Streets echo as heroes are remembered

It was barely past midnight when they began to gather. Men in the uniform of heroes. The white dress caps of the Fire Department of New York arriving in the dark of night to pay tribute to their fallen brothers.

Long before the crowds and press assembled at Ground Zero, five columns of marchers began the long journey through the silent streets of New York to remember the dead.

At the extremity of the five boroughs of New York they rose long before the dawn to perform one last act of tribute to the fallen. The blue of the New York Police Department in Brooklyn. From Queens, the police department of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. And from the very tip of Manhattan, a five-hour and 30-mile trudge to Ground Zero.

Each column wound its way through deserted streets, the silence split only by the sound of ceremonial bagpipes.

New York today is a place to wear a uniform. More than 400 men and a handful of women from the emergency services died when the twin tower crumbled. The echo of booted feet marching through darkened streets was in their memory.

Only yesterday they had laid another brother to rest, fireman Peter Bielfeld of Ladder Company 42 in the Bronx, whose remains were finally identified from DNA only a few weeks ago. Officer Bielfeld, 44, was off-duty on 11 September, seeking a medical review to take early retirement, when the call came through that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. He grabbed spare equipment from a nearby deserted fire station and headed, never to return, to the twin towers.

Today's ceremonies saw marchers arriving at the site in the early hours. They began at exactly 8.45am with a moment of silence across the city. Last year, exactly a minute later, American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower.