Troops in Afghanistan, Iraq mark Memorial Day

Troops in Afghanistan, Iraq mark Memorial Day

By Heidi Vogt - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Jun 1, 2010 11:24:14 EDT

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — U.S. forces serving in Afghanistan and Iraq remembered friends and colleagues Monday in solemn Memorial Day ceremonies to commemorate all of their nation’s war dead.

As some soldiers paused, violence raged on in both places.

In Afghanistan, U.S.-led NATO forces launched airstrikes against Taliban insurgents who had forced government forces to abandon a district in Nuristan, a remote province on the Pakistan border. NATO also said it killed one of the Taliban’s top two commanders in the insurgent stronghold of Kandahar in a separate airstrike.

At the sprawling Bagram Air Field, the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan, about 400 soldiers in camouflage uniforms and brown combat boots stood at attention for a moment’s silence as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of some 94,000 U.S. troops in the country, led the ceremony.

A bugler played taps and a color guard displayed the U.S. flag and the flags of units serving in eastern Afghanistan where the base is located, about 30 miles north of Kabul.

A steel construction beam from the World Trade Center destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks was unveiled, with the inscription “WTC 9 11 01”. The beam was donated by citizens’ group the Sons and Daughters of America of Breezy Point, a suburb in Queens, New York, where 29 victims of the Sept. 11 attacks lived, according to a letter read out at the ceremony.
go here for more
Troops in Afghanistan, Iraq mark Memorial Day