Feature: Snapshots of sympathy
By AL WEBB
LONDON, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- A small girl with a Cockney accent shyly waved a tiny American flag, and a queen brushed away a tear. In a Scottish town that has known its own tragedy, a lone church bell tolled. On a German river, foghorns sounded a low moan.
 Across countries and continents waves of sympathy for a nation in anguish rolled on. A young woman in a Kenyan park wept over the sad headlines in newspapers spread on the ground. A one-time terrorist donated blood for the victims. Hundreds stood in line in cities from Dublin to Moscow to sign books of condolences.
 And over the outpouring of grief and mourning for the lives lost in the boiling flames and rubble of the World Trade Center towers and a wing of the Pentagon, time and again came the strains of "The Star-Spangled Banner," sometimes in places where it had never been sung before.
 In a gesture reminiscent of John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner," symbolizing his solidarity with another troubled people four decades ago, the Paris newspaper Le Monde perhaps summed it up best: "We are all
Americans."
 In London, where the little girl with the funny accent and her American flag pressed her damp face against the gates, the band performing the traditional Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace suddenly did
something it had never done before -- it struck up "The Star-Spangled Banner."
 For 45 minutes, the Mall in front of the palace became a little piece of America for hundreds of its citizens who were there because there were no planes to take them home. And the band of the Coldstream Guards played on.
 As tear-stained faces lifted and sang along, as Americans and British and other nationals waved Old Glory, the marches rolled -- "The Liberty Bell" after the national anthem, followed by "The Washington Post March" and
"Semper Fidelis" and finally, heart-rendingly, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."
 Scott Kalis, an American ex-sailor with friends among the dead of the New York Fire Department, swept off his baseball cap and placed his right hand over his heart. When it was over, he said simply, "Thank you for letting us do this."
 What the Coldstream Guards had triggered was the greatest mass demonstration of grief in Britain since Princess Diana was killed in a car crash four years ago. And as with Diana's death, a carpet of flowers,
children's toys, poems, letters, all illuminated by tiny candles, built up this time at the fortress-like U.S. Embassy in London.
 A card on one bunch of lilies read: "For all the wonderful American friends I have been lucky enough to know." And another quoted Theodore Roosevelt: "Only those who are fit to live do not fear to die."
 Amid the hundreds of bouquets, a single American flag was wrapped around a tree. One woman pressed her tear-dampened lips to its fringe in a soft kiss.
 The sweeping tide of mourning reached its crescendo at 11 o'clock Friday morning when Britain, France, Germany and scores of other countries in Europe, Africa and Asia went silent for three minutes, in honor of the
innocent dead in America.
 In London, a taxi driver who refused the fare from an American woman named Jill he had taken to St. Paul's Cathedral, climbed out and stood with her in silence. In Paris, the elevator at the Eiffel Tower stopped halfway to the top. Buses, trams and cars halted in their tracks across the continent.
 In Spain, more than 650 city and town halls became gathering centers for tens of thousands who bent their heads in silent prayer -- and then, at the end of the three minutes, they lifted their eyes and applauded in that
people's traditional tribute to the victims of terrorism.
 On the River Elbe leading into Hamburg, ships flew their flags at half-mast. The minutes of silence crept by -- and at the end were broken by the sound of a thousand foghorns rolling across the water into the city's
very heart.
 In Lockerbie, Scotland, there was no applause, no singing, no bands, only the ringing of a single church bell and the flutter of flags at half-mast.  This is a town with singular links to America, forged in a terrorist
attack in the skies 13 years ago.
 A bomb planted aboard Pan Am Flight 103 destroyed the jumbo jet, killing all 259 people aboard, most of them Americans, and raining death on 11 people on the ground as the wreckage tore through the sleepy little town just before Christmas.
 "The people of Lockerbie are appalled by these acts of terrorism," said Phil Jones, chief executive of the local regional council. "We received comfort and support from America in December 1988, and we want to let them
know they are in our thoughts now and in the difficult times ahead."
