Emotional front line of US war in Iraq

BBC

Nashville, Tennessee, is the cradle of country music, home of doleful ballads about love, faith and sacrifice.

Here, as elsewhere in the US, people worry about Iraq.

But unless they have sons or daughters serving there, most of them remain emotionally detached - and they never have to think about what the arrival of a marine in a white van means.

Marine First Staff Sergeant Chad Bilyeu is a delivery man of sorts. But with a knock on the door, what he delivers is the worst kind of news.

As a casualty information officer for the 3rd Battalion of the US Marine Corps, based in Nashville, he has the task of telling families that their son or daughter, brother or sister, has died.

He has now made 11 personal visits of this kind - one of them, a little over a year ago, to Tammy and Steven Delle.......