CHIPPENHAM firefighters Jack Nicholson and Mark Miller have returned from New York, where they presented more than £10,000 from the sale of their charity calendar to the families of firemen who lost their lives on September 11.

As the Chippenham firefighters return, two of the town's police officers are also travelling to New York to pay their respects to the emergency services workers killed during the attacks on the World Trade Centre.

The Chippenham firefighters have seen for themselves how the aftermath of September 11 still continues in New York, despite the fact the familiar images of Ground Zero have almost disappeared from our television screens.

Firefighter Nicholson said: "While we were over there they had just found some more bodies and identified them, so for three days we were there, there was a firefighter's funeral every day, and one for a police officer. For them it's still very much going on."

Firefighters Nicholson and Miller were also invited to visit Ground Zero for themselves, where they were touched by the tributes from all over the world. "Just off the main block there were individual tributes from the families and that was when it really started to get quite personal and disturbing," said firefighter Nicholson.

"We saw one fellow who had died when only 23 and had been in the service a year, and you wonder if that was his first major job he'd been to."

The firefighters thanked Calne printing company Red Pin, and North Wiltshire MP James Gray for helping make the trip possible.

As they return, PCs Dave Budd and Rich Jones are also preparing for a poignant trip to Washington and New York on Saturday, when they will pay their respects to hundreds of colleagues who died in the line of duty.

The officers will be guests at the National Law Enforcement Officers' Memorial in Washington DC, which will be attended by George W Bush.

They will visit the FBI Academy, experience policing on the streets of New York and visit Ground Zero.

In the wake of September 11, PC Budd wrote to every constabulary in the UK, asking for one of their force's badges in order to take them to America as a tribute.

"Our visit is simply to show that police officers and their families over here felt the same anger and sadness about the incidents surrounding September 11 as they did," said PC Budd.

The colleagues will attend a candlelit vigil in Washington where the names of all the officers killed in the last 12 months will be read out, and PCs Budd and Jones have been invited to form part of the honour guard there.

They will take part in sponsored visits to the FBI Academy, and the Prince William Police Department, where they hope to go out on uniformed patrol with American colleagues.

The PCs will travel on to New York next Thursday where they will meet more American police officers and tour their headquarters.

"This is to say to them 'We felt for you,'" said PC Budd. PC Jones, 34, said: "It's not often you get a chance to do what we're about to do."

jbishop@newswilts.co.uk