Brendan was an impressive physical specimen, and few could keep up with him in any setting involving athletic challenges.
On one particularly hot, stuffy day Mathews, exhausted after studying all night for an exam, was going through the motions during team drills. The first teammate to notice his lack of intensity was Brendan, who would never give anything less than 100 percent on the practice field. He reacted fiercely when he saw anyone not doing his part to prepare for the next game.
As the whistle blew, Brendan, the slotback, ran straight toward Mathews, the linebacker. While Mathews trotted toward the tailback, Brendan came seemingly out of nowhere and hammered his friend, who hit the ground almost as quickly as Brendan reached out to help him up. With blood spraying from his broken nose, the confused, disoriented linebacker took the hand of the teammate who had just embarrassed him with a bone-crushing blow.
Brendan was a man of deeds, not words, and while helping the injured player off the turf, gave him a look that Mathews interpreted as “if you want to be first team, play like it.”
Mathews wasn’t happy about the blood streaming down his face, but he knew it was Brendan’s way of helping him become a better player. Although many jocks would have started a fight over the incident, Mathews later thanked his teammate for the wake-up call.
Like Brendan, Travis believed being the hardest worker was the key to success. On the wrestling mat, Travis was always the guy with the black-and-blue face. His ears usually looked like they’d been crumpled inside somebody’s fist. But the La Salle College High School standout was strong, determined, and always one of Navy’s toughest outs.
“You may never be big enough to play football or fast enough to run track,” Travis once told kids at a local wrestling clinic in Doylestown, at an event covered by a local newspaper. “You work through the hardships and (you can) be successful, whether it’s on the wrestling mat or in battle. (Wrestling) lays the foundation for what it takes to be a good officer.”
Although some on the Navy wrestling team struggled to balance long practices and trips to away meets with academics, passing exams was never an issue for Travis, who absorbed lectures like a sponge. He attended classes, studied, and wrote his papers, but always thought wrestling would best prepare him for being a warrior and leader on the battlefield. This belief was reinforced by the qualities he saw in Captain Doug Zembiec, a two-time All-American wrestler at Navy who attended as many practices and meets as he could and frequently sparred with Travis.
“Be a battle-ax,” Zembiec told him. “Hurl yourself into your opponent.”
Zembiec, a 1995 Naval Academy graduate, had a big impact on Travis. In the young wrestler’s eyes, the gritty, tough, seemingly invincible warrior embodied everything he wanted to become: a skilled Marine officer who used the wrestling mat to develop himself into a leader who commanded respect.
Travis was a high school and college wrestling star. After a strong junior year at Navy, which featured several epic matches against nationally ranked opponents, he was presented the Naval Academy’s Weems Award for dedication and leadership.
As a preseason Top 20 wrestler going into his senior season, Travis didn’t want to simply win matches and meets. He wanted to dominate and help lead the Midshipmen to a championship.
In December 2003, Travis won the Penn State Open in his 184-pound weight class. He won four straight matches that day, including a 6–4 victory in the title contest against a formidable Rider University opponent. Travis’s parents, Tom and Janet Manion, never missed one of his matches and drove up to State College, Pennsylvania, for the meet. Nothing gave Travis more satisfaction than making his parents proud.
The Penn State Open was hard for Travis’s mom and dad to watch. During the day’s first match, Travis let out a terrible scream while grappling with his opponent. Their son’s right shoulder, which he had injured during his junior year, was now a greater source of pain, especially after an unsuccessful operation left his arm practically unusable.
After he cried out in agony, Travis’s right arm felt like Jell-O for the rest of the tournament. He won it anyway.
Travis knew that if he was also going to prevail in an upcoming wrestling tournament in Arlington, Texas, it would have to be with one arm, just like at Penn State.
At the January 2004 tournament, when Travis knelt on the mat before squaring off against a tough adversary from Purdue, he channeled Captain Zembiec’s words and hurled himself into his opponent. On this day in Texas, however, the battle-ax had no blade.
“Come on, Trav,” Tom yelled from the stands.
