Before graduating from boot camp, every Marine masters the blank stare: the focused-but-distant look that glares down from recruiting posters, the one meant to strike fear in enemies, the one intended to convey more than two centuries of tradition.

Marines are taught to hold the stare no matter what. If a fly crawls on their face, or in their ear, they are ordered to remain steady.

No training could prepare them for the funerals.

According to protocol - an extension of their sacred "never leave a Marine behind" mandate - a fallen Marine's body must be guarded by another Marine whenever it is accessible by a member of the public.

During the past year, the 60 active-duty Marines stationed at Buckley have taken turns standing guard over the caskets. Inevitably, they get to know the person inside.

Underneath their formal white caps, or "covers," many of the Buckley Marines keep the funeral brochures of every Marine they have watched over.

"Now they're watching over us," said Sgt. Andrea Fitzgerald, as she turned over her cap, revealing a photo tucked inside. "I call them my angels."

At the visitation, Marines hear the families talk to the body. At the memorial services, they hear the eulogies. During the burials, they see the flag presented to the grieving mother or widow.

Through it all, they try to hold the stare.

"They can stand there for hours," Beck said. "Their feet fall asleep up to their knees. The pain we're feeling drives us. It drives us for the family because the pride is bigger than the pain. But the pain - you gotta eat it, you gotta live with it, you gotta take it home and cry in the dark. What else are you going to do?"

For Sgt. Kevin Thomas, of Aurora, it starts when the Marines first meet the casket at the airport.

"You always hear all these statements like 'freedom isn't free.' You hear the president talking about all these people making sacrifices," he said.

"But you never really know until you carry one of them in the casket. When you feel their body weight. When you feel them, that's when you know. That's when you understand."

Thomas said he would rather be in Iraq - or anyplace he doesn't feel so helpless.

Still, he said, he has learned lessons from funeral duty that he knows combat can't teach.

"I'll be sitting in front of the computer and I'll see the news: Another service member killed. It's enough to choke me up, tighten my chest. That's another hundred people that are about to be affected," Thomas said.

"It's almost enough to wish that you could take his place, so these people wouldn't hurt so much.

"There's no way that doing one of these funerals can't make you a better person. I think everyone in the military should have to do at least one."

Still, it doesn't end at the cemetery.

"People think that after the funeral, we're finished," Beck said. "It's not over. It's not over at all. We have to keep taking care of the families."

'He only got halfway through'

The sound of strapping tape ripped through the living room in Laramie.

"Now for the hard part," Jo Burns said, after opening one of the cardboard boxes from Iraq filled with her son's possessions.

Then she corrected herself.

"It's all hard."

It had been more than a month since Beck's midnight drive to the white house with the biggest numbers on the block. Beck wasn't required to personally deliver the boxes to Laramie. He didn't have to stay with the family for two hours more as they sifted through them, either.

But actually, Beck said, he had no choice.

"I know that Kyle Burns is looking at me, making sure I'm squared away - with his family and with him," he said during the drive to Wyoming. "I know I'm going to have to answer the mail on that one day - not with God, but with Kyle."

Inside the living room, Bob Burns began lifting Ziploc bags from the box, cataloging the contents in a shaky voice.

"Here's his wallet," he said, as he looked inside. "A fishing license. A hunting license. A Subway Club card? Good grief."

"They're things that reminded him of home," Jo Burns said.

A few minutes later, she pulled out a list in her son's handwriting and started to cry.

"What is it, Jo?" Bob Burns asked.

"It's everyone he wanted to call. And write."

"Well," Bob said, "now we've got a list, don't we, Jo?"

They found more. A camouflage Bible. A giant clothespin. Pens with their tops chewed up.

Corporal's stripes.

"He already bought them," Bob said. "He only had a couple more tests to take."

Kyle's older brother, Kris, pulled out a book, Battlefield Okinawa, and feathered the pages, then placed his finger at a wrinkle on the spine.

"Looks like he only got to about here," he said. "He only got halfway through."

Jo Burns never wanted Kyle to be a Marine. When he invited a recruiter over to meet her, she was openly hostile.

"I have to be honest," she said later. "I didn't believe all that brotherhood bull----. I thought it was just a bunch of little boys saying things that boys say.

"I never believed it until after he died."

In the midst of it all, they found a little snow globe with a typical Wyoming scene: trees, an elk, a bear and a coyote.

Jo Burns shook it up and watched the flakes fall.

She then grasped Beck's hand.

"He told us several times, 'You won't be alone through this - we'll be here,'" she said.

"I guess I didn't understand what that meant."