Out at Fort Lewis the Army has changed the way they’re memorializing the many dead soldiers.

Fort Lewis will shift to monthly group memorials -- rather than individual services -- for fallen soldiers, a change that reflects the mounting number of deaths as the post fields more than 10,000 soldiers in Iraq.

So far this month, the Army has announced the deaths of 19 Fort Lewis soldiers, including three whose names were made public Wednesday.

It is by far the deadliest month of the Iraq war for the post, which averaged fewer than three deaths a month for the first four years of the war. Post officials say the increased number of fallen soldiers has made it more difficult for rear detachments to pull off the planning and other logistics required for individual memorial services.

Fascinating. The Death Factory in Iraq is so productive that the Army can no longer stand the pace of individual memorial ceremonies. They’re going to the group hug system.

"As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm's way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies," wrote the post's acting commander, Brig. Gen. William Troy, in a May 22 memorandum, which was first made public on the Web site of United For Peace, Pierce County, a peace activist group.

The post memorial services are in addition to services held by the Iraq units of fallen soldiers, and graveside and church services held by families.

The post services, which include personal remembrances of the departed soldiers, are a wrenching reminder of the toll of the war. They draw from dozens to hundreds of mourners, and in about a third of the services, include the family of the fallen soldiers, according to Joe Piek, a post spokesman.

Where to start? The first public announcement comes from a peace group? Who wants to speculate how that memo got to them? I can understand why this memo wasn’t faxed out to every newspaper and wire service on the planet Earth, like they do every time they capture or kill the #2 al-Qaeda guy. Dead soldiers are not good news, after all, despite the fact that every dead GI probably means 10 Islamomunst jihadist Feedom-haters won’t get to make our basement chairborne commandos make skid marks in their shorts.

The appalling part is the regularization of the memorial ceremonies. Granted, time is tight on a base geared for combat but these were Ft Lewis troopers. The base was their home. They were family, and scheduling them all for once a month is revolting. It’s almost like tucking Uncle Ralph into the deep freeze to wait for Aunt Minnie, who’s on her last legs at the hospital.

Ft Lewis, being a home base, probably gets a lot of weeping women, and having them all in at once will make life simpler on the nerves and emotions of the CG.