By Paddy
Without comment.
FORT BRAGG, N.C. - When the Army's 82nd Airborne Division dedicated a memorial to paratroopers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, organizers believed three sides of a wide granite column would be plenty of space to engrave the names of the fallen.
Three years later, there is no more room.
The last name on the memorial belongs to Sgt. Clayton G. Dunn, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in May 2007. To accommodate the rising number of casualties, military officials have been forced to expand the memorial by adding a granite wall. The wall now has 50 new names - each a grim reminder that a 13-ton granite tower vastly underestimated how much space it would take to honor the fallen.
"We can put on as many as we need to now," said retired command Sgt. Maj. Roger Vickers, who served for 14 years in the 82nd. "The hope is we don't ever have to put another name on it at all."
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