Recalling nightmare day

The first anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks is a particular poignant time for Chippenham bank manager Paul Lilley.

Mr Lilley, 43, and his wife Wendy were visiting in New York for the first time to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary when the terrible events unfolded.

The couple were less than a mile away from the World Trade Centre when the hijacked planes smashed into the north and south towers. They had planned to visit Lower Manhattan that morning only delaying their trip by chance to get something to eat first.

One year on, Mr Lilley, who manages the HSBC in the High Street, said the event had changed their lives.

"It helps you to understand what's important and what's not important," he said. "No matter who you are, and where you are, you are very vulnerable. None of us knows what's round the corner and thank God we don't."

The widespread media coverage makes it hard for anyone to miss the fact of the anniversary, but Mr Lilley said he was glad to see it.

"It helps you to understand and cope with what actually happened," he said.

"You can start to see how everything unfolded. Sometimes it can seem like information overload, so we view selectively. You cannot help but relive those moments."

Particular memories of the attack and its aftermath have remained very vivid.

Mr and Mrs Lilley were in Time Square when news of the first attack broke, and Mr Lilley said he could clearly recall the sense of reality sliding into slow motion as people tried to comprehend what had happened.

He was also moved by the kindness and concern extended to them in the days after the attack by New Yorkers.

Instead of being wrapped up in their own enormous problems, he said people were continually asking them how they were because the attacks had happened while they were guests in the city.

A candlelight vigil held on the evening of September 13 was another emotional moment, when the Lilleys went out in the evening and saw every single building had candles burning, and people were outside in the streets expressing their solidarity and singing.

Shops and offices across Wiltshire came to a standstill yesterday for one minute's silence at 1.46pm the time when the first jet smashed into the World Trade Centre a year ago.

Joining them in tribute were personnel at RAF Lyneham, where a memorial service was held outdoors.

Flight Lieutenant Tom Draper said: "By coincidence we have some American personnel doing training exercises at the base and they requested a service."

In Chippenham, firefighters who earlier in the year had raised thousands of pounds for the families of their murdered US colleagues by posing bare chested for a fundraising calendar, stood in silent tribute beneath a flag flying at half mast.

It was their second salute to the fallen. On Sunday the crews joined a two minute silence as part of the International Firefighters' Remembrance Day.

In Marlborough, a tree of peace was planted in the town cemetery to mark the anniversary. The ceremonial planting of the American oak was arranged by mayor Margaret Boulton.

Two Chippenham police officers were due to be at St Paul's Cathedral yesterday to take part in a commemorative service. DC Richard Jones and DC Jo Spencer were representing Wiltshire police to commemorate the police officers who lost their lives on September 11.

Jet roared and I expected to die

THE sound of sudden and certain death roared in my ears as I sat lodged in gridlock on Washington Boulevard, next to the Pentagon, on September 11 2001.

Up to that moment I had only experienced shock by the news coming from New York City and frustration with the worse-than-normal traffic snarl...but it wasn't until I heard the demon screaming of that engine that I expected to die.

Looking up didn't tell me what type of plane it was because it was so close I could only see the bottom. Realising the Pentagon was its target, I didn't think the careening, full-throttled craft would get that far. Its downward angle was too sharp.

Knowledge that I was about to die was immediate and certain: this plane was going to hit me along with all the other commuters trapped on Washington Boulevard.

Gripping the steering wheel of my vibrating car, I involuntarily ducked as the wobbling plane thundered over my head. Once it passed, I raised slightly and grimaced as the left wing dipped just before the nose crashed into the southwest wall of the Pentagon.

Still gripping the wheel, I could feel both the car and my heart jolt at the moment of impact.

An instant inferno blazed about 125 yards from me. The plane, the wall and the victims disappeared under coal-black smoke, three-storey tall flames and intense heat.

Knowing I had just witnessed the mass murder of hundreds of people, maybe more, I wanted to be sick, but there was no time. Debris was falling. I sprawled myself across the front seat, and tried to cover my head, fearful that pieces of the wreckage would crash through the windshield or roof.

As the thudding stopped, screams of horror and hysteria rose from the line of cars, and I became a person I didn't know. I didn't scream. Operating on instinct, I climbed out of the car. First I checked to see if I was bleeding. I wasn't. Then I tended a hysterical woman in the car ahead of mine who needed to be held, and be reassured the danger was over.

Borrowing a cell phone, I managed two quick calls; one to the office and one to my husband. When security personnel ordered me off the scene, I didn't argue, I simply left. Pulling away, my hands and stomach shook.

Without thinking, I made an abrupt U-turn. I wasn't going on to the office. I was going home. I needed to see my husband, call my children, hear my small grandson's voice.

Two hours later, with the comfort of my husband's presence, all my family accounted for and two shots of whisky, my trembling decreased.

Convinced I had experienced the worst life could offer, I felt like a fool after viewing the television footage from New York. This was horror, terror and evil beyond imagination.

The internal frenzy that had been plaguing my body finally gave way to a hushed humbleness that would last for days.

I spent the rest of the day and most of the night watching cable news, wondering who our enemy was and gazing out into the clear, eerily silent sky. I never closed the blinds, I wanted a clear view...just in case.

My memories of the following hours and days are more blurred. Yet, there are poignant moments that remain etched in my heart. Like the neighbours and colleagues who replaced the customary, polite hellos with warm embraces and tears.

Tears were a common occurrence during those first weeks. Everyone seemed to have their own breaking point. Mine came while reading an obituary page devoted to the people aboard American Airlines Flight 77.

The morbid thought that these passengers' last seconds of life took place over my head made my throat constrict. Reading each entry, I came across the names and ages of young children children who were incinerated only a few yards from where I had cowered in my car.

In the months that followed, society tried to heal and learn to cope with anthrax and potential suicide bombings.

