Sept 14-15, 2001. After dropping my kids off at school in Camden I took the underground down to Grosvenor Square, the park across from the American Embassy in Mayfair. The park had been chained shut the day after the attacks but now part of it was accessible (with tight security) and it was the scene of an astounding outpouring of British sympathy.

At a Condolences Tent, books were available for people to write messages -- and they wrote them by the thousand, not knowing who would ever read them. Some wept as they wrote. A bulletin board in the tent displayed drawings from British schoolchildren, offering friendship to children of New York. These were hard to look at with dry eyes.

Beyond this were the flowers. Grosvenor Square is dominated by an enormous statue of FDR (built by private donations from British citizens after the war -- contributions limited to 5 shillings each, and the amount was raised in a day). Around its base were hundreds of bouquets, many of them quite large, and most with touching messages attached: "11-9-2001 WHY???", "Be Strong," "Rest in Peace," "Breaking Our Hearts," "If Only We Could Fight Terrorism With Flowers." They were addressed "To Our American Brothers," "To Our Friends Across the Sea," "To All New York."

The wishes were from all over England -- from Kent, Essex, Ipswich, York, Hertfordshire, Derby and Dorset. But most were specifically from London -- "To All The New Yorkers, From All Your Cockney Friends"; "To the Greatest City in the World...From the Second"; "HOW we Londoners grieve for you New Yorkers."

Some were to particular victims: "To Julie, Rest Peacefully Now," "To the Little Girl Whose Doll was Found in the Debris" (this was attached to a small, old, and well-worn bear that looked like it had sustained several childhoods, now left anonymously to a foreign child who would never see it); to the NYC firefighters, from a London fireman and his wife.

Many people attached their notes to tokens of Britain -- a Paddington Bear, an Arsenal (football team) scarf, a tiny London flag and pole, at half mast. Others put messages on tokens of America or New York -- on dollar bills, on Mets or Yankees caps, on an MTA Metrocard. There were Union Jacks and Star Spangled Banners tied together, and a photo of FDR and Churchill.

The square filled up with mourners carrying flowers. They just kept coming -- a businessman in a pinstriped suit, a young man with spiked hair, a lady on a cane (clearly old enough to have been a mother during the blitz), a tall girl with bright red-white- blue socks and tears trickling down behind large sunglasses, a young mother pushing a pram with a very small baby and a large bouquet of lilies.

The formal gestures from queen and prime minister were certainly sincere but it was the emotion from everyday Britons that was most moving. In particular I will never forget the image of the ordinary-looking, 60-something London couple, the man standing stiffly with fists clenched and blinking back tears, as his wife tenderly unwrapped a flowerpot (click on image at right for full image)..

By 11, the US Ambassador and his wife led the 3 minutes of silence that was observed all over Europe. Nothing was said before or after, but at the end of the silence a small group of Americans sang a fragile rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

The crowd was mostly British and did not know the words, but at its conclusion began to clap... and then the ovation was taken up through the park and well beyond -- only then did I notice the large crowd - many hundred, perhaps thousands -- behind the border hedges, all the way around the park. They had sought out the most American spot in London to spend the moment of silence.

The next day I returned with my children. Bouquets now covered every step and ledge, piled several feet high in many places, and the queue to get in to leave more stretched around the park. I talked with an old woman with a large bouquet of red (roses), white (baby's breath) and blue (irises). She said she had queued for 4 hours to leave flowers for Diana, and would happily do the same for the Americans. (And for days afterwards, over 5000 were coming daily.)

The wave of sympathy came not just from simple compassion, not just from the bond so many Londoners feel with New York, but from their unique experience: no one knows like Londoners what it is like to have your city turned into rubble. Britain lost 40,000 people to the Blitz, most of them in London, along with tens of thousands of buildings; one of every six Londoners was homeless at one time before the war ended. The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, St Katherine's Dock, St Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum, and much of Oxford Street were all bombed. If you look closely, you see the scar tissue everywhere -- new, out-of-place buildings appearing at regular intervals on old streets, marking the dreadful rhythm of bombing runs.

When London tells you to hang in there, it really means something.

US papers covered the queen's response to the tragedy, but I have seen no coverage of this outpouring by the regular Britons. But it is a real story, and a moving one indeed.

G. D. Stone
London
Sept. 16, 2001