--- title: Mason Wells Survived Boston and Brussels Terror Attacks description: The Navy midshipman and author of Left Standing writes about surviving the Brussels airport attack and Boston marathon bombing canonical: https://time.com/5013393/boston-brussels-terror-survivor/ author: Mason Wells article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-11-21T15:45:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:53:59.577Z article:section: Ideas og:title: I Survived 2 Terrorist Attacks on 2 Continents. They Changed Who I Am. og:description: Author Mason Wells describes surviving the Brussels and Boston terror attacks og:url: https://time.com/5013393/boston-brussels-terror-survivor/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b62db12750e5715/6988e69a86f68e59816e74ed/screen-shot-2017-11-21-at-10-34-02-am.png?branch=production&width=826&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 826 og:image:height: 465 og:image:alt: Screen Shot 2017-11-21 at 10.34.02 AM og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: I Survived 2 Terrorist Attacks on 2 Continents. They Changed Who I Am. twitter:description: Author Mason Wells describes surviving the Brussels and Boston terror attacks twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b62db12750e5715/6988e69a86f68e59816e74ed/screen-shot-2017-11-21-at-10-34-02-am.png?branch=production&width=826&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # I Survived 2 Terrorist Attacks on 2 Continents. They Changed Who I Am > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=2c2b6e3c-1260-44f7-99ee-92642c41bc21&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Survivors of Terrorist Attacks on How They Moved Forward [Watch (HLS stream): Survivors of Terrorist Attacks on How They Moved Forward](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Z0gQrqpv.m3u8) (7:17)  _Published 2016-09-09. Four terrorist attack survivors recounted the horrors of such acts of violence in a series of emotional interviews. The survivors who spoke to TIME all agreed on the need to march on in the face of fear._ by [Mason Wells](https://time.com/author/mason-wells/) ## Mason Wells Nov 21, 2017 3:45 PM UTC  Author and survivor Mason Wells by [Mason Wells](https://time.com/author/mason-wells/) ## Mason Wells Nov 21, 2017 3:45 PM UTC The last thing I expected when I entered the [Brussels Airport](http://time.com/4274589/belgium-releases-brussels-bombing-suspect/) on March 22, 2016, was to be peppered with deadly shrapnel. When the first suicide bomb detonated, I stood in absolute shock, as my world suddenly exploded with pain, fear and uncertainty; the force of the blast catapulted me away from my otherwise blissful reality into an uncertain realm in which death was an imminent threat. As the fire and flames in front of me dissipated and the smoke began to clear, I focused all of my energy on running out of the airport, despite facing dire injuries, including third-degree burns, numerous lacerations, a cracked heel bone and a ruptured Achilles tendon. The horrific scenario was unfortunately all too familiar to me, as the Brussels Airport attack wasn’t my first brush with terror. I also survived the[ Boston marathon bombing](http://time.com/4972135/jeff-bauman-jake-gyllenhaal-stronger/) in 2013. It’s still pretty shocking to consider that I was a victim of two separate attacks. And in between those two attacks, I was living in Calais, France, when [Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos](http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/22/europe/france-train-shooting-heroes/index.html) subdued an alleged terrorist carrying an assault rifle on a Thalys train. The incident hit close to home, as we used those high-speed trains weekly to travel from one city to another. By the time I turned 19, I had witnessed the Boston marathon bombing, had been injured in the Brussels airport bombing, and had seen two cities that I frequented, Brussels and Paris, hit by [multiple ISIS attacks](http://time.com/4395069/isis-attacks-middle-eastern-leaders/). These experiences reshaped me. I will carry horrific memories from Brussels and Boston with me for the rest of my life. The smells, the emotions, the casualties — they aren’t the kinds of things that you can just force yourself to forget. I still find myself wrestling with the effects. A torrent of questions assaulted my soul in the wake of the attack: Why did this happen to me? Why would someone slaughter civilians so unforgivingly? What was my future going to become? Would I ever be who I once was? What if this happened again? How am I going to get past this? While I was recovering from the Brussels attack, I would wake up on my hospital bed in the middle of the night to gunshots, only to find that they were a figment of my memory. Each time this happened I still found myself checking where I had been shot in my dream — a confirmation that it was just an illusion from my troubled mind. Over the course of my two-month-long stay in the hospital, this cycle of lucid dreams repeated itself. Several months after my release I began studying engineering at the University of Utah and the stress of college coursework redirected a lot of my energy. Over time, the nightmares began to fade. But the memories lingered, and they began to exhibit themselves in troublesome ways. When I was driving out on the road I began to imagine all of the ways in which I could die in a car wreck. Whenever I pulled up to an intersection, my mind ran through every possible thing that could go wrong as I crossed. When I was at the mall with my brother or on a date, my mind would picture what would happen if suddenly somebody was there with a gun or a knife. I was constantly running scenarios through my head — how I would react, what I would do, where I would go. The memories of what happened to me were draining and my mind was often moving at a mile a minute. It was during these moments that I came to terms with three fundamental truths: Having strength is a choice, being happy is a choice and becoming who we want to become is a choice. There were often so many reasons to become angry and embrace hatred. After all, someone had tried to kill me. But every day I told myself that I would overcome it all. That meant working hard to do so. During my second semester of college, I found myself working in Washington, D.C., in my congressman’s office. I took the metro to and from work every day, another member of one of the country’s busiest morning commutes. Going from one station to another, packed in tight like sardines, trying