HeraldOnline (www.heraldonline.com) has issued the following report from Matt Garfield:

A yellow ribbon hangs around a tree and a bouquet of flowers stands outside the house where Logan Tinsley used to live. On Wednesday, the tearful hugs and quiet words of comfort exchanged in his front yard were a testament to his family's worst fear: Logan isn't coming home.

Three weeks before he planned to get married during a furlough, Tinsley was killed when a roadside bomb sent his Humvee tumbling down a ravine south of Baghdad.

Tinsley, 21, was a medic with the U.S. Army's 509th Airborne Regiment based at Fort Richardson, Alaska. The specialist was serving an 18-month stint in Iraq that began in November.

The scene at Tinsley's home on Walnut Street on Wednesday was similar to others playing out across America as the second-deadliest month of the year for U.S. troops in Iraq winds down.

Boxes of fried chicken and bottles of soda sat on a card table in the front living room. Folding chairs waited nearby for the next visitors. A red ribbon on the front porch read, "Logan, Our Hero." Old classmates and relatives showed up all afternoon to console each other.

Through her sobs, Logan's mother, Lori Fairfax Tinsley, welcomed each one with a hug. But unlike many military moms, she is not just mourning the loss of her child. She is also preparing herself for another son, Ryan, to be deployed to Iraq.

"I had a dream a long time ago that the Army would come to my door, but I wouldn't know which son," she said. "I begged them not to come in, not to tell me Logan was dead."

Now it is Ryan's turn to go to war. At 18, he is scheduled to ship out in April with the Army's 82nd Airborne division as a "forward observer," responsible for calling in artillery drops and air strikes on hostile targets.

Friends and relatives are begging him not to do it. But between greeting visitors and answering cell phone calls on Wednesday afternoon, Ryan Tinsley talked stoically about his duty.

"My brother did his part," Ryan said. "I'm doing mine."

U.S. Rep. John Spratt, who met Logan Tinsley when he was a decorated ROTC cadet at Chester High School, called the family Wednesday with condolences and an offer: To help take Ryan off the list of soldiers slated for deployment.

As much as it hurt, Lori Tinsley told Spratt she couldn't accept.

"I said, 'I've got to leave that to my son,'" Lori said. "I don't want my only son to be angry at me for keeping him from doing what he wants to do. He wants to fight even harder to vindicate his brother."

Word spreads quickly in a small town like Chester, and as the day wore on, classmates kept showing up at the house. They remembered a teenager who was often mischievous, sometimes even a bit crazy.

Joe Roberts remembers the day in 8th grade that he and Logan got caught writing raunchy song lyrics during band class. Logan played the French horn until he found an instrument he liked better.

"We both got guitars, and the rest is history," Roberts said.

James Lucas, known as "Big L," recalled the day he and Logan drove to Gastonia, N.C., to get matching tattoos saying "Cowboys from Hell" as a tribute to a song by their favorite heavy metal band, PANTER.

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