“Bear down!” shouted Tom’s brother, Chris Manion, a former wrestling star who was almost always in Travis’s corner.
The Purdue wrestler slammed his struggling opponent to the ground for a takedown, with Travis’s injured shoulder thumping squarely onto the red-and-yellow mat. His right arm was already numb, and this first blow left Travis with almost no strength to attempt an escape. In a sport built on hand-to-hand combat, one hand is almost always no match for two.
“They should stop this,” Janet said to Tom, who was silent as he watched his son being thoroughly dominated.
The match ended in an 11–0 shutout. It was by far the worst defeat of Travis’s illustrious high school and college wrestling career and left the varsity athlete despondent as he watched the rest of the meet from the bench, clutching his injured shoulder.
Back at the Arlington Hilton after the worst meet of his life, Travis, a brawny, good-looking twenty-three-year-old with a buzz cut, sat outside the hotel talking to Navy assistant wrestling coach Joel Sharratt. Although the senior athlete and his mentor were close, this was the first time Sharratt had ever seen Travis, who insisted that he had “let everyone down,” overcome by emotion. Travis knew his wrestling career was over and worried aloud that he had disappointed his parents.
“That’s bullshit,” Sharratt said. “Your parents support you 100 percent.”
After a brief moment of silence, the assistant coach gave Travis a reason to perk up, telling the future military officer that though his senior wrestling season was over, it was now time for him to devote all his energy to becoming a Marine.
Travis understood what his coach was saying, but giving up wrestling was almost inconceivable. He loved the sport and wanted desperately to be the best at it.
He was still standing outside with Coach Sharratt when his parents got back from the match. After the coach had greeted Tom and Janet and excused himself to head upstairs, Travis hugged his mother.
“I’m sorry you guys had to come all the way down here to see that,” he said.
“Travis, you tried your best,” Janet replied.
Putting his hand on Travis’s healthy left shoulder, Tom, the Marine Corps colonel, gave his only son some encouragement, telling him that many great things were still ahead. Regardless of how many wrestling matches Travis won, what truly mattered was that he would soon graduate from Navy and become a leader of Marines.
The fourth day of 2004 may have felt like his lowest point at the academy, but the senior midshipman had barely made it that far to begin with. Just over four years earlier, as a first-semester plebe, Travis had done something he’d never done before in his life: quit.
Just before Thanksgiving 1999, Travis was clearly agitated as he sat across from his Naval Academy battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Corky Gardner, a career Marine with many years of leadership experience. The young midshipman was fed up with the early morning classes, drills, and strict rules about always staying on campus. He had only given it four months, but to a stubborn eighteen-year-old, plebe year felt like an eternity.
If Travis had been with his sister Ryan at their dad’s alma mater, Widener University, or almost any other institution of higher learning, he could have simply filled out a withdrawal form. But at the Naval Academy, where dozens of midshipmen succumb every semester to a rigorous mix of academics and military training, Travis had to complete a packet full of intentionally difficult, tedious paperwork explaining why he planned to leave Annapolis. Then he had to separately inform his squad leader, company commander, and company officer of his intention to resign, before he could even get inside the battalion commander’s office.
For Travis, the final meeting presented a dual challenge. Lieutenant Colonel Gardner wasn’t just his battalion commander; he was a close friend of Travis’s father and had begun serving with Tom almost a decade earlier. When Travis showed up for “plebe summer,” a grueling training session that results in many dropping out before the academic year even starts, Gardner was there to cut off Travis’s first lock of brown hair during the ceremonial head shaving that serves as each freshman’s “oh shit, high school really is over” moment.
As battalion commander, Gardner had been reluctantly accepting the resignations of plebes since summer. He wondered why Travis wanted to see him, but never imagined that this day could be one of Travis’s last as a midshipman. This young man wasn’t the quitting type.
Travis was disappointed about missing out on the freedom of college life. He would spend his weekends on academy grounds, which sometimes felt like a prison, and listen longingly to his sister’s stories about constant parties and road trips. “It must be nice to be out there having all that fun,” Travis once told Ryan, his only sibling and most trusted female confidante, during a phone call.
