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John Byrnes was swimming in a pool beneath Hunter College in Manhattan on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when he stepped outside for coffee and heard sirens blaring down Lexington Avenue.
He learned that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Minutes later, he saw the North Tower collapse on a campus television and immediately headed toward his National Guard armory.
Byrnes spent the next two weeks helping secure Ground Zero. And spent the following years in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Each of the five veterans who spoke with Fox News Digital ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11 remembers where they were when they learned the nation had been attacked — and how Sept. 11 changed the trajectory of their life and service.
Some were already in uniform. Others, including a successful businessman and a teenager who watched the attacks unfold on television at his school, felt compelled to enlist.
Looking back 25 years later, Byrnes draws a sharp distinction between the wars, including the decision to respond to the terrorist attacks and the choices that followed to continue the war on terror.
“The decision to go to Afghanistan, that was absolutely necessary,” Byrnes, who is now a strategic director at Concerned Veterans for America, told Fox News Digital. “The decision to go to Iraq, which was not necessary.”
“The decision to stay in Afghanistan for so long was unfortunate, but it all came down to that day.”
“The decisions that didn’t seem wrong at the time were just pebble after pebble into an avalanche,” he said.
Veterans who spoke to Fox News Digital all went to war believing they were protecting Americans by keeping the fight “over there.” Twenty-five years later, they remain proud that they answered that call. Their harder questions are about what came afterward: how the mission expanded, what two decades of war accomplished and whether the country ultimately made good on the sacrifices it asked of them — and the people of Afghanistan.
Chris Hoff was working for the state Department of Corrections while studying to become a special-education teacher in his post-military service life. For him, the decision to return to service came as he watched the towers fall from the New Jersey shoreline.
Michael Matthews was already serving in the Army when the attacks happened that fateful day in 2001. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 with one of the first divisions to cross the border from Kuwait. His team was later hit by an IED. (Michael Matthews)
“When September 11th happened, I knew right then and there that I was going back in the military,” Hoff told Fox News Digital.
He returned to the reserves and deployed to Afghanistan twice. During his second deployment, he suffered multiple concussions and was ultimately forced to end his military career.
“For 20 years, all I knew was prison and war,” Hoff said. “And I was good at both of them.”
When he could no longer continue in either career, Hoff said he felt as though he had failed. But he credits connecting with the Wounded Warrior Project and beginning equine therapy for ultimately saving his life.
Hoff now shares his story in hopes other veterans will seek help sooner.
“If I can help just one soldier… get help,” he said, “it’s okay to get help. It truly is. I’m glad I did.”
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
John Byrnes was swimming in a pool beneath Hunter College in Manhattan on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when he stepped outside for coffee and heard sirens blaring down Lexington Avenue. He learned that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Minutes later, he saw the North Tower collapse on a campus television and immediately headed toward his National Guard armory. (John Byrnes)
Rep. Troy Downing, R-Mont., now serving his first term in Congress, was moose hunting in remote Alaska when he first learned that the World Trade Center had been attacked.
He had been dropped in the bush with only an aviation radio, and no planes had flown overhead for days. When a pilot finally reached the hunting party, Downing learned that both towers had fallen.
“This country has been good to me,” Downing recalled thinking at the time when learning about the attack on U.S. soil. “What have I ever done to deserve it? We’re being attacked right now. Everything that this country stands for is being attacked. And I’ve never done anything to deserve this.”
Downing, the son of a single teenage mom, grew up poor. He went on to teach at New York University and help build a technology startup that became Yahoo.
He was 34, with no prior military service, when he returned home and walked into a recruiter’s office the next day. Downing joined the Air National Guard and served in combat search and rescue, including during two deployments to Afghanistan.
The way the war ended did not change Downing’s view of the decision to serve. But it did shape how he viewed what the country ultimately did with that service.
Downing called the withdrawal under former President Joe Biden “a blemish” that “squandered everything that we gained there.” He urged veterans not to conclude that their own sacrifices had been in vain.
“I just want to make sure that my brothers and sisters in arms, the folks that have served this mission, understand that they served this country and they served honorably,” Downing told Fox News Digital. “And not think just because of that one misstep that it was in vain because you stepped up to the dotted line when your country asked you to.”
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Brandon Newberry has wrestled directly with that question.
Just 16 years old when he walked out of gym class and saw news coverage of the World Trade Center falling on a TV in his Spanish classroom, Newberry said: “I just felt lost and hopeless.”
“I wanted to do something,” he went on. “I wanted to help. I knew there were people suffering, people dying and it hurt me really bad.”
Newberry joined the Marine Corps in 2006 because he believed the branch would put him closest to the fight. He deployed to Iraq in 2007 and later served two tours in Afghanistan.
“My whole philosophy behind it was take the fight to them,” Newberry told Fox News Digital. “As long as I kept it in their backyard, they couldn’t put it in our backyard.”
“For 20 years, all I knew was prison and war,” Hoff said. “And I was good at both of them.” (Chris Hoff)
Newberry said he spent roughly seven years in Afghanistan, including time as a government contractor after leaving the Marines. The years there gave him a close view of the Afghan people and the changes he believed had taken place while U.S. forces were in the country.
“At the time, women were allowed to go to school. We had women doctors,” he said. “They didn’t have that fear of the unknown, as long as we were there trying to help them out.”
Newberry said the U.S. “fumbled the ball” and could have done more to establish a lasting government and security force before leaving.
“It could have definitely been done better,” he said.
He also felt the conclusion of the two-decade war was a tragedy. “The withdrawal hurt us military guys. I lost a lot of good friends, and it hurts.”
The ending, Newberry said, raised a more personal question about the years he had spent there: “I almost feel like everything that I did was almost for nothing because, again, I feel like at this point I failed the Afghan people.”
Michael Matthews was already serving in the Army when the attacks happened that fateful day in 2001. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 with one of the first divisions to cross the border from Kuwait. His team was later hit by an IED.
Matthews suffered injuries to his face, neck, head, back, arms and legs, spent three and a half weeks in a coma and remained hospitalized for nearly nine months.
He had hoped to make a career of military service, but the injuries forced him onto a different path.
“It just ultimately changed the trajectory of what my goal was, which was to, of course, do this amazing life in the military and make a huge career out of it,” Matthews told Fox News Digital.
Instead, Matthews said the experience also gave him a new purpose: “Helping veterans and helping the community.”
Michael Matthews was already serving in the Army when the attacks happened that fateful day in 2001. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 with one of the first divisions to cross the border from Kuwait. His team was later hit by an IED. (Michael Matthews)
For the men who served, questions about the wars do not necessarily translate into regret over their own decision to fight.
Byrnes said one of the central lessons of the post-9/11 wars is that military and political leaders must look beyond the immediate objective — and be willing to acknowledge when a strategy is not working.
“You can never admit failure,” Byrnes said. “You always want to, no matter how bad things were, set the positive note. You tell the boss you’re winning until somebody else comes to take your place so you can get promoted without saying that you’re not winning.”
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But 25 years after the attacks, the veterans’ reflections resist a simple judgment on the wars that followed.
They describe pride in having served despite the physical and psychological wounds, expressed frustration over the decisions that prolonged or expanded the wars, and issued sharply different conclusions about what the United States ultimately accomplished in its 20-year endeavor in the Middle East.
Matthews put that tension simply.
“We’re proud of what we did,” he said. “Even though we may not have fully understood what we were doing or why we were doing it.”