i just had this discussion with my soldiers this morning...i had them take turns telling where they were so that they appreciate what we are fighting for. people love to forget what happened that day.
i was active duty, with my unit for just shy of a month. i got to the wash rack where i was working at the time (the wash rack is a duty that every unit on fort sill rotates to, where you use high powered cannons to wash the tracked and wheeled vehicles coming back from the field) and everyone was up in arms about it. i ran home and got my small 13" tv and brought it back to the wash rack where we watched the news for about two hours. our brigade had a formation (damn near 1200+ soldiers)...we were told we have two hours to get everything military we own and get our asses back. we drew our weapons and ammunition, and locked down fort sill. since we had the wash rack and other "red cycle" details similar in nature, all of those details were shut down and our battalion did all of the quick reactionary force and gate guard duties for ten days. we didnt see our families or take showers, and we were ready within 15 minutes to fly out of the army airfield to anywhere as infantryman, or 48 hours with all of our equipment. we were on the scene to any incident on fort sill within 3-5 minutes with all rifles, .50 machine guns, mk19 automatic grenade launchers, and other weapons and equipment.
all in all, for a brand new soldier, it was pretty unerving to realize what i had gotten into by joining the army, but at the same time exhilirating. i volunteered with every unit on post to try to get depolyed, but no one from fort sill deployed until OIF.