Two thousand eight hundred and eight. That’s the number of American war dead, in a country we have long portrayed as — even mocked for being — too afraid of body bags.

Twenty thousand six hundred and eighty-seven. That’s the tally of wounded. Unlike Britain’s 119 fatalities in the war on terror, many of these men and women are not even career soldiers. Instead they are part-timers who typically signed up to bolster low incomes or help pay college fees, never thinking they would end up in Afghanistan or Iraq.

This is a story from the quietly bleeding communities of main-street America, about ordinary people. One weekend’s drill a month, plus two weeks during the summer, is what these recruits might have expected. That, and serving their neighbours during storms, fires, earthquakes and civil disturbances.

They represent small-town America, and in the past, presidents were afraid to send them to war. Not this one, though: nearly half the troops in Iraq have been reservists.

Now about 600 part-timers are dead, compared with 100 fatalities among Guardsmen during the Vietnam war, and none — except for illness and accidents — during the first Gulf conflict.

Nowhere knows this better than the tiny town of Hallstead (population 1,216) in the Pennsylvanian rust belt, where industry used to be king but mountains are now the main attraction. The entire community was getting ready to bury one dead Guardsman when news came through that the area had lost another five. Per head of population, this part of America has lost more civilian soldiers than any other.

Distress is nothing new here. At first look Hallstead seems to be thriving — its modest shopping mall is busy. But that’s because taxes are lower here than in New York state, so people cross the border for tobacco and petrol.

Leave the mall for Hallstead proper and you enter Bruce Springsteen country. The song Youngstown, about a town that produced raw materials for tanks and bombs to win the second world war, only to be ravaged when the steel mills shut down, could have been written for this place.

The young man who made the president’s war real in Hallstead was Billy Evans, 22, who is number 2,102 in the list of American fatalities. He died in Baghdad after a bomb exploded near his Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

As a photographer whose dream was to work for National Geographic, he had joined the Guard to pay for college. In the depressed little towns that dot the Blue Ridge mountains in his home state, that decision is typical: if you don’t find work in a school, hospital or stone quarry, military service is about the only option.

He was scared by Iraq. One year later the grief over his death remains raw. “Give me five seconds to say I love you, and to hold you one more time,” is the longing expressed by Judy, his mother. “I love you, and still wish I could hear you say — just one more time — ‘You too, Mom, you too’.”

In a place like this, the price of war is public: many families have a member who worked, hunted, or went to school with one of the dead.

Nine days after the loss of Evans, another makeshift bomb blew up another Bradley. This ignited the vehicle’s fuel, which set off the ammunition, killing five young men recruited from around Hallstead.

We find Scott Wiegand, father of one of the dead, in a camper van. It is three days before the first anniversary of the death of his son Lee, and until now he has not given an interview. When he begins to speak he does not stop. This is a father who won custody of his children when they were seven and eight; he raised them. He has taken as many blows as a 50-year-old can bear. First he loses his 20-year-old son, then he loses his job of 18 years, then his home is destroyed in a flood. He can cope with losing his home — after all, when you’ve marked your son’s 21st birthday by pouring a bottle of beer into his grave and talking to him through the soil, who cares about a house? But he does not give interviews, he says, because he would hate himself for exploiting Lee’s story to gain some fleeting comfort for himself. Although the tears come and go as he answers a reporter’s questions for the first time, he shows a dignified strength — refusing to name the employer who made him redundant, for example.

Hallstead has suffered, then. And yet there is little anger. “I did not see any anger from anybody,” says Pam Krayeski, a cafe owner whose son was at school with Lee Wiegand and Billy Evans. Even the parents seem accepting: while Lee’s mother left stones daubed with anti- war slogans around her son’s grave, the general view is that she is unwell, and she was quietly persuaded to remove them.

Nobody mentions the war profiteers, such as the CEOs of defence contractors who are paying themselves as much as £50m a year, (including a maker of bulletproof vests who awarded himself a rise of 13,349%). Nobody expresses resentment of the president, who escaped Vietnam by mysteriously bypassing a long waiting list to join the Guard himself, 12 days before he was due to be drafted. Instead, there is an ardour to honour the fallen. This is partly out of a desire to comfort the families, but also out of a patriotism that would bemuse anyone from Britain, until you understand that it is much more thoughtful than it looks.

“Before the Iraq war I thought patriotism was dying,” says Chris Hardy, a carpenter and self-described “malcontent” who is no lover of Bush. “But people think, ‘We’ve lost some of our own. We know these kids.’ Right or wrong, they’re our people — our friends’ sons. You have to give them the respect they deserve. Set your politics aside. You have to honour those men.”

Scott Wiegand agrees, saying that he has noticed a rise in patriotism among the young — the constituency that in Britain would be most anti-war. To a European, the anxiety felt about terrorism by residents of this rural town might seem ludicrous. But then Europeans have short memories. It is two hours’ drive from Hallstead to New York city, and some of the emergency workers attending 9/11 came from this area.

Wiegand’s tearfulness has two triggers. One, naturally, is to talk about his son. The other is to describe how the community around him has reacted. At the start of every day, for example, the caretaker of the tourist information centre performs a ritual in which he places seven heavy stones, each engraved with the name of a dead Guardsman, under trees. He carries one stone at a time and salutes each. Nobody asked William Warner to do this; somehow it just seemed right.

Like Wiegand, the caretaker lost everything in the recent flood, but this has not stopped him from carrying out his ritual. “He’s a great American,” says Del Austin, who raised the money for one of several local memorials, something he felt impelled to do, despite disapproving of the invasion of Iraq.

I visit the local newspaper office and, like a refreshing breath of disrespectful air, find the editor playing online poker. Is there an anti-war movement in the area? The editor asks his one and only reporter, who thinks for a moment. “If there is,” says Barbara Whitehead, “I don’t know about it.”

This is not the only surprise. I explain to some drinkers in a bar that British people don’t really honour their troops. We’re busy with normal life, and besides, we do not approve of the war. They look at me as if I am from the Dark Ages. This is the error America made during Vietnam, they say. Some people spat at the returning soldiers and called them child killers, when they were just boys doing their duty.

To support the soldiers does not imply agreement with the war or with President Bush, says Chris Hardy. “It implies that they did what they were asked to do. They gave everything. They should be heroes to you people.”

Bush is lucky. America feels solidarity with its sons and daughters so politicians are free to put them at risk. Respect for the dead, and for those who are still in the line of fire, means that criticism of the Iraq adventure is muted.

That is why Lee Wiegand’s mother agreed to remove the anti-war slogans with which she had decorated his grave. To question why her only son died just upset people.

We have something to learn from Hallstead. But perhaps this respectful little town has something to learn from us, too. A generation after Vietnam, America is trapped. The people want their boys and girls home. But to take to the streets and make a fuss would be to betray the 2,808 who have already died.

America's wars

Total American military deaths by conflict (including non-theatre)

US civil war (1861-1865) 498,332*
Second world war (1941-1945) 405,399
Korean war (1950-1953) 54,246
Vietnam war (1964-1975) 90,209
Operation Desert Shield/ Desert Storm (1990-1991) 1,972
Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-present) 2,808 as of 26/10/06

*Does not include 26,000-31,000 soldiers who died in Union prisons

Source: US Department of Defence