"We deal with death here," said Col. John Devillier, commander of Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations, or AFMAO, the Dover, Del.-based organization that serves as the Defense Department's primary mortuary. "This is a tough place to work. There's no other organization in the DOD that sees the war the way we do.

"I cry a lot," he said.

One of his veteran sergeants had to stop to compose herself when asked about how she deals with facing so many fallen troops.

"I try not to put too much into it," said Master Sgt. Elvira Jameson, who helps dress remains for burial in picture-perfect uniforms. "Sometimes, there's no way around it. You see things that are there; you've just got to look through it, and press on."

Jameson, a member of Dover's 512th Airlift Wing who has been temporarily assigned to mortuary affairs operations five times, was here when the military and civilian casualties from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks began arriving. "That was devastating," she said.

Devillier and his 108 workers operate what amounts to the Defense Department's No. 1 funeral home. Next door, the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, or AFMES, conducts autopsies and forensic examinations and, upstairs, operates the military's largest DNA lab.

It's tough work that wears on even the steeliest minds. Workers at civilian morgues and funeral homes rarely see the sorts of devastation that war can wreak on a body.

"I must admit, I was shocked. I was just shocked," said Army Col. Ladd Tremaine, a forensic pathologist and the director of AFMES, referring to 2006, his first year with the organization. "It's really hard to process and describe. I mean, they're feelings."

For Navy Capt. Stephen Robinson, a veteran medical pathologist who's been with AFMES since 2004, a difficult moment came when one of the troops shared his son's name.

"One of the decedents had my son's name. Same name. Very disturbing. Especially since he was about the same age my son was then. ... That one bothered me for a couple of weeks, actually."

It's important, some workers say, to not push the sadness away but rather acknowledge it, and allow oneself to feel empathy for the fallen.

"You have good days and bad days with it," said the 512th's Senior Master Sgt. Antoinette Worthey, who has been assigned to AFMAO about 10 times since 2003 and, like Jameson, worked a variety of jobs, such as overseeing the placement of dressed remains into caskets. "If you're ever to the point where you don't have those bad days, it's probably not the place for you to work."

In August of 2007, C. Douglas Sterner's attention was drawn to a story in a Connecticut newspaper about a decorated Vietnam veteran at the forefront of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe's fledgling casino pursuit.

Of interest to Sterner, himself the recipient of two Bronze Stars in that war, was a reference to then Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council Chairman Glenn Marshall earning not only the Silver Star, one of the military's highest honors, but also five Purple Hearts — the medal given to soldiers and Marines injured by the enemy in battle.

Something in that story in The Day newspaper didn't jibe with Sterner, who has worked for nearly a decade to do what the military has never done — create a database of medal recipients called the Hall of Valor. He'd never heard of the Marines handing out so many Purple Hearts.

He used his connections to do some research and quickly found Marshall's story had the all-too-familiar whiff of a phony. He tried, with little success, to tell The Day reporter she'd been duped.

Six days later, the Cape Cod Times reported Marshall's biography was littered with embellishments. He had indeed served in Vietnam, but for four months. His frequently told story about being at the Battle of Khe Sanh in the spring of 1968 — to Vietnam-era Marines what Iwo Jima was to the few and proud in World War II — was completely bogus. Marshall was a senior at Lawrence High School in Falmouth while Marines fought back against the 77-day onslaught, the Times reported.

Marshall's lying, as well as a 1980 rape that was also uncovered by the Times, led to him initially stepping aside temporarily as tribe chairman and, ultimately, being ousted.

Sterner's role in uncovering Marshall's embellishments is detailed in a chapter of a new book written by him, his wife Pam Sterner and author Michael Mink called "Restoring Valor." The book is due to be released early next month by Skyhorse Publishing in New York.

"Stolen valor is still misunderstood. A lot of people see it as harmless — soldiers tell war stories — and not being as prevalent as it is or a major concern," Sterner said. "I took this on to help people realize that it is a prevalent and serious problem. It's not the lie. It's what they use it for."

MACON, Ga. - A model ship in a large glass display case dominates the lobby of the former Macon City Hall: the USS Macon, a World War II-era cruiser named for the city.

Yet that was not the only USS Macon. Another U.S. Navy vessel, even larger than the 674-foot warship, plied the skies a decade before the cruiser was commissioned.

Despite that, no local monument stands to the rigid-framed, helium-filled dirigible that crashed into the Pacific Ocean on Feb. 12, 1935.

The flying USS Macon was a bold experiment, leading-edge technology for its time, said Bill Stubkjaer, curator of the Moffett Field Museum in Sunnyvale, Calif.

During its short working career, the airship was based at the field later named for U.S. Navy Adm. William Moffett, an advocate of airships killed in the 1933 crash of the USS Akron, the USS Macon's sister ship.

At one time, years ago, a large photograph of the airship USS Macon -- designated the ZRS-5 -- hung in City Hall, recently renamed the Macon-Bibb County Government Center. But where that picture went, no one seems to know.

Commissioner Ed DeFore, who served 42 years as a Macon city councilman before taking a seat on the new Macon-Bibb County Commission, said he has a vague memory of it as one of many displays that cycled through City Hall. A picture may also have hung at the city's Downtown Airport, he said.

But airport manager Doug Faour said someone familiar with local aviation history told him the USS Macon's picture was displayed at City Hall and not at the airport.

Nor is it commemorated at the Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins, said Bill Paul, the museum's collections manager.

"I don't think we really have anything on it," he said. But there are a few things at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla., Paul said.