he s nbc s kevin tibbles. reporter: one foot in front of the other on a march of remembrance. former army captain glen dare carries the names of fallen friends on his fully loaded pack. it makes you wonder why did i get to come back? so my purpose now is to try to carry their mission on. reporter: he walks with others for a veterans support group called carry the load which organizes marches nationwide to raise awareness of the true meaning of memorial day. it s not just one day a year we think about them or honor them, we think about them all the time. reporter: one of the names he carries is of faearmy major stet wolfer, killed in iraq in 2008. wolfer s family saw this photo of dare last year. in an ad for r carry the load posted at a local bank. i burst into tears. it was mind-boggling. reporter: the charity put them in touch with one another. and this year, the wolfers
and this is your mom. yes. reporter: right. and back here some of sergeant smith s buddies in the marine corps, in the same unit he was in. tell us, sir, who are you, give everybody your name. my name is casey. he was a fantastic marine. he was the kind of marine that everyone wanted to be like and he was a great leader. reporter: he was in your unisnun unit. it was our first deployment, he was a great person to take us in and horrible to lose him, but definitely learned a lot from him and we ll carry out his legacy. reporter: on this memorial day, would you have been anywhere else but here? no. no. reporter: this is where you wanted it all to be, with him? yes. reporter: that s what we re seeing from so many of the troops that have come here to visit their friends, fallen friends, colleagues, battle buddies, a lot of them tell us they wouldn t be anywhere else
newsroom begins right now. all right. straight ahead we re going to talk about the cnn debate, the tea party republican debate. we ll talk a little bit later about this this hour. but first we want to let you know that the president of the united states is expected to speak in just a few minutes on this, the tenth anniversary of the september 11th terrorist attacks. you re looking live now at the kennedy center in washington, d.c. this is going to be a concert for hope in washington and as soon as this gets under way when the president makes his remarks we re going to bring that event, in part, to you live right here on cnn so don t go anywhere. but before that, i want to tell you about a developing story. it is about the war in afghanistan. it began less than a month after 9/11 and today a reminder that tens of thousands of americans remain in harm s way there. a suicide bombing at a base in eastern afghanistan has wounded as many as 77 american troops and killed at l