 In all, according to an estimate by The Daily Telegraph newspaper in London, some 800 million people across Europe joined in the three minutes of silence.
 At Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, once part of a dividing line between freedom and tyranny, a crowd of some 200,000 -- among them Germans whose relatives had died in terrorist attacks -- gathered beneath a black banner bearing the words, "We Mourn With You."
 In Paris, crowds jammed the Place de la Concorde, itself a symbol of reconciliation, while church bells rang for five minutes before the silence.
In the government's Elysee Palace, "The Star-Spangled Banner" rang out, while over the French air waves, radio stations played John Lennon's "Imagine."
 Television stations in Italy reckoned that simple was best. They showed pictures of the jetliners crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon ablaze and the WTC towers tumbling into dust. There was no commentary, only a caption: "Against the deafening noise of hatred, the sound of civilization."
 The bankers of Switzerland are not noted for their sentimentality, so they dealt in their own currency. At the end of the three minutes of silence, they announced they were donating more than $500,000 to the families of
the victims of the atrocities in America.
 Lloyd's of London, the insurance market based in the British capital and one of several insurers of the World Trade Center, rang its Lutine bell and observed a minute of silence in memory of the dead in America -- some of them in the several broker offices Lloyd's has -- had -- in the WTC.
 The bell was salvaged from the British frigate HMS Lutine in the 19th century. It is traditionally rung to signal news of a missing ship.
 In Belfast, the bullets and bombs of Northern Ireland's own form of terrorism, known as sectarian violence, went silent as tens of thousands from both sides of the divide -- Roman Catholic and Protestant -- gathered
in front of a makeshift stage at City Hall, to stand in silent tribute.
 It is a city that knows the heartache of terrorism. "We have suffered for 33 years," said Betty McLearon. "People here have to be admired for the way they can cope with it. It will take the people in New York a long time to get over this."
 The mourning went well beyond Europe's borders. Air raid sirens went off across Cyprus, signaling the start of three minutes of silence and bringing the people and traffic of that tiny Mediterranean nation to a standstill.
 In Moscow, the Russians observed a minute's silence as they laid wreaths and floral tributes outside the U.S. Embassy once a symbol of the Cold War. Thousands of Muscovites lined up patiently to sign books of condolences.
 In Nairobi's Uhuru Park, some 1,000 Kenyans assembled for a prayer service, among them victims of the terrorist car bombings at U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 231 people.
 A young woman knelt on the ground, newspapers carrying headlines and stories of the unfolding American tragedy spread before her, her tears softly smearing the newsprint as she prayed silently.
 In turbulent Israel, a nurse gently inserted a needle into the right arm of Yasser Arafat, himself a one-time terrorist who is now head of the Palestinian Authority. In a demonstration of support, he was donating
blood to help the American injured.
 A few streets away, a Palestinian youth carried a sign written in both Arabic and English: "We feel with you. We are victims too." His sad eyes were in stark contrast to some of his fellow Palestinians who danced jigs
of joy as television programs showed the WTC towers collapsing.
 Back in London, the minutes of silence were followed by a service of remembrance in the capital's majestic St. Paul's Cathedral, led by Queen Elizabeth II herself. In the audience of 2,400 inside, Americans hoisted
the Stars and Stripes for the rest of the world to see via television.
 Outside the cathedral, the tens of thousands who could not get in waved their own tiny flags and listened over the loudspeakers that carried the words and music for blocks around.
 The cathedral's huge organ rumbled into life, to open the service, appropriately, with the American national anthem. Then something happened that has never happened before, certainly not in public and doubtless not
even in private.  Softly, the queen began to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner." Now, the British monarch does not "sing" national anthems. When they are played, she never even opens her mouth. Until now. But Queen Elizabeth sang it all, this song whose words were written 187 years ago during Britain's last war with her lost American colonies, through the final words, "... O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave." With the last note, the queen gently brushed away a tear.
 That said it all.