Chasing female midshipmen was frowned upon, and every time Travis talked to his high school buddies about their coed adventures, he was naturally envious. Of course, those same stories almost always involved alcohol, a substance that was nearly impossible for Travis and his fellow plebes to obtain.
One Friday night, a particularly desperate group, which included Travis, bet each other about how many double shots they could do of Virginia Gentleman whiskey, the only bottle of liquor they could get their hands on. In a notably futile attempt to prove his manhood and catch a buzz, Travis won the bet, but threw up violently the rest of the night and most of the next day.
Once Travis made up his mind about almost anything, there was little chance of his changing it. Given that Gardner was preparing to challenge his decision, Travis was an irresistible force about to meet an immovable object on the historic Annapolis campus.
“Sir, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’ve decided to leave the academy,” Travis said. “I know this might surprise you, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I think this is the best thing for my future.”
Gardner was shocked. He always tried to talk midshipmen out of resigning, even those he wasn’t sure were the right fit for the academy. In this case, however, he would do everything in his power to keep Travis from leaving. As he cleared off his desk, Gardner was convinced he was sitting across from a young man who was about to make a serious mistake.
“Travis, I appreciate you being up front about this,” he said. “But I have to ask why you think you’d be better off somewhere else.”
“It’s a bunch of things, sir . . . wrestling, schoolwork, missing my friends back home,” Travis said. “But I thought about this a lot, and this is what I’ve decided to do.”
“Have you talked about this with your parents?” Gardner inquired.
“But I thought you said you’d thought about this a lot?” the battalion commander asked.
“Well, I have, sir,” Travis said, growing frustrated as he realized his decision was being contested. “I’m going to talk to them as soon as I get home.”
After thumbing through Travis’s withdrawal packet, which included the midshipman’s excellent grades, Gardner looked directly at his friend’s son.
“Well, I’m sorry, Travis, but I can’t accept this,” he said. “While I understand you’re having a hard time, like many others do, I think you’re about to do something you’ll regret for a long, long time.”
“But sir . . . ,” Travis began.
“And either way, there’s no way I could let you do this before you speak to your parents,” Gardner continued. “I think you owe it to your dad, especially, to talk to him about a decision of this magnitude.”
“Sir, he will never agree . . . ,” Travis said as tears began to well up in his brown eyes.
“I want you to go home for the holiday, relax, talk to your folks, come back and we’ll chat again,” Gardner said. “Just get away from this place for a little while, enjoy yourself, and I think you might feel differently.”
“I’ve made up my mind and don’t need time to think about it,” Travis responded. “I was told all I have to do is talk to you and that’s it.”
“Have a good Thanksgiving, Travis,” Gardner said. “Please give my best to your mom and dad.”
Travis jumped out of his chair, snatched his resignation packet, and hurried out of the lieutenant colonel’s office. Although he had too much respect for Gardner to slam his door, he couldn’t help but mutter “this is ridiculous” under his breath when he was far enough down the hallway.
While most Americans were thinking about the “Y2K” computer scare and the coming dawn of a new millennium, Travis was enduring his most difficult Thanksgiving ever. Just as he had expected, his dad was angry when Travis told him he was leaving the academy.
“Look, this is your call and your decision,” Tom told his son, who he always believed could excel at the Naval Academy and beyond. “But I think you’re making a big mistake.”
Ever since running around his house singing the Marine Corps hymn with his sister, Ryan, when they were little kids, the academy had seemed like the most logical step to Travis. But once he actually got there, he was introduced to the daily routine: wake up at 5:30 a.m., get your room inspected, eat breakfast at 7:00 a.m., start class at 7:55, and then sit in lecture halls all day before a grueling 3:00 p.m. wrestling practice. After a full day of physical and academic challenges, Travis and other midshipmen would spend most of the evening studying and preparing for the next day’s classes.
It was an exhausting routine for any college student. Travis couldn’t imagine returning from vacation and starting the grind all over again.
