A Day to Honor the Living and Mourn the Lost

"I was hugged by nearly three or four women," said Frederick Choromanski of Fairfield, Conn.

Choromanski, who served with the 43rd Army Infantry Division, was an understandable attraction, his uniform decorated with a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and numerous other medallions and distinctions from his tour throughout the Pacific. In Saipan, the Japanese "almost blew my left arm off." He spent almost all of the next three years in a hospital recovering.

"He said, 'If I live to this time, we're coming,' " his wife, Evelyn, said as the couple walked through the crowds.

"There are a lot of memories," her husband, now 85, acknowledged. "Everything is very touching."

Repeatedly, emotions were evoked, often for little moments these men and women never had anticipated. Jim Halliburton, an Army Airborne veteran from Indianapolis, started to choke up again as he recalled what had happened the day before while he and two other members of VFW Post 10003 played tourist at a museum.

Out of nowhere, a class of students came up to them and shook their hands.

"That was the nicest thing that ever happened in my life," said Halliburton, 79. "I had a hard time keeping the tears down."

And sitting in the front row of one section of seats, Marjory Doezel struggled to explain, without crying, why she had traveled to Washington. Why she had arrived shortly after 10 a.m. yesterday, not minding a lengthy wait. Why the memorial felt so important to her.

She could not.

She talked about her seven years as an Army nurse in Iceland, England and France. "We were the first unit to go overseas," even before Pearl Harbor, she said. The Battle of the Bulge found her working at a hospital in France, where the wounded who had survived field triage were sent for "the long stays."

Doezel made a career of the Army and retired a full colonel. She met her husband in the Army and buried him at Arlington. At 88, she is looking back on the sweep of her life.

"It was just the personal sacrifice that we made," she said in one attempt at explaining.

"Just to see it, it's just all these years," she said in another try.

And finally:

"I'm still here," she said softly. "So many have died."