A new art exhibit recently opened has on display some 1,300 portraits, honoring many of the more than 1,600 U.S. servicemen and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is located at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, D.C., where thousands of people who were in the military are buried.
Here are some of those portraits, many painted from photographs, and comments from family and friends at the exhibit called "Faces of the Fallen."A father who lost his son said, "We are not forgetting them. I am thankful for that."
One fellow soldier says, "Petty officer third class Mendez, but everyone called him Doc. He died trying to save someone's life."
Another father says, "I've got 11 of my friends on the Vietnam Memorial wall and I sure never figured my son was going to be on a wall like this."
A visitor says, "Every single one of these people has an individual story, each one had a mom, each one celebrated birthdays. They had friends, they had neighbors, and some didn't even have girlfriends. Never even knew what it was like to have their own child, you know, to graduate from college. You know, there was a lot of living that these guys never had a chance to do."