I spent two hours last night in the cold outside Dagon Funeral Home. There were three or four hundred people ahead of me, two retired schoolteachers behind me, and a congressman about a dozen people back.

When I left, in the cold dark, the line still stretched out the front door, left down the sidewalk, around the corner, and back for two blocks.

That’s how it is when a hero dies.

That’s how it is when a small town loses its first such hero. The first since Vietnam.

Lance Corporal Zack Smith was 19.

His high school sweetheart will be a widow on their first anniversary.

And the price of freedom will never be clearer than it was last night in the cold.