CAPITAL REGION — People throughout the United States will gather today to remember those who were killed in the terrorist attacks seven years ago, and so too will soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but under markedly different circumstances.

It’s been seven years since the World Trade Center was felled by two of four airliners used as weapons that day.

But for Schoharie resident Michael Hartzel, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army National Guard, the Sept. 11, 2001, deaths of citizens, firefighters, police and others remain a vivid memory.

“I try never to forget. Our mission here is for the 3,000 people who lost their lives,” Hartzel said Wednesday via satellite phone from a forward operating base in Afghanistan.

Hartzel, 42, is near Kabul and expects to spend the rest of the year there. He and others with him arrived there in March, joining roughly 30,000 members of the U.S. military who will commemorate Sept. 11 with a ceremony and by flying American flags above their temporary homes.

The 23-year career soldier recalls being at the Stratton VA Medical Center in Albany seven years ago today.

Hartzel was demonstrating equipment used by the 2nd Civil Support Team for Weapons of Mass Destruction that was stationed at Stratton Air National Guard Base in Glenville.

Hartzel got a call from his commander not long after the first airliner crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

“He said, ‘You might want to bring the guys back.’ Shortly after we got back to Scotia, we got a call to deploy to New York City. We were gone within a half an hour,” Hartzel said.

He joined a convoy of civilian vehicles that headed downstate to meet with a police escort near Newburgh.

At the time, Hartzel was assigned to a special unit created to respond to attacks that could involve chemical, biological or radiological agents — and it was not immediately clear what might be found at the site that came to be known as ground zero.

Hartzel recalled a surge of adrenalin as he learned both buildings had crashed to the ground as he was en route to New York. Another plane had struck the Pentagon; the fourth crashed in a meadow in western Pennsylvania.

“We didn’t know a whole lot,” Hartzel said.

The team began a reconnaissance effort to determine whether weapons of mass destruction were used in the attack and ultimately ruled out an initial belief that a radiological isotope had been aboard one of the planes, he said.

Hartzel and his team spent the next eight months in the city, monitoring the site and its surroundings alongside the New York Police Department.

Hartzel said he doesn’t dwell on thoughts of the bodies, steel, glass and ash that surrounded ground zero, but the event itself is a source of motivation today.

“I’m proud to be an American, and it bothers me every day that someone hit our country,” Hartzel said.

One thought that pervades his memories of that day is working alongside members of the New York Fire and Police departments, who were grief-stricken over the deaths of their friends.

“They lost a lot of brothers,” Hartzel said.

Soon after the attacks, the U.S. military launched an attack on Afghanistan, an impoverished nation believed to have harbored those who plotted the attacks.

The ruling Taliban government was uprooted, and today Hartzel is part of a group working to help train Afghanistan’s army and police forces, a mission that takes on some urgency as the Taliban regains strength and mounts more effective attacks.

Hartzel serves as a mentor for members of the Afghanistan National Army at a site used to train recruits.

He is attached to the Army National Guard’s 27th Brigade Combat Team, which is commanding Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix VII with a mission to train, mentor and support the Afghan army and Afghan national police.

As part of the job, Hartzel said he assists Afghan military officials in their training exercises.

He described the work as giving advice through an interpreter.

“Usually we try to let the Afghan drill sergeants do the training; we tell them how they can do things better, how they can do things different and try to let them be the lead on it,” said Hartzel, who mentors a lieutenant colonel there.

The task force includes soldiers from throughout New York.

They represent the largest single federal deployment of New York Army National Guard personnel since 2003, with roughly 6,000 members sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, according to the National Guard.

The people he meets there are kind and thankful, Hartzel said, especially those who are the focus of the frequent humanitarian assistance, or “HA,” missions.

“A lot of them don’t have water and electricity here. We do a lot of HA missions, bringing clothing, hygiene [products] and blankets; they’re very receptive to that,” Hartzel said.

On the forward operating base near Kabul, Hartzel is living in a “connex box,” or shipping container that’s cut in half. He said he eats regular meals but the environment there is much different from the upstate New York valley he calls home.

It’s a “very dry, desertlike environment,” Hartzel said, with temperatures in the 80s by day and the 50s at night.

In addition to his wife and 2-year-old child, Hartzel said, he’s missing the “smell of cut grass and fresh air” he left in the Schoharie Valley.

“We’re about 6,000 feet here and the air’s not the best. It’s really dusty,” Hartzel said.

In Afghanistan, Hartzel said he and others next to him — including soldiers from Cobleskill and Latham — are as safe as they can be, considering the situation.

“There’s always the threat of an attack, and any time you run a convoy down the road there’s always a threat of attack. But being in the military, you try not to think about those things, you train for it,” he said.

As people in the United States gather for solemn events, many soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will hold ceremonies of their own and recall the tragic events that sparked the global war on terror and brought them closer to death themselves.

According to the Department of Defense, 4,158 U.S. soldiers have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and 583 have died in and around Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

“It’s a very important thing to us. We will have a ceremony tomorrow afternoon, and a lot of the guys, they’ll fly flags over the FOB,” Hartzel said.

The flags will be sent back home to VFW posts and to family members with certifications saying they flew over the base in Afghanistan on Sept. 11.

Meanwhile, several events will take place in the Capital Region today to commemorate Sept. 11, 2001:

* “Never Forget” will be the second commemoration of 9/11 at the small rock garden that surrounds two beams that were once part of the World Trade Center. It starts at 6 p.m. in front of the Water’s Edge Lighthouse Restaurant, 2 Freemans Bridge Road, Glenville.

* In honor of the spirit of service shown by those who lost their lives in the attacks, firefighters, police officers, emergency medical services members and military personnel are invited to a free barbecue from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hannaford Supermarket at 3333 Consaul Road, Niskayuna.

* In Albany, the annual September 11th Remembrance Ceremony will pay tribute to those who died in the attacks. It will take place in East Capitol Park starting at 11 a.m. In the event of rain, the ceremony will be moved to the South Concourse of Empire State Plaza. The ceremony will include remarks by Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings, Albany County Executive Michael Breslin and state Office of General Services Commissioner John Egan as well as a performance by Voices of the Music Choir Carillon.