On September 11, 2016, the fifteenth anniversary of the attacks, The War Horse published an essay by Michael Penney in its Reflections section. It was titled “Ignore The Awful Times, And Concentrate On The Good Ones.” The War Horse is a nonprofit newsroom that covers the military and veterans. This is the only piece of his found on its author page.
What the essay covers
The essay is built as a calendar. Michael goes year by year and tells where he was on each September 11.
- 2001: Fifteen years old, buying snacks at the school store when classmates ran in about the news. He went on to math class, where a television was wheeled in and the class watched the second plane hit live. He writes that he decided then to go after the people responsible.
- 2005: Deployed to Ramadi with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, repairing a damaged Humvee and trading a strange local story about Hurricane Point.
- 2006: A moment of silence during mountain warfare training at Bridgeport, California.
- 2007: Back in Ramadi, “sleeping in the same hooch,” in a city that had gone quiet.
- 2008–2010: Hard years at home after his first marriage ended, which he writes about plainly. Then a 2010 anniversary in the field with police advisor teams.
- 2011: Kajaki, Afghanistan, where his Afghan police counterpart, Abdul Hadi, apologized to him for the war.
He closes with what the date still means to him. He sets aside time every year to mourn the 2,996 people killed that day.
What a terrible thing to ever forget. So I take the time to mourn it, because I still can’t believe it.
Michael Penney, The War Horse, September 2016
He also describes leaving the Corps after eight years and three combat tours. He threw a mismatched pair of combat boots, marked with his deployment dates, onto the power lines outside the gate at Camp Pendleton. He writes that he planned to take a second pair to Ground Zero.
Why it mattered then
By 2016 a generation of Marines who were in school on 9/11 had fought the wars that followed it and come home. Most anniversary coverage looked at the day itself. This essay looked at the fifteen years after it through one Marine, from a math class to Ramadi to Helmand Province. It did not skip the rough stretches in between.
The title carries the lesson: remember the losses, and choose to put your attention on the good.
Looking back
The essay is some of his most personal published writing. It sits beside his TEDxRaleigh talk from that March, which also dealt with getting through devastating moments with your values intact.
This post is part of the From the Archive series, which collects Michael’s past media appearances in one place. See the full media archive.
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