Head of security told his wife he was determined to help others flee first

A British-born man caught in the explosions at the World Trade Centre last Tuesday called his wife on his mobile phone and said: "You made my life" before he disappeared.

Rick Rescorla, who was born in Hayle, Cornwall, was working as head of security for the investment bank Morgan Stanley Dean Witter when the second jet struck. He spoke to his wife, Susan, to explain he was helping people to escape.

"He called me on his cellphone, told me not to cry. He was helping everyone evacuate, but if something happened to him he wanted me to know that I 'made his life'," said Mrs Rescorla. She added: "His last words to me were 'you made my life' ­ but he made mine."

According to colleagues, Mr Rescorla had also stayed behind to help people to escape from the World Trade Centre when it was bombed eight years ago. This time, however, the former lieutenant and platoon leader in the Vietnam War, who won the Silver Star for his bravery, is now feared dead.

In Hayle, his cousin Jon Daniels said: "We are definitely not giving up on Rick. If there is one man that could come out from underneath all that rubble, it is Rick."

The parents of a north Wales man who was working on the 97th floor of the World Trade Centre said yesterday that they were sick with worry as they waited for news. Steve Morris, 31, moved to America in 1995, where he worked as a computer consultant. Phil and Judith Morris, of Nantglyn, near Denbigh, said: "Steve is a good, loving son who always kept in regular contact."

Other Britons added to the list of more than 5,000 people missing include Dinah Webster, 50, and Neil Cudmore, 38, a couple who worked for a financial journal and were at a conference on the 109th floor. It is believed they were planning to marry later this year.

Kevin Dennis, 43, a stockbroker who was on the 101st floor, had twin sons. He and his American wife, Debra, had leftLondon for the United States after Mr Dennis was headhunted by Cantor Fitzgerald.

Nicholas John, 33, a banker from Swansea, was working for Chase Morgan in New York and was due to attend a meeting in the World Trade Centre early on Tuesday morning.

The parents of Graham Berkeley, 37, described how they watched the atrocities unfold on television, not realising that their son, an IT consultant who lived in Boston, was on board the second hijacked plane. Charles and Pauline Berkeley, of Shrewsbury, then received a phone call breaking the news that he was dead.

Grieving relatives of missing Britons will be greeted by victims of other disasters, such as the Omagh bombing and the Aberfan disaster, when they arrive in New York as part of a Foreign Office "mercy flight" today. The counsellors ­ who volunteered to help during a conference on grief management in London on Saturday ­ will work with teams of specially-trained family liaison officers drawn from police forces in Kent, Sussex, Essex, Surrey, North Wales, Dorset and Hampshire.

Details of the help to be given to as many as 600 relatives were unveiled last night by Sir Christopher Meyer, the British Ambassador, at a press conference in New York. He had spent the day visiting the huge humanitarian effort in New York, an experience he described as "traumatic".