US: On the day this week that crowds cheered John Kerry and John Edwards in Dayton on their swing through this battleground state, hundreds of people gathered in a basketball gymnasium in the village of Amelia outside Cincinnati, 50 miles away, for a more sombre event.
They filled rows of grey metal chairs for an evening Mass before an improvised altar - the adjacent Church of St Bernadette was too small for the occasion - in memory of Sgt Charles (Chuck) Kiser, a 37-year-old reservist killed in Iraq on June 24th.
In a homily, Father Hans Gruenbauer paid tribute to Sgt Kiser's act of heroism in shooting a suicide bomber in Mosul and saving other soldiers' lives while giving up his own in the explosion.
His brother-in-law spoke to the congregation of how, when called up from his job as a shift supervisor in a metal works, Mr Kiser had told him, "Don't cry for me - this is the highlight of my life."
He told of the unquestioning patriotism of the good-looking former high-school athlete, who had left behind a grieving family: his mother, Glenda, his five sisters, and his wife, Debra, and children Alicia (13) and Mark (10).
The war has also hit painfully close to home for another family in the heavily Republican greater Cincinnati area. Specialist Matt Maupin was kidnapped in Iraq on April 9th and reported executed last month.
The 20-year-old from nearby Batavia had joined the army Reserves to help finance his college education.
His mother, Carolyn, who has become a friend of Ms Glenda Kiser, said at an earlier service that Sgt Kiser's life "should be a reminder to us all that freedom is not free".
Ohio Republican Congressman Rob Portman, a close friend of Mr Bush, called Glenda Kiser last week to offer his condolences.
"She asked just one thing from me - that his death not be in vain, that we finish the job," he said.
Such sentiments show that in Ohio, with its strong military tradition, many people accepted the words of President Bush when he came to Cincinnati six months before the war and said that "confronting Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror".
Many observers feel, however, that the heavy price of the war is taking its toll on support for the President in the American heartlands and that, as the Cincinnati Enquirer put it, Iraq "is the subject that seems to be overshadowing all others at this point in the campaign".
"The war is the main issue here," said Jim Bebbington, a staff writer at the Dayton Daily News, as we waited in his office for a conference call with Congressman Portman on the Kerry-Edwards campaign.
Big crowds were going to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and "Democrats are coming out of the cinema levitating", said Bebbington.
But he believed there was only a tiny fraction of "undecideds" who might be influenced by the anti-Bush documentary.
Democrat Hugh Quill, the treasurer for Montgomery County, which includes Dayton, also said the war had become the dominant issue in Ohio, where the presidential election could be won or lost.
While many people like the Kisers were obviously patriotic and doing their duty, he detected "a growing resentment at the extension of the use of reservists for a war that showed a lack of planning and thoughtfulness". He had seen a lot of families being torn apart who had not expected lengthy call-ups.
Ohio would be decided by the 10 per cent of swing voters, predicted Quill, and the "huge misery index" from job losses.
Also, he said, the "unprecedented resolve and energy" of Democrats gave the Kerry campaign a "better than 60-40 chance" of winning the state, which went by three points to Bush in 2000.
Congressman Portman did not mention the war in his conference call, other than to say that both senators had voted against the $87 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq "which provided body armour" for the troops.
The ticket was "out of touch with kitchen-table issues," he said.
Kerry and Edwards were more liberal than Ted Kennedy. They opposed tax cuts which fuelled the economy. Trial lawyers like Edwards bankrupted great companies and made healthcare more expensive.
Driving between Dayton and Cincinnati, I heard the same points made more stridently by right-wing host Laura Ingram on the Talk Radio Network. She took calls from listeners who complained about criticism in the media of the Iraq war because it undermined the morale of American soldiers.
In a commercial break, the US army appealed for more volunteers from Ohio to join up for "duty, honour and country". It asked potential recruits to call 1-800-GO-GUARD.
As the Mass in Amelia ended, members of the congregation made the ritual greetings to those around them.
"Peace be with you," they said. Some just said "Peace".