A Soldier's Story: First of Three Deployments Started on Sept. 11, 2001

This week, Woburn Patch remembers the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 with a series of stories.

Phil McGovern found out about what was happening in Manhattan, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, from overseas.

That Sept. 11 marked the first full day, he told Woburn Patch, of his deployment to Bosnia. His flight had stopped in Ireland. His late father’s parents were from Ireland. So he thought he’d call his dad.  He didn’t expect “anything out of the ordinary.” Certainly not a stateside terrorist plot of Osama bin Laden.

In messages from people in the commonwealth and New York from Sept. 11, 2001 to him, people commented, McGovern said, about the eerie quiet here, except for occasional roar of fighter jets.

“It was shocking to everybody to have that kind of attack,” McGovern said Monday in a phone conversation. Referring to the multipronged assaults aimed at three sites, including the nation’s capital, McGovern said the passengers who diverted the third plane into a field in Pennsylvania were proud of the US Congress, not specific individuals, but the institution.

Here’s what’s happened to McGovern since Sept. 11, 2001.

After three tours of duty in 10 years, now-US Army Major McGovern returned to the states on May 1, the day, he said, that “Osama got his just desserts.” He was killed.

McGovern served tours of duty in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He had enlisted in the Army National Guard in 1991, after he finished law school. When he was 17 or 18, he said he felt his education should take priority.

“People ought to do some form of service,” McGovern said Monday.

Bosnia was “relatively tense,” McGovern said, when he was there, serving on a peacekeeping mission to help after the civil war there. Among the mission’s duties:  arms inspection and improving governance.  He was deployed for seven months.

Stateside, he worked between 1996 to 2003 as an assistant state attorney general.  The work was “interesting,” he said. One of the subjects:  the sex abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church.  He also worked as a JAG officer in the National Guard.

McGovern deployed in 2007 to Iraq. His job:  to help get troops “resourced” in Baghdad, from the main American headquarters base. Then he served a member of the release board at the primary detention facility in central Iraq. McGovern had written his senior thesis at Merrimack College, he noted, on Abraham Lincoln’s use of military detention. 

Major McGovern returned stateside in March, 2008.  He had been promoted to major in January, 2008.

Then came Afghanistan. McGovern was deployed there in late 2009, as part of a troop surge. Even before he went to Iraq, McGovern said he’d had a feeling that action “was going to ramp up” in Afghanistan. He made “a career decision” to move from National Guard to active duty. Before deploying abroad, he worked at Ft. Drum, NY, on long-term planning for that facility. McGovern’s superiors wanted a planner in Afghanistan, in Kabul, as soon as possible, he recounted.

“It came down to me.”

He got to Kabul in December, 2009, after waiting at a stopover on Christmas Eve for three days for his lost luggage.

Much more seriously, five months later, on May 18, 2010 while traveling across Kabul in an SUV convoy, the vehicles were struck by a car bomb. Six soldiers were killed.

“I, fortunately, was only slightly wounded,” he said, with a cut on his nose, a bump on his head. Eighteen Afghans were also “engulfed” by the explosion, he said; 40 more were wounded.

He received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

“The drumbeat of (another) tragedy” beat in his heart.  A governor in southern Afghanistan who McGovern had gotten to know was assassinated. 

McGovern faced yet another tragedy around this past Christmas, along with many local residents and police officers. Home on leave, he said he stopped in to the wake of Police Officer John “Jack” Maguire. McGovern’s mother and brothers reside here.

This summer, McGovern changed jobs. He started work on Aug. 15 in Washington, D.C., as a political-military planner for the State Department.

It was “kind of gratifying,” Major McGovern concluded, that Osama bin Ladin "got his just desserts.” McGovern is glad, he said, to be “part of an effort showing success.”

A Younger Soldier’s Story

Ross Borelli was in fifth grade on Sept. 11, 2001. He doesn’t remember much about that day, except that when he got home from school his mother told him what had happened.  She remembers her boss telling his employees to go home and be with their families.

When her son was a junior at Woburn Memorial High School, Borelli signed up to join the Army.  He really couldn’t explain why when he talked to Woburn Patch last month, except that he’d always wanted to join. Maybe from the movies, he suggested. “It was a job.”

Army Specialist Borelli served one year in Afghanistan. Now he’s in Colorado, in his third year of service. He’s helping train “a bunch of new guys” for deployment. When he completes his service, he said he plans to work in private security.

When he first wanted to enlist, Borelli said his parents were not happy.

After his first four months at Ft. Knox, he said, they changed their minds.

His mother told Woburn Patch she’s proud of her son’s service.