Arlington National Cemetery

President Bush paid solemn tribute Monday to America's fallen forces, labeling the more than 3,800 U.S. troops killed in combat so far in Iraq and Afghanistan "a new generation of heroes." This year's Memorial Day comes four days after Bush warned a war-weary nation that he anticipated increased American military casualties in Iraq this summer as a result of the troop buildup underway.

Rabbi Abraham J. Klausner, had one final wish: that his remains be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. But officials at Arlington denied that wish this week in a case that pits the edicts of faith against military policy. Strict guidelines determine whose remains may be buried in the ground and whose ashes may be inurned in the columbarium at Arlington. Klausner qualified to have his ashes placed in the columbarium; he did not qualify for ground burial.

Caspar Weinberger was remembered at a funeral service at Ft. Myer Memorial Chapel as a Defense secretary who took on totalitarian regimes and helped to end the Cold War -- and also hid chocolate in his desk and liked to catch a daytime nap. Weinberger, who was President Reagan's Pentagon chief, died last week at 88 in Maine.

In the late afternoon light, the Old Guard units fan out over the hills and valleys of the cemetery. Methodically, at each grave, they pull the flags from their rucksacks and push the small poles into the ground. Gatorade caps tucked inside gloves protect their hands from the sharpened ornamental tips. Each year, the number of flags grows, though that fact is not one in which anyone takes pleasure. More than 300,000 are interred, starting with veterans from the Revolutionary War.

Four years ago, John Haines, a retired Chevrolet dealer from Glenwood Springs, Colo., was thumbing through his hometown newspaper when an article about a local business caught his attention. Arlington National Cemetery's largest and most famous monument, the Tomb of the Unknowns, had developed extensive cracks after seven decades of exposure to harsh winters. At the government's request, Yule Marble Quarry in nearby Marble, Colo.

The cremated remains of a convicted murderer must be removed from Arlington National Cemetery under a new law signed by President Bush. The son of Russell Wayne Wagner's victims had lobbied to have the remains removed. Wagner, a Vietnam War veteran, was convicted in 2002 of stabbing to death Daniel Davis, 84, and Wilda Davis, 80. He died in prison serving a life sentence. Honorably discharged from the Army in 1969, he qualified for interment at Arlington.

A funeral home that helps handle veterans awaiting burial at Arlington National Cemetery left corpses in an unrefrigerated garage, in hallways and on makeshift gurneys, according to a former embalmer who has given his photographs and notes to authorities, the Washington Post reported Sunday. "It was disturbing and disrespectful and unethical," said Steven Napper, a retired Maryland trooper who worked at the funeral home for nine months.

As a soft twilight fell over the nation's capital, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was laid to his final rest Saturday in a ceremony on a sloping site in Arlington National Cemetery. Kennedy's burial brings America's most famous band of brothers together again. His grave sits 100 feet south of his brother Robert's, and 200 feet from the eternal flame that burns for John, the former president. The senator's funeral cortege followed the same route his brothers' hearses did, from the Capitol to the national shrine across the Potomac River in Virginia, after they were killed more than four decades ago. Eight members of a U.S. military honor guard carried Kennedy's casket from the black hearse and set it down at a freshly dug grave near manicured shrubs and broad maple trees.

Joan Waxman happened to be in the nation's capital on an elementary school trip that week in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was buried. She was in town for a wedding when former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died. This weekend, as the body of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery, Waxman, 53, and her husband, Howard, were moving their son in for his junior year at George Washington University. Before heading back to New Jersey, they decided to pay their respects to the last of the fabled Kennedy brothers after watching his funeral cortege on Saturday.

\o7 \f7RE "Know Thy Enemy," by Kenneth Turan, Dec. 20: Clint Eastwood carries "know thy enemy" too far. He must be too young to remember the Bataan Death March, Pearl Harbor and numerous prisoner atrocities by the Japanese. This movie, regardless of its intention, is an insult to our boys at Arlington National Cemetery. HAIG DULGARIAN \o7Los Angeles \f7