to hold breakfast and read the newspaper at the same time—while I had overcome a lot of my fears and trauma in the previous months, I was still uncomfortable in areas with large groups of people. The frequent advertisements on D.C. metro platforms reminding passengers to look out for unidentified bags didn’t ease my mind either. Each time I boarded a metro car I would move towards one end of the car to position myself as close as possible to the door — in my head I was imagining all of the horrible things that would happen if suddenly a bomb went off. I did my best to fend off those kinds of thoughts, to push them away and fill my mind with something else. Sometimes I was successful, other times I was not. Through it all, though, I kept reminding myself that I could and would overcome the trauma those terrorists inflicted. It has been a long but fruitful process. It’s been 18 months since that fatal day in the airport, and I still occasionally grapple with my scars. But I have also found peace and purpose. During the hardest parts of my recovery I always reminded myself that my future is what I make it, and that I had a choice as to whether I would be a victim or a survivor. Today, as I sit writing this piece in the school of my dreams, the [United States Naval Academy](http://time.com/4337212/obama-commencement-speech-transcript-us-naval-academy/), I can assure you that I chose to be a survivor. It was a tangible choice that I made. It was a choice to embrace optimism, confront my problems and trust in a higher power. No matter what we go through, we always have a choice as to how we will respond. Our lives are what we choose to make of them, and by choosing to act we can take our lives further than we ever imagined. _Mason Wells is now a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy, where he is studying engineering and is the author of_ [Left Standing](https://www.amazon.com/Left-Standing-Miraculous-Survived-Brussels/dp/1462121691/?tag=timecom-20). ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ MUSIC ] You have to convey the truth, but there's always a viewpoint. So is the story you are telling, terror, terror, terror, it's awful, it's awful everybody's afraid, everybody run for your lives. Or is the message, how can we as a people come together to make our world safer? [ MUSIC ] This story There's a lot pieces to it. As of yet unconfirmed that a plane has hit the World Trade Center. And you can see that [ CROSSTALK ] It's got tons of smoke billowing out of the south tower. Unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers. Around 8: 40 and I ended up going down into the lobby. I know as soon as I got out of the elevator and started towards the door on the west side of the north tower when you heard a thud. I walked outside through the revolving door and I looked up above me and I see smoke billowing out at the top. The North tower. I turned around and thought I had no place to go. I couldn't outrun the debris that was coming down at me so I felt that the safest place for me to go would be to go back into the building, into the lobby. But I got as far as in the revolving door where all the oxygen, the temperature went up inside the door to like, an oven. Next thing I know I was lying out- In the middle of the driveway that leads up to that overpass, and I had been blown out of the building. [ SOUND ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Hundreds dead, the number could rise. Among the dead, six- [ CROSSTALK ] The Taj Mahal Hotel has played a big role in my life since I was a little girl. My parents got married at the Taj, I got married at the Taj and it has a you know, great personal significance to me. What we really heard was a very loud crash, I thought I tree had fallen and you could see the host just kind of, you know... Looking through the window. A minute later she said that nobody move, somebody's dead in the corridor. I've never heard a gun being fired and we then realized they were gunshots. Many, many gunshots. The staff knew all the back passageways and the terrorists didn't and they used that tactical advantage. To save us, to save their guests rather than to save themselves. Hundreds of us should have died, I mean we shouldn't be here. A peace rally has turned deadly in the Turkish capital Ankara after [ INAUDIBLE ]. This dangerously divided country is even more divided now. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ NOISE ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] [ MUSIC ] Post traumatic stress is very strange. It makes a situation be right below the surface. [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] The sounds of the second plane striking the building and the noise it made when it struck the building, it must have been a real whining High pitched sound that right to this day goes through me like a knife. [ MUSIC ] It's very traumatic, when somebody has died, and you have lived. And that survivor's guilt is real, and it's universal. It's something to process, but then it's something that will either make you, or break you. [ MUSIC ] It remains to me, as amazing of a place as it Always was. I really felt protected there. I felt that people saved me there. And not only the people having [ UNKNOWN ] to say, but the spirit of that place, those walls. It saved me, it saved my husband, it saved so many of us. [ FOREIGN ] [ foreign 00: 06 ] I remember the first time I came into the city, it was very difficult for me, I mean I, walking down the narrow streets, around Times Square and stuff like that and I spent most of my time looking up between the buildings. [ foreign ] [ FOREIGN ] [ MUSIC ] In every place in the world we've had all these attacks lately. And they've happened under the name of Islam or jihad or whatever it is. But you know what? Terrorists are not people with religion. Terrorism is too powerful of a It to ever go away. The challenge for people is to understand that fear of that tactic and not allow themselves to be swayed. What are ways to combat these things that are happening? [ FOREIGN ] [ FOREIGN ] What I have felt from my own personal experience with that, being a New Yorker and having lived through 9 / 11, is Said under extraordinary times ordinary people become extraordinary. [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5013393/boston-brussels-terror-survivor/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5013393/boston-brussels-terror-survivor/"},"headline":"I Survived 2 Terrorist Attacks on 2 Continents. 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