New Graves, Fresh Grief

"But I see flowers," Anderson adds, thinking this is a good sign.

"No," Ward tells her, worriedly. "I brought those."

They go quiet for a moment, knowing what the other family is going through, wishing they could help. Another woman nearby says, "The parents are having a tough time, aren't they?"

In May 2005, Beth Belle's son, Nicholas Kirven, was the first to be buried in a brand-new row of graves. Two years later, five rows extend from his headstone. She is talking about the young man who stopped by earlier in the day, the one who still walked haltingly on his prosthesis and had a scar winding around his skull, the one who leaned over to see names on the newest graves, his arms hugging his chest.

"They come, and they cry," Belle says, describing the veterans she has watched and spoken with in the past two years. Only a week ago, while she and her husband and others from their family were fussing over flowers at her son's grave, she noticed a Marine hanging out at the grave of a young man buried two rows up from her son.

"He kept looking over at us," Belle says, until her sister finally told her, "I think he wants to talk to you. You should go over there." He had been back only two days, Belle remembers, and he said, "This is the hardest thing for us to see -- the families."

As she talks, another young man comes and kneels by Larry Philippon's grave, right next to her son's. He starts to cry, and his sniffles seem so loud they almost echo. When he stands, Belle's husband says something to him, and he answers quickly, as though it's all he trusts himself to say: "I played lacrosse with Larry."

When she was talking with the Marine, Belle continues, he became as emotional as the lacrosse player. He told her words she'd heard before from others returning from battle, sentiments she doesn't share. "I let you down," he said. "We didn't bring your son back. I didn't do my job."

* * *

A man with thick, gray hair is reading to the fallen. Midafternoon, Tom Gugliuzza-Smith takes a break, picks up a large, brown watering can and small brush and visits every gravestone on the section's northern end, scrubbing bird droppings. He has been visiting Section 60 since late 2004, when he stopped by a funeral and watched a gangly adolescent collapse over his father's casket. He has since become, in effect, a stand-in for those who can't be there. He reads books such as "The Da Vinci Code" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls," sent by far-away families for their sons.

And now, down York Drive, the shady road that leads straight to Section 60, a tall, slender guy is walking fast. He has shaggy blond hair and Euro-fashionable clothes: dark shirt, skinny jeans, backpack. His stride is long, almost buoyant.

He turns right and threads his way through the gravestones, slowing, then stopping at one that, two-and-a-half weeks ago, lay in the final row. That distinction has since disappeared. A new row of freshly dug graves holds seven headstones.

Sinking to his heels, this young man who, only moments before, looked purposeful and almost brisk seems to crumble. He reaches toward the name etched into the gravestone. He is sobbing.