ARLINGTON UNITES GRIEF, ANGER, PRIDE.

Byline: Darragh Johnson The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - In Section 60, death remains too fresh to be separated from life.

You see it in the 17 cigars pushed into the grass near one headstone, signs that a combat unit stopped by. And in the older man who reads Robert Frost to the dead, knowing that their families live thousands of miles away.

In Section 60 are the graves of 336 soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan - one in 10 of the dead. The percentage of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom fallen soldiers who are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., is the highest of any war.

For the duration of this war, there have been few photos of coffins returning home. Section 60 is the one place to get a sense of the immensity of the nation's loss.

The great expanse of the cemetery is known for its orderliness, its precision. Each Memorial Day, the government places a U.S. flag exactly one foot in front of every headstone. Only flowers are allowed on graves.

But in `60,' the messiness of life disrupts the order. Picnics are laid and incense burned. Red glass hearts are left atop the headstones. Origami-style sheets of notebook paper are tucked away, safe from lawn mower blades.

Mothers and widows, friends and regretful exes write intimate notes, some as casual as a message stuck on a refrigerator door. ``I called your old cell phone the other day. Someone named Brian has it now, and I couldn't help but wonder if he knew anything about you.''

Here, the deaths haven't been fully absorbed. People talk to their dead. They still see their dead. ``Somebody drives by,'' says Linda Bishop, a few feet from the grave site of her son Jeff, ``and you think it's him. You see him.'' The phone rings, Xiomara Mena Anderson says, standing over the grave of her son Andy, and ``I always think it's him.''

Other parts of Arlington wear the dignified repose of old age and bygone eras. Section 60 reverberates with youth and immediacy.

Even the names on the headstones sound youthful and vibrant: Megan, Jesse, Heath, Blake. They are names that seem better suited to text messaging - LOL, BFF - than to the abbreviated code of the graveyard - CPL, BSM.

``I find a need to be there,'' says Teresa Arciola, who drives from New York's Westchester County every other month to place iPod earbuds on her son's grave and play for him the Temptations and Eminem. She brings him Black Forest gummy bears and, on his birthday, beer that she pours into the ground. At every visit, she sits on his grave and reads aloud from his favorite baby book, ``Corduroy.'' He had just turned 20. ``I feel good while I'm there,'' Arciola says. ``But I don't think there's comfort.''

The graves come quickly.

One mother visits the grave of her casualty officer, the man who was there for her when she first learned that her son had died in 2005.

The funerals require an extra level of choreography. Two were held last Wednesday, back to back.

By the time the first man was buried - Maj. Douglas Zembiec, a 34-year-old Marine known as the Lion of Fallujah - the backhoe beside his grave had begun to dig for the next funeral. More than 50 mourners remained near Zembiec's grave.

Some wandered, visiting other graves. A man in a dark suit sought out two other headstones. A Marine officer spent 20 minutes crisscrossing the section, stopping regularly.

And the backhoe continued to dig. Every mound of dirt scooped from the newest grave was used to finish burying the officer whose funeral had just ended. Rites for Army Spec. Matthew Bolar were to begin in an hour.

To stand at the edge of where the graves begin is to see what the war has meant - what has been lost, what has been sacrificed. The headstones' black lettering seems to endlessly repeat the vague circumstances of each death: Operation Iraqi Freedom ... Operation Iraqi Freedom ... Operation Enduring Freedom ... Iraqi Freedom ... Iraqi ... Iraqi ... Iraqi ... Enduring ... Iraqi ... Iraqi ... Iraqi ... Iraqi ... Iraqi ... Enduring ...

``Freedom is not free,'' say the hats and bracelets worn by some visitors to Section 60. And the rows of headstones are stark, white reminders of how much that freedom has cost.

The graves spread in every direction, as orderly as crops in early June, lines and diagonals as reassuring as they are mesmerizing.

This is the place where all of the grief, anger and pride at what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan come together. Children chase each other through the headstones and try to pry rocks from the dirt of freshly dug graves. Their parents stand nearby, introducing themselves and exchanging e-mails and phone numbers.

``They tell me they don't want to go to any more grief counselors or priests. They want to be with people who are going through hell themselves,'' says Carol Thomas, who stops by regularly and has befriended many of the regulars.

Her husband is buried elsewhere in Arlington, and she sees the Iraq and Afghanistan war dead as ``all my boys.'' She sees their mothers and fathers, widows, uncles, best friends and others as ``my great friends.''

Michel du Cille / Los Angeles Times 

CAPTION(S):

Xiomara Mena Anderson visits her son's grave at Arlington National Cemetery. She says that when the phone rings, she still thinks it's him.