“I saw the towers fall from my office building. That’s what made me want to join the United States Army. I couldn’t believe it was happening in our back yard, actually our front yard. I was outraged. I wanted to do something." Alexander Marmer signed up for the United States National Reserves on October 10, 2001, less than a month after witnessed the September 11th attacks in New York City. Marmer was born in eastern Ukraine in Donetsk. He served in the compulsory Soviet military just before Ukrainian independence in 1991. Months after independence he left to Israel and eventually the United States. “We also had a lot of death in the family. My cousin died in Israel in one of the suicide bombings in ’96. He was 16 and on a bus to visit his sister and a suicide bomber blew up the bus.” Marmer spent the last three years in the Warrior Transition Unit at Fort Drum waiting for the appropriate medical designation to exit the Army. Here he is on the second to last day of his stay at Fort Drum. More coming at @ncpr and ncpr.org/homefront #homefrontfortdrum #FindingAmerica #fortdrum #ftdrum #ftdrumny #nny #humansofthearmy #army #veterans #foreignveterans #ukraine #soviet #donetsk #september11 (at Fort Drum Warrior Transition Unit)