The holiday was gloomy for Travis, who barely touched his Thanksgiving dinner. As sounds of laughter filled the living room, where his mom and dad, Ryan, and other relatives were socializing, Travis knew his time at the Naval Academy was over. A few days later, he returned to Lieutenant Colonel Gardner’s office with his completed resignation packet.
“I’m really sorry to see you go, Travis,” Gardner said. “I wish you the best, but I also want you to know that if you ever want to come back, I will put in a word for you.”
“I appreciate that, sir,” Travis replied. “But this place isn’t for me.”
Travis, who had made good grades at Navy, had no problem gaining admission to Drexel University in Philadelphia, where he contributed significantly as a freshman Division I-A lacrosse player while planning to join the wrestling team.
Travis didn’t hate Drexel. But after spending a semester away from Annapolis, his appreciation for what Navy stood for, as well as the bonds he had forged with several academy friends, made him regret his decision to leave. There was only one place for Travis Manion, and if he could get another chance, it was time to go back.
Neil Toohey came to the Naval Academy straight out of high school without any exposure to military life prior to the fall of 2000. After getting his head shaved during “I-Day,” induction day for incoming midshipmen during plebe summer, Toohey was rushing back to his room to finish unpacking his belongings before his room was to be inspected for the first time. He had already seen another plebe being berated for screwing up and didn’t want that to happen to him on his first day.
Toohey arrived in his room to find a muscular, brown-haired guy going through his clothes. At first he thought it was one of the upperclassmen doing an inspection, but this guy was wearing a plebe’s uniform. As Toohey was pondering the possibility that someone was going through his underwear, the young man quickly dispelled that fear by introducing himself.
“Hey, I’m Brendan Looney, your new roommate,” he said. “We’ve got to get all your clothes folded before the inspectors get here.”
Grabbing Toohey’s shirts and socks from his duffle bag, Brendan quickly folded them as he heard footsteps coming down the hall.
“You’ve got to fold ’em like this,” Brendan said. “Make the socks smile.”
“Oh . . . thanks, man,” Toohey said. “But just one thing. . . . You mixed up my shirts.”
“Shit, that’s my bad,” Brendan said. “I’m colorblind.”
After Toohey thanked him a second time, Brendan, an imposing figure even at age nineteen, responded with a nod and a grin. It was already clear to Toohey that his new roommate was looking out for him.
“Man, I just have no idea what I’m doing around here,” Toohey complained.
“Relax,” Brendan said. “You’re not supposed to. . . . It’s our first day.”
Though Brendan was also a plebe, he was more prepared for I-Day than most others after spending ten months attending the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, Rhode Island. With a grueling academic, physical, and military training regimen, NAPS had given Brendan the chance to play football against junior college and junior varsity opponents while preparing to join Navy’s Division I-A team.
About 15 percent of the incoming class came from NAPS, and each of those 177 students, including Brendan, had a head start. As Brendan demonstrated by helping Toohey pass inspection, the “NAPSters” were seen as big brothers by many plebes, who felt clueless and frightened while getting hollered at for making the smallest of mistakes. Although Brendan still had a lot to learn himself, he knew not making his bed in thirty seconds or forgetting to shine his belt buckle wouldn’t get him kicked out of the academy. His sheer physical presence gave him the appearance of a natural leader, but it was the calming smirk he often gave the other plebes that really demonstrated that quality.
Of the four plebes in Brendan’s room, three had gone to NAPS. After experiencing ten tough months together, the first signs of military-style brotherhood were evident in the NAPSters, who usually stuck together. Toohey gained inclusion by virtue of being their roommate.
As the first-year midshipmen adjusted to the academy’s grueling routine in the fall and spring of 2000, Navy’s class of 2004 was beginning to take shape. Unbeknownst to Brendan and the other plebes, however, a key member of their social circle was not yet with them.
When Travis told his father he wanted to reapply to the Naval Academy after one semester at Drexel, Tom, still unhappy over his son’s decision to drop out in the first place, was skeptical.
“That’s your decision,” he said. “If you want to go back, you’re going to have to do it on your own.”
