"I remember being in an Irish pub ... watching 911 on TV through this haze of, you know, X number of beers that we had at that point," he says. "It was it was this insane trying to recall 3,000 Marines from across Darwin to leave the next morning at 0, 7" The troops were a mix of excited, anxious, afraid, but not willing to admit it,. Lots of, lots of speculation. And then as we started getting closer and closer... It was surreal I mean, they were super disorganized."