DAVID GREENE, Host:
Back in the U.S., this was the scene before the first pitch of a minor league baseball game yesterday in Norfolk, Virginia.
(SOUNDBITE OF BASEBALL GAME)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we ask you all to rise and join us in a moment of silence for all of our service men and women who answered our nation's call to arms and made the ultimate sacrifice defending our freedom, including those U.S. Special Operations troops that tragically lost their lives in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
GREENE: Norfolk is home to many Navy SEALS and their families. And that community is in mourning after Saturday's helicopter crash that killed 30 U.S. troops, many of them SEALS. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling has been spending time in Norfolk today as well as Virginia Beach. He joins us now from Norfolk. Hi, Danny.
DANIEL ZWERDLING: Hi, David.
GREENE: You spent the day talking to a lot of people there. What is the mood, and what are people saying about this tragedy?
ZWERDLING: Well, here's the odd thing. There is no mood that I've been able to sense. You know, I was expecting that we would find trees with ribbons around them as we drove up to the main base where the SEALs are, or that we would find an impromptu memorial along the side of the road with flowers and photographs. And there's been none of that.
And we've talked to a number of people who know SEALs, people who have service people in their families, and everybody we talked to said this is really the SEAL way. They are very private. They're secretive, of course, and they want to mourn in private.
I talked to one woman who said that here and there in the neighborhoods you can see a few cars parked outside a SEAL's house, a sign perhaps that the SEAL who lived there was one of the people killed. A couple of folks we talked to said, you know, you have to remember that this is business as usual. They fight, they work on very secretive missions, very dangerous missions, and people die. And everybody in their families and in their community accepts that. Sadly accepts it, but accepts it.
GREENE: Wow. Sounds like that baseball game, the announcement, was one of the only sort of outward signs of grief. It sounds like there's this unbelievable show of stoicism. I mean, people just really aren't talking about what happened on the battlefield at all.
ZWERDLING: People didn't seem to want to talk about it. I prompted them. I don't know if you can hear in the background, there's the sound of murmur, people milling about.
GREENE: Yeah. A little bit.
ZWERDLING: At the moment, I'm at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum. Now, the USS Battleship Wisconsin, this huge battleship from World War II with giant guns, is docked right alongside us. And a woman who works with the SEALs and others said, if you want to talk to people who are passionate about the military, go to that museum.
So we've been talking to people in this museum, and here's the astonishing thing. Out of the 10 people I've talked to in the past hour, every single one of them said those men in Afghanistan are heroes, and it is time to bring all the troops home. One person after another, the elderly, young people, men, women, they all said this is not a war the U.S. is winning. We have not accomplished our goals, and it's time to get out. Now, we just talked to one woman whose husband is in the service, and she said, we are just simply losing too many wonderful young men and women who are wasting their lives over there.
GREENE: And are there memorials planned at some point there in Norfolk, and any public services at all?
ZWERDLING: I've heard of nothing. We drove past some churches, and I was expecting, okay, on the church signs they would show a sermon about this tragedy. You know, nothing. It was just the usual every Sunday sermon. I asked a PAO, a Public Affairs Officer at the naval base, is there any sort of memorial planned, and she said, we haven't heard a thing.
GREENE: Again, we've been listening to NPR's Daniel Zwerdling who's talking to us from Norfolk, Virginia. Danny, thank you.
ZWERDLING: David, thanks so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.