In pre-dawn darkness, Obama salutes victims of war

On Wednesday, President Obama started his day in the Oval Office as he always does, with intelligence and economic advisers alerting him to trouble spots and bits of improvement. He ended it 20 hours later, after a surprise trip to Dover Air Force Base, where he witnessed the return of 18 Americans killed this week in Afghanistan.

His day already had been crowded. By nightfall, the president had appeared in public five times. He honored a Senate pioneer, named an opponent to a panel, signed the defense bill, planted a tree and held a reception for a crowd jubilant over a new law. He made jokes, offered embraces, posed for photos, spoke firmly. He had dinner with his two girls, on the eve of their first Halloween in Washington. His wife was in New York at the first World Series game.

All the while, he knew the most sober and grim public duty of his new presidency awaited him after midnight.

He would stand in the chilly pre-dawn darkness Thursday at the Delaware base, his arm in a stiff salute, jaw clenched, and see the toll of the war he is waging. He did not look away.

Obama left the White House by helicopter just before midnight Wednesday. Marine One came to a halt behind the hulking C-17 military transport plane that brought the remains of 15 soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents who died in two different incidents this week, in a month that has become the deadliest for U.S. troops since the war in Afghanistan began.

Wearing a dark suit and a topcoat, the president first met privately with the families of the dead. Aides heard him repeat, "I'm so sorry for your loss."

Four times, Obama marched up the ramp of the hulking transport plane and bore witness as Maj. Richard S. Bach, an Air Force chaplain, offered a prayer over the remains. Afterward, he joined other officials, including Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., standing at attention and saluting. The officials held their salutes during the silent transfer as a six-person Army team wearing fatigues, black berets and white gloves moved the cases holding the bodies to a white mortuary van.

"It was a sobering reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices that our young men and women in uniform are engaging in every single day -- not only our troops, but their families as well," Obama said of the four hours he spent in Dover. "And so Michelle and I are constantly mindful of those sacrifices. And obviously the burden that both our troops and our families bear in any wartime situation is going to bear on how I see these conflicts. And it is something that I think about each and every day."

Those were his only public remarks, and they echoed ones he has made over the past months as he deliberates sending more troops to Afghanistan.

Obama has met with families of the dead before, but not when their loss was so raw and new. He writes personal letters to kin of each fallen soldier, as President George W. Bush did before him. Bush declined to attend military funerals, believing his presence would be intrusive, a custom that Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon observed during the Vietnam War.

The president's visit to the base came six months after the Pentagon ended a ban on media coverage of the arrival of fallen soldiers at Dover. Families must agree for reporters to be present. The ban had been imposed by the administration of President George H.W. Bush nearly 18 years earlier, a move officials said was aimed at protecting the privacy of the families of the dead. But many critics saw the ban as a way of shielding the American public from the costs of war.

Only the family of Sgt. Dale R. Griffin of Terre Haute, Ind., agreed to have the media witness the transfer of remains Thursday morning. Griffin died when the military vehicle he was riding in was hit by roadside bombs, according to media reports.

The president and other officials boarded the transport plane about 3:40 a.m., then disembarked and stood at attention on the tarmac while family members arrived on a small bus. As Griffin's body was carried off the plane, Obama and his party saluted. They saluted again as the mortuary van slowly drove away.

After boarding Marine One for the return flight, Obama thanked aides who planned the trip, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. After that, everyone aboard was silent as they flew back to the White House.

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.