DOVER AIR FORCE BASE (USA): When the cargo planes land at this air base on the coast of Delaware, people nearby stand at attention to honour the dead.

Fifty-five soldiers have been killed in guerrilla-style attacks in Iraq since President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat there on May 1. Since March 20, when the US-led war on Iraq began, an additional 114 US soldiers have been killed in hostile action.

This quiet base about 1.6kms inland from Delaware Bay is where all the American soldiers who die in Iraq come home.

Dover Air Force Base has the largest Department of Defence port mortuary and the only one in the United States. Since the Vietnam War, wartime casualties have come through here.

The mortuary prepared the remains of the astronauts killed in the Columbia shuttle disaster and the Pentagon victims from the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Since March, when the US-led war against Iraq began, the staff at the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs have been at their brutal but delicate task non-stop, with 10- to 12- hour days, sometimes without days off for weeks.

“What I tell my family is, if you see reports of fatalities, then that means we’re working,” said Karen Giles, who heads the mortuary.

FACES GETTING YOUNGER: Giles and her colleagues have learned to avoid those news reports, in part to avoid developing attachments to soldiers who they may have to tend to.

She said she had to be careful when watching the news, as she walked through the mortuary, a hangar-like building with cement floors and pastel-coloured partitions. The military is finishing construction on a new, larger facility next to the old one and hopes to move next month.

Giles, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel who performed similar duties during the 1991 Gulf War and again in 2001 for the September 11 deaths, said that the job was always difficult.

“I absolutely have a perspective on the cost of war,” she said. “I look at the faces that come through, and they’re younger.”

But Giles and others said there was still a lot of pride involved in their job.

“We’d love nothing more than to never have to do this,” said Air Force Major Jeff Yocum, commander of the services squadron that oversees the mortuary.

“(We) take great amount of pride in ensuring that dignity, honour and respect is provided throughout their time at Dover,” he said. “Our overriding concern to ensure that they return with dignity and respect to their families and loved ones.”

FLOW OF DECEASED: Between March 29 and August 5, the remains of about 250 soldiers were brought to Dover from Iraq. That figure includes all troops who have died on duty, regardless of the cause of death.

The planes, C-5s, C-17s and sometimes C747s, arrive at all hours of the day or night. They are met on the runway by a military honour guard that accompanies each casket on a short walk from the runway to the mortuary, a nondescript beige building at one corner of the base.

At the height of operations in Iraq, the permanent peacetime mortuary staff of seven swelled to 200, including members from each division of the armed forces, as well as the FBI and the Department of Defence.

That number has since been trimmed to about 50 workers, although the flow of casualties remains “very steady,” according to Giles.—Reuters