"Eyes Wide Open" Memorial In Austin

"Eyes Wide Open:The Human Cost of War"

The American Friends Service Committee is striving to put a price tag on the human cost of the war in Iraq.

The committee put that price tag on display Tuesday in Austin's Zilker Park Peace Grove. The memorial will last until Thursday.

The "Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War" traveling memorial currently consists of 1,462 1,464 1,467 1,472 1,478 1,485 pairs of empty combat boots, arranged by state in parallel rows resembling the layout of a military graveyard. Each pair of boots represents a soldier who died in Iraq and is marked with a name tag stating the name, age, home state and rank of each soldier.

The memorial, which first opened in January 2004 in Chicago and contained 504 pairs of boots, is constantly evolving, as more pairs of boots are added to the exhibit as the death toll rises.

"As the exhibit travels across the country, families and friends come to grieve for lost loved ones and strangers who gave their lives to a cause far from home," AFSC General Secretary Mary Ellen McNish said in a written statement. "At each stop, people have left notes of commemoration, photographs of lost soldiers, identification tags, flowers and American flags to accompany the boots on their journey."

Also included in the memorial is a display of more than 1,000 other shoes including loafers, flip flops and baby sneakers, and a wall of names and causes of death representing civilian losses in Iraq. Newly added is a display of caps in honor of fallen contractors and the full military regalia of Marine Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey, who returned from Iraq in July 2003 and hanged himself a year later.

"The exhibit is a memorial to all the victims of the Iraq war," AFSC spokeswoman Yvonne Montejano said. "There are the soldiers, the civilians, the contractors and the suicides by Iraq veterans. We are trying to highlight and bring voice to the human and psychological aspects of war."