I’ve been living long enough to develop an appreciation for how life manages to work itself into circles. Time after time, while effecting a forward trajectory replete with new experiences, I still find that I manage to loop back to the older ones residing at my brain’s perimeter.

Sixteen years ago I was on sea duty, stationed aboard a smaller combatant and enjoying some underway time in the North Atlantic. We made port calls to a few places, and on one in particular saw our crew linking up with a German ship that was also in town. This is a pretty normal occurrence, and even as we enjoyed a handful of hours drinking to the foam, our crews parted ways without giving much more thought of the time in port. For life at sea, you’re only ever focused on the next tasks that must be accomplished.

My ship’s ensuing underway evolution coincided with the attacks on September 11th . Serving aboard a destroyer that measures less than half the length of an aircraft carrier, at the time we didn’t get a satellite feed that could provide us with normal television. Even internet connections were frustratingly slow, and attempts to download web content was typically an exercise in futility.

As the flash messages from home station zipped to the ship and informed our captain of the situation unfolding in Manhattan, there was nothing we could do but brace ourselves for the next update. We remained stranded at sea due to the heightened security state, so we conducted an emergency refueling and just stood by. We had crew on board from New York. Our country was under attack. There wasn’t much any of us could do to see, touch and feel home. It was all beyond surreal.

But up on the bridge and below decks, life had to go on. It was our collective job to keep the ship safe, so there was no question that the routines of professional seamanship would be carried out. During one day on bridge watch, we got a call on our VHF radio. The Germans, the friendly ship that outdrank us while in port, was suddenly asking if they could pass us close by to say farewell. We informed our captain, passed the word for personnel to prepare to render honors, and soon the outline of German destroyer came into view.

What happened next was something that none of us could have anticipated. The crew of the ship, FGS Lütjens, passed up our port side while manning the rails. They flew an American flag and had a banner reading ‘We Stand by You’ that was surrounded by sailors waving. It was a small but unexpected gesture that meant so much at such an uncertain time, and it is still a moment that brings tears to my eyes as I reflect back on that day.

And now this brings me back to last Friday night. These days I work in a multinational environment, and here I was invited to a small dinner at a French colleague’s house. I’m always keen to meet new folks, and of course to work on my French speaking skills. Upon arrival I met his lovely wife as well as one other couple, very nice Germans to include a husband who also works at my organization. We’ve helped each other with certain tasks from time to time, but I didn’t know him well.

Gathered around the dining table, soon we began speaking about our travels far and wide. The French spoke of being posted in hardship locales such as Tahiti and La Réunion, the Germans marveled us with the Harry Potter aspects of the German Naval Academy. Soon the subject of 9/11 came up. I mentioned off-hand that I was deployed at the time, and then I asked my German co-worker if he knew about one of his ships rendering honors to an American one shortly after the attacks.

“Yes of course,” he said while forking into his gratin dauphinoise, “I was on board that day.”

I nearly dropped my own fork.

“What?” I asked, hardly believing what I had just heard.

“I was at the rail—there’s a photo that was taken by someone on your ship! I still have it somewhere.”

The rest of the table sat quietly and listened as we proceeded to unwrap the rest of the story—one country’s experience versus the other’s. How the German crew remembered us in port Plymouth, and how afterward while out at sea they saw on their radar screen an Arleigh Burke destroyer located not too far away. Within the space of 20 minutes, the Lütjens crew had fashioned a banner and posted personnel topside to starboard. They had our flag aboard, and they hoisted our colors too. The rest, as they say, is history.

Still stunned as we spoke about this now—the two of us much further along in our Navy careers—I still felt the emotion of that day. I was astounded to be seated at a French dinner table in London with members of two allied nations, all near strangers, and somehow found a way to intersect our lives.

“Do you know,” I said after he finished his side of the tale, “that I have been waiting such a long time to say ‘thank you’. “You have no idea how incredibly important your gesture was to us.”

It was true. I kept in some email contact with the Lütjens’s XO for a little while after that, but as time happens to move, I ultimately lost touch with that part of my life.

The dinner conversation moved on and we talked of what it was like to live in England, to be in Europe at this moment, and also what it was like to be German, French and American as we moved through the world. After the World War II, the Germans spoke candidly of the experience of being German in London. We discussed how the German and French have forged new bonds with joint military contingents. How all of this history is really not that far removed from where we are today, yet we now serve side by side with a common objective. We share a meal.

Before I knew it, the night had slipped away and I was about to miss the last tube home. Before going, I pulled out my phone and brought up the photo of my colleague’s old German ship.

“That’s me,” he said, pointing to the top right of the screen. “I was on loan from another ship as the anti-submarine warfare officer.”

As chance would have it, this was the same job that I held on my ship. On that day in 2001, we had stood only a couple hundred yards apart saluting each other—our younger selves—never to know that so many years later we’d be sitting next to each other on a Friday night in London.  Incroyable.

Life, as we all continually discover, holds no shortage of returning to moments that we have long since been experienced and tucked away. And while the world (and Navy) is small, there are often moments where you swear to yourself that some things just can’t be made up. Friday night was one of those moments, and it will likely go down as one of the more memorable experiences of my year. Because more than anything, I got to do something that I’ve been waiting to do for years: convey my gratitude for the small gesture of fellow sailors at sea that served to transform the morale of an entire crew on one very dark day.