Andrew Vine and Bruce Rollinson headed to New York 25 years ago to cover the aftermath of the worst terror attack on American soil.

Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States which killed almost 3,000 people.

In our full Saturday special released today (Sat), Andrew Vine recalls his memories of the harrowing days following the attack from his reporting on the ground in New York.

His full recollection is available here for our subscribers – more than 1,300 words of poignant memories.

One week later:- Commuters on the Statten Island ferry approach Manhattan as smoke and dust still rise from the area of last Tuesdays terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre'. September 18, 2001.

placeholder image — One week later:- Commuters on the Statten Island ferry approach Manhattan as smoke and dust still rise from the area of last Tuesdays terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre'. September 18, 2001.

Below is a small section of this longer piece which we have made available to read here.

The biggest shrine to the missing was close to the entrance to Bellevue Hospital, a few yards from First Avenue, where a 30-yard-long fence was covered with posters carrying pictures of more than 1,000 people who had not been seen or heard from since the towers fell.

Relatives had begun pinning them there within hours of the attack, in the hope that hospital staff arriving for work would recognise someone. The posters were heartbreaking, and not just because most carried smiling faces.

Desperate families reasoned that their loved ones might be unconscious, so included intimate details of birthmarks, moles, scars and tattoos that they hoped would help medical staff identify them.

Momentos at Prayer wall in Times Square subway station. September 19, 2001.

Even their jewellery was described in detail – a Cartier watch that Alisha Levin wore, a diamond engagement ring on Monica Goldstein’s finger, an ankle bracelet that Victoria Alvarez Brito never took off.

Leafing through my notes from the time, I find the names and what was written about them no less poignant now than on the day I copied them down.

There was Deanna Micculli, “Just married six weeks ago and is seven months pregnant with her first child”. Marian Victoria Hamilton was “My precious wife, my whole life”. A picture of Gregg Preziose simply said, “Please find my daddy”. And hundreds upon hundreds more, each a story of broken hearts.

The fence and its posters became known as the Wall of Prayers, where New Yorkers came to pay their respects to the lost. Cleaners from the hospital kept the site immaculate, relighting candles that had blown out and neatly arranging the countless bunches of flowers left below the pictures.

The prayer wall at the Belle Vue Hospital on 1st Avenue and E29th dedicated to those missing after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre last Tuesday.. September 18, 2001.

All those names are now carved on the 9/11 memorials, but the fading of hope for the missing as the days ticked by felt like another blow for that great city and its people who had suffered so grievously.