When four hijacked planes smashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, the explosions killed 3,062 people. But the events of Sept. 11, 2001, forever changed the lives of legions more.
   Scroll down for profiles, recollections, photographs, videos and coverage of that day when the sun shined and war hit home. Check back often, as new material will be added leading up to and following the one-year anniversary.
   Share your Sept. 11 stories and tell others how the attack and all that followed affected you.

-- MilitaryCity.com
               

Read the introductions now and come back Sept. 11 to read the full stories and see the graphics.

Fortress reborn

   Sgt. Roxane Cruz-Cortes' heart races as she walks down Corridor 4, toward E Ring on the Pentagon's first floor.
    "I can still smell the smoke," she says, her voice unsteady. She looks around uncomfortably, as though she sees something other than the corridor's clean, newly rebuilt, freshly painted walls.
    Here, a year earlier, most of the first- and second-story offices were obliterated by a hijacked passenger jet, killing 125 in the Pentagon, 59 passengers and crew on the plane and five suicide terrorists.
Read the full story

Families look to
memorial to ease grief
   Jim Laychak finds it unsettling that the Pentagon was rebuilt so quickly, which is one reason he's working with the Army Corps of Engineers to make sure a planned memorial to the Sept. 11 attack is both permanent and meaningful.
    His brother, David Laychak - a budget analyst on the first floor of E Ring, near Corridor 4 - was among the 125 in the Pentagon who went to work that day and never came home.
Read the full story

    The 125 people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon included 55 soldiers and sailors and 70 civilians. In the war on terrorism, 52 more soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
    Some fell to enemy fire on a frigid, snow-covered ridge in Afghanistan, a place many Americans could not have located on a map a year ago. Others died when their helicopter plunged into the tropical waters off the coast of the Philippines. Still others died in tragic accidents -- misguided bombs, plane crashes, exploding ordnance.
    We remember and honor all of them here.  
        View the Pentagon victims
        View the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines

    We will never forget what happened on Sept. 11. The images we saw that morning, whether in person, on the news or in the newspaper, will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
    Take a look at images from New York City, the Pentagon and Operation Enduring Freedom.               View the pictures