The soldiers were lined up more than 100 deep at Laflamme Dental Clinic on Fort Bragg on the morning of May 28.

The strangers ringing Shana Crumpler's doorbell in Hope Mills the evening of March 1 didn't worry her. They probably had the wrong house.

She was starting to cook dinner - chicken wings, macaroni and corn - so she sent her 11-year-old daughter, Hannah, to the door.

But the two strangers in uniforms asked for Shana by name. They asked her to sit down. And they asked to see her marriage license.

She doesn't remember much of the conversation. The man talking to her struggled to say the words. No, her husband wasn't hurt. It was worse.

Shana knew these men were lying, or mistaken.

Josiah, an 82nd Airborne Division infantryman from Hillsborough, had promised his bride he would come home safe from Afghanistan.

He promised.

Shana thought about a movie she'd seen recently called "Brothers," in which a wife is notified of her husband's death. But the husband in the movie had been captured, not killed, and he later returned home.

Maybe that's the case with Josiah, she thought. Maybe he's hiding in a cave, waiting for the right time to come back.

But the men on her couch said otherwise.

Her husband, the man she met 10 months ago and married three months later, was killed when his patrol came under attack in Badghis province in northwest Afghanistan.

Another man in Crumpler's unit, Spc. Matthew Huston, died in the same attack.

Seven men from the 82nd Airborne Division's 4th Brigade Combat Team have died in Afghanistan since Feb. 1. The war is heating up in southern Afghanistan, where most of the brigade is stationed.

It's people like Shana Crumpler who know the cost.

Seeing her new husband go to war was tough enough.

Josiah had quickly become part of the family. Shana had a son and daughter from a previous marriage. Josiah went to all of Hannah's softball games and practices. Hannah bragged to her friends about her stepdad's big muscles.

He assembled Seth's swing set in the yard and took the 4-year-old boy to see the movie "Up."

"When he left, it felt like God took my best friend away," she said.

Crumpler was four weeks from his two-week R&R break. Shana was counting down the days.

The two were going to take Hannah and Seth to play at Great Wolf Lodge resort near Charlotte.

In August, when he came home, they were going to take a cruise for their anniversary. Shana had already put in for vacation days at work.

And they were going to have another wedding ceremony, this one much bigger.

Now, Shana's life seems broken. She has her wedding album, her photo on the nightstand of the two of them from the weekend at Myrtle Beach. She looks back at their honeymoon in Charleston, where Josiah took her on a romantic carriage ride.

She's often glued to the computer, staring at Josiah's Facebook profile or reading the e-mails he sent her. The tears come often. She can't be alone. Sometimes she has fleeting thoughts of joining Josiah in the afterlife.

"There's a piece of the puzzle missing," she said. "I feel like we could've had a lot, could've grown together."

She wishes she could know exactly what happened. What were his last words? Did his death keep anyone else safe?

The last time Shana spoke to her husband was Feb. 14, her birthday.

"He said, 'Happy birthday.' I said, 'Thanks and happy Valentine's Day,' " Shana remembers. He said a bunch of guys were in line to use the phone, so he had to make it quick.

"He said, 'I love you.' I said, 'I love you, too.' And that was about it."

It wasn't supposed to be goodbye.