TRURO, N.S. — It's quiet at the cenotaph.

Sitting on a small rise in the centre of town, the statue of a solitary soldier, his head bowed, looks downcast as life hums along nearby.

No one approaches the simple monument to war's dead on a day when golden sunlight streams through fall leaves and a stiff wind blows by. But that will change on Remembrance Day when thousands of people are expected to gather here to pay their respects to generations of military lives lost.

And, some say, this community will feel a particularly keen sense of loss as it remembers four young men whose deaths have shaken its residents and made Afghanistan's distant war a very real part of their lives.

"You can feel it. You can hear it. Out on the street, everybody talks about it," Leo Boudreau, president of the local legion, says at the steps of the memorial to the First and Second World Wars.

"We are one of the communities that's been really hit the hardest."

On Nov. 11, in addition to the 275 names inscribed on the monument, people will honour Canada's most recent combat casualties, four of whom grew up in or had ties to this central Nova Scotia community.

Warrant Officer Frank Mellish, a 38-year-old father of two who died along with three other Canadian soldiers on Sept. 3 in fierce fighting with insurgents near Kandahar, was born in Truro; Cpl. Christopher Reid, a 34-year-old soldier who was one of four Canadians killed in attacks near Kandahar on Aug. 2., was born and raised in the town where his family still lives; Sgt. Darcy Tedford, a 32-year-old father of two who died in a Taliban ambush Oct. 14, was raised in nearby Earltown; and Pte. Nathan Smith, who was killed in 2002 when an American pilot dropped a bomb on his troop in Kandahar, has parents who live in nearby Tatamagouche.

It is an unusually high toll that resonates with Truro's 12,000 residents, weeks after news of the most recent death spread quickly through town.

"It moves the whole question of war from being something that someone observes on TV to something that's real and extends out and touches all kinds of people," said Father Ron Cairns, a priest at the Immaculate Conception Church, adding that if someone didn't know the soldiers, they usually knew someone who did.

"I've had parents in tears whose children are serving overseas without any harm, but they're markedly concerned and they live with this."

Cairns, who saw more than 600 people fill his church recently for a special mass for Mellish and his family, said Truro has become a microcosm of what he senses is happening across the country - that people are beginning to come to grips with the fact that their country is at war.

"There's a dawning awareness of the real cost of war. It's new for Canada and it's new for this generation and our society to have body bags coming home and to be burying the dead. I mean, that's going back 60 years. I think the reality is just coming home."

That deepening awareness has shown itself in different ways, say Cairns and Boudreau. Cars bear the telltale yellow stickers saluting Canadian Forces. Talk in local coffee shops invariably shifts to the Afghan conflict. Religious leaders mention the losses in their sermons. And, people send hundreds of letters to families of the fallen.

"There's such an outpouring of love and support and sympathy toward our family," said Sandy Mellish, who lost her son. "I'm sure we've received 400 cards. People care - it's evident that they care - but nothing cuts that pain, nothing. But people are trying hard to help."

Mellish and her husband, who served in the military, have always attended Remembrance Day services, whether the family was in Truro, Cape Breton, or Summerside, P.E.I., where Frank spent his teen years and met his future wife, Kendra, who he started dating when they were 13 years old and in air cadets.

Mellish said the ceremonies should give people across the country a chance to show their appreciation for the troops now in Afghanistan and the 42 Canadian soldiers who have been killed there since 2002.

"I think everyone who walks the streets of Canada free owes my son a thank you," she said from her home. "If they don't mention it verbally, then it should be in their hearts."

The Reid and Mellish families plan on laying wreaths at the Truro cenotaph, Boudreau said. Tom Reid, Christopher's father, said he will be there, just like he is every year, but hoped to keep a low profile in the midst of up to 5,000 people.

There, too, will be veterans who know well what these families are going through and are being reminded of their own service overseas as young soldiers who fought frightening battles.

"I know exactly what it's all about," said 86-year-old Herb Peppard, who fought in southern France and Italy in the Second World War. "I've seen buddies killed and everything. I know just how the mothers at home and the wives must feel. It's terrible.

"Are people feeling this loss? Yes, very much. They are feeling it. They're kind of alarmed that so many people from a small area are being killed."

In ways, it shouldn't be surprising.

Less than three per cent of the national population lives in Nova Scotia, but more than 16 per cent of the country's soldiers killed in Afghanistan came from the province, according to one report.

That makes Nova Scotia the second highest province per capita for the number of soldiers killed in the Afghan conflict.

"It's not an honour, but it makes you feel patriotic, I guess," said Boudreau. "We look at this cenotaph and there are 275 names engraved on it and the names of the fellows from here are not there, but certainly on the 11th of November they'll be remembered here, just like the 275.

"They'll be part of our thoughts."