The death of a soldier, the end of a life, is the beginning of a story. Across Iraq and Afghanistan, on remote forward observation bases and combat outposts, American soldiers depended on each other.

Thrown together, they breathed the same air, shared the same dreams of home, faced the same enemy. Many, too many, lived shortened lives.

In Wisconsin on an early autumn morning, Kermit Hugo hears a knock, peers through a window, see soldiers wearing dress blue uniforms standing at his front door . .

. Marine Sergeant Bob Kugler, serving in Iraq just a few miles from his brother Mike, collapses at the news-Mike has been killed .

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On a summer day in California, Misty Herrera Fuoco watches the news, wonders if her sister, Marine Sergeant Nicole Gee, survived the suicide bomber's attack at Hamid Karzai airport . .

. Colleen Whipple from Oklahoma, and Helen Keiser-Pedersen from Connecticut.

They watch soldiers walk toward them, their sons killed side by side in the same attack in the mountains of Afghanistan . .

. A helicopter shot down in Afghanistan, the 38 men, and a military combat canine aboard, are killed.

Navy SEAL Commander Mark Oz delivers the news to Patricia Parry, Brian her son, is one of the 38 . .

. When a son or daughter, sister, brother, husband, wife, mother or father is in the military, the whole family is too.

That's the way it works. Sacrifice shares the stories of people who gave us those soldiers.

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