“I will,” Travis said.
A few days later, Lieutenant Colonel Gardner was sitting in his Annapolis office when a surprise visitor walked in.
“Travis?” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”
After asking how his good friends Tom and Janet were doing, Gardner welcomed the former midshipman into his office and asked him to have a seat. Travis explained that while he had given Drexel a try, it had only taken him a few months to realize that Gardner had been right. The Naval Academy was indeed where he belonged.
Gardner was thrilled by Travis’s epiphany, but also cautious in his response. He agreed that Navy was the right place for Tom and Janet’s son, but he stressed that getting into the academy a second time was very rare. Gardner told Travis that while he would do everything possible to help, it would be a challenge to convince the Naval Academy that he deserved a second chance.
Though he understood that the odds of getting back into Navy were probably against him, Travis was undeterred. For the next five months he worked exhaustively to win the hearts and minds of a skeptical Naval Academy admissions board.
Because Travis had immediately enrolled at Drexel and participated in a varsity sport during his lone semester on the Philadelphia campus, his readmission request was taken seriously. His academic record was strong, before and after leaving Navy. But what made his application stand out was a cover letter from Gardner, who wrote that he had “absolutely no doubt” that Travis would be a fine midshipman and even better military officer.
For the class of 2004, 10,296 young men and women applied to the US Naval Academy, of which only 1,224 were admitted. Travis, a second semester addition, was one of them.
Tom and Janet were watching an ABC News interview with Texas governor George W. Bush, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, when Travis walked into their Doylestown living room holding a large envelope from the Naval Academy.
“I got back in,” Travis said.
“I knew it!” Janet said before jumping up to hug her son. “I knew it.”
Tom was surprised and pleased, as he fully appreciated the size of the mountain his son had just climbed. After a brief pause, he shook his son’s hand.
“You have a second chance,” he said. “I’m proud of you, but don’t forget how fortunate you are to be getting this opportunity.”
Travis, who returned to Navy in the spring of 2001 as a second semester plebe, barely knew anyone on his floor, including his three roommates, who had just been through their first semester. Though he was thrilled to be back at the academy, Travis felt like a ballplayer traded in the middle of the season. There was still a pitcher’s mound and ninety feet between each base, but he was surrounded by a different group of teammates, including upperclassmen who frequently reminded him how much they detested quitters. Travis was ready for the criticism, and for the most part, he took it in stride.
The Naval Academy dorms looked more like classroom hallways than living quarters. The shiny floors, often cleaned by midshipmen who had done something to piss off a company officer or upperclassman, stretched the length of several football fields, with the open doors of aspiring sailors and Marines lining the hallways. No matter what they were doing, underclassmen always had to be ready for surprise inspections. Brendan and Travis, who carried the burden of being Division I athletes along with their academic and drilling responsibilities, rarely if ever complained.
Just after the start of the fall 2001 semester, Travis and Brendan met up for an early morning run. The wrestler and football player both had practice later that afternoon, but as two varsity athletes who wanted to be the best, they were determined to work harder than everybody else.
After talking about the start of the NFL season, their mid-jog conversation shifted to their backgrounds. They had a lot in common, including their love of sports and their country. Both midshipmen had been raised Catholic in tight-knit families, although Brendan’s was a little larger.
“I have two brothers and three sisters,” Brendan said as they jogged past Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium and into a nearby Annapolis neighborhood.
The two younger Looney brothers, Steve and Billy, were still at DeMatha, the high school attended by Brendan and their father, Kevin. After graduation, Steve and Billy would join Brendan at the Naval Academy.
Brendan’s sisters, Bridget, Erin, and Kellie, grew up wanting to hang out in “the cool room.” That was their nickname for Brendan’s room, where all of his younger siblings wanted to hang out. Like Steve and Billy, the Looney sisters looked up to Brendan and strove to emulate him. Not only did Brendan set an example as the ideal big brother; he was also a hardworking, stellar athlete, and all his talented younger siblings would eventually follow in his footsteps.
“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.