Tomorrow, Veterans Day, volunteers will fan out on the slope of the Prospect Hill Cemetery facing George Street and add 97 flags to the thousands of others planted in the grass.

The total number of flags will top 5,000.

One each for every American soldier's life lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is the fourth year the flags have had to be updated.

Four years and thousands of flags.

It wasn't meant to be a permanent fixture. It still isn't.

Jack Sommer, general manager of the cemetery, launched it in August 2005. That month, in two separate attacks, five Pennsylvania National Guardsmen were killed in Iraq. Sommer thought the cemetery should so something to honor them and their sacrifice.

The cemetery has been around since 1849 and is the final resting place of veterans of every American war. Sommer said you can walk through the cemetery and see markers for veterans of the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, the Civil War and every other conflict in this nation's history.

It's inspiring, he said.

He hatched the idea of planting flags in the hillside facing North George Street. The cemetery had the flags. On Memorial Day every year, it plants flags on all of the gravesites of veterans. Under state law -- it's a long, convoluted story -- the cemetery is required to take the flags down on July 5. Sommer figured the cemetery could put those flags to good use.

"We had the flags," he said. "So we thought it'd be a good idea."

That first year, the cemetery staff planted 1,500 flags to honor the men and women killed in Iraq. It seemed like a lot of flags then, a lot of lives sacrificed.

He figured the display would be temporary, something that would fade as the war wound down. Sommer said he had an idea that the display would quickly become a part of local lore, a bittersweet tradition, honoring the loss of life in the service of the nation.

The following year, the display grew. And the year after that, the cemetery added flags to honor those who gave their lives in Afghanistan. The first year, he reasoned, "a lot of us assumed Afghanistan was over."

It wasn't.

Last year and this year, in fact, the cemetery has planted more flags honoring those who lost their lives in Afghanistan than those who perished in Iraq.

The display attracts a lot of attention. Sommer said truck drivers going past will stop, parking their rigs at the Central Family Restaurant up the street, and take photos of the display. Family members of fallen soldiers will stop. Veterans of other wars tell him how much the display means to them.

The display has grown to the point that it's getting difficult to find room for all of the flags. "We've had to change (it) to get 5,000 flags into the area," Sommer said. "It takes a bit of engineering."

This year, as in the past couple of years, volunteers put up the flags in the spring and will take them down for the winter. The Gold Star families get involved, as do school groups and veterans.

The growth isn't something Sommer relishes.

Every flag represents a death. Every flag represents broken hearts.

The display isn't meant to be political. It's not meant to express support of the war, or protest it. The meaning is simple - honoring those who served.

"Whatever your view on the war, we do not want to make the mistake we made a generation ago," he said.

The men and women who serve, he said, are doing their jobs. If you're against the war or think it was a horrible mistake, blame lies elsewhere, not on the shoulders of the men and women who volunteered for service.

Looking at the display, you cannot help but feel a sense of loss, a sense of sadness for all of those lives sacrificed in what history will most certainly record as perhaps the most misguided misadventure in this nation's history.

So many lives.

Sommer said he longs for the day when the display will no longer be necessary, when the cemetery staff can pack it away and look for a way to honor the fallen veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan in an appropriate manner, one that reflects the war as history, not current events.

"I think that's something we hoped for from the first day we put it up," Sommer said. "We hope that time comes. I think everybody hopes that time comes."

Mike Argento's column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints. Reach him at mike@ydr.com or 771-2046. Read more Argento columns at www.inyork.com/ydr -- click on the opinion section -- or visit his blog at www.mikeargento.com.