Many sought therapy to soothe anguish and fears. I chose academics, cynicism, defiance and anger. The 1960s' social revolutionary that lay dormant in my soul for more than 30 years resurfaced with vengeance. I didn't want to be comforted. I didn't need to feel good about myself. I was angry and proud of it.

I read up on the Islamic religion, Middle East culture and fanatic personalities. None of my research could help me grasp the mindset of hate so consuming that one could joyfully, callously and deliberately fly planes filled with innocents into occupied buildings.

Amazingly, a year has passed since that nightmarish day. Commemorative ceremonies are being planned, but I refuse to participate. I worked too hard to dry my tears, and I won't risk letting them flow again in a staged moment of ceremony.

My sentimental and philosophical moments come in the middle of the night when I can't sleep.

Recently however, my midnight thoughts have turned to the hysterical woman I held in my arms on Washington Boulevard. I've wondered where she is and how she is.

In the past several months my sensitivity to airplane noise has finally subsided. It's flying itself that has become my major issue.

I still cannot bring myself to board a plane. It's not that I don't want to fly, I simply can't. When an aircraft appears on the horizon, all I see is a missile, and time has done nothing to change that.

Anguished hours waiting for word

Parents Brian and Berta Zehetmayr feared their son had died in the wreckage of the Twin Towers on September 11.

The couple from Longacre in Lea spent ten agonised hours waiting for word of their 34-year-old son Michael, who they knew was due to attend meetings in the World Trade Centre as part of his work as a management consultant for a computer software company.

He was spending two weeks in the United States with his wife Charlotte and their one-year-old daughter Emily, on holiday and business. The original plan was to take care of business first and then to have a week's break in Cape Cod.

Michael was due to have meetings with staff from the investment bank Morgan Stanley, which had offices on 21 floors of the trade centre.

Brian Zehetmayr vividly remembers the terrible day.

"We did not know that Michael's programme had changed and we knew Morgan Stanley offices were in the World Trade Centre so we thought our son could have been there," he said. "We were just hoping that he was not there but we just did not know. It was terrible."

The couple could not get through to the family in America because the phone networks had crashed. They spoke to Michael's company and staff there managed to get contact with him, but not until hours later.

"We didn't get a message from his company until 11pm that day, saying he was in Cape Cod," said Mr Zehetmayr.

A number of changes to Michael's itinerary potentially saved his life.

"The changes meant he had the holiday first and was then to do the business, but we did not know this. We were extremely concerned for many hours," said Mr Zehetmayr.

The business meeting never took place and the family's holiday was cut short by the tragic events.

"We don't even know if the people of Morgan Stanley who he was meant to meet got out alive. They had a huge amount of losses," said Mr Zehetmayr.

Now strangers say hi

THE people of New York have become friendlier since the September 11 tragedy.

That's the view of Hannah Lavan, the daughter of North Wiltshire district councillor Lesley Bennett, who has been in New York for more than two years studying for a masters degree in social work at a Manhattan university.

Ms Lavan, 26, whose life has changed radically in the intervening year with the birth of her first child Gabriel, said: "I think the people of New York are friendlier than they were a year a go.

"A complete stranger came up and said 'hello' to me that's new.

"There has also been a change in the minority groups, people from the Dominican Republic and Afro-Americans have become much more patriotic towards America, which is a big change.

"There are still lots of American flags, red, white and blue everywhere."

Ms Lavan said that New York is struggling to move forward.

"There is a feeling that New York doesn't know where it's going," she said.

"They can't decide what to build on the site, although they won't build on exactly the same point the twin towers were on. Once they decide what to build then we can move forward."

She said each day more details about the lives of those killed in the attacks are emerging in the newspapers.

But she said in many ways life goes on.

"I was at a party last night and the conversation was the usual; how bad the subway system was it was the same conversation as we would have had on September 2 last year," she said.

I pray for end to injustice that breeds rage

American-born Rev Darcey Gritzmacher, United Reform minister for St Andrew's Church, Devizes, tells of her hope for the future in the wake of 9/11.

"HAVEN'T you heard?" I said on the phone to my mother-in-law who lives in Queens, New York, and teaches five blocks from the World Trade Centre.

"Heard what?" came the reply. In one amazing moment I realised that I, living in Devizes, Wiltshire, was about to break the news that tragedy had struck the twin towers to someone living 20 minutes from the scene.

And in one amazing moment I realised through the media and our advanced communications systems how interdependent our world has become.

As the initial shock waned, I knew that this was my hope for the American, and indeed the global, response to September 11. That in the face of a shocking tragedy and symbolic hatred, we would grasp in a new way that the world is indeed an interdependent place and that this would be an opportunity, as we healed, to reflect upon our role within it.

That we, as a nation, would gain a greater sense of empathy and solidarity with peoples around the world who live with terrorism and a perceived threat from extremists daily.

My fear since that terrible day was that the American response to September 11 would be isolationist, retreating into our own corner of military might and economic power. That we would divide the world into axes of evil and good without acknowledging that, in terms of foreign policy, no country's hands are squeaky-clean.

Because I am a Christian who believes that God holds all life sacred, I tentatively supported the military strikes in Afghanistan and only because there was the intention to support a new democratic government rather than the Taliban .

However, I perceive that an attack on Iraq in the wake of September 11 will only inflame tenuous relationships throughout the world between Muslims and Christians, Arab nations and the West, take the focus off the peace efforts in the Middle East and alienate America from our allied links.

The attack on the World Trade Centre was not merely about America. It was an international symbol.

It is my hope and prayer on the anniversary of September 11 that nations particularly my own will embrace this interdependence, not to justify continual war, but as an interfaith statement says: 'to assert global peace, human dignity, and the eradication of injustice that breeds rage and vengeance'.