A bad month in Afghanistan sends ripples across the U.S.

Every afternoon, seven days a week, Ed Epley has a 5 p.m. appointment with the war.

He pulls a protest sign from his maroon 1961 Volkswagen bus — he has 30 to 40 signs stashed inside — and joins a one-hour peace vigil at the Benton County courthouse in Corvallis, Ore. Epley has been doing this, day in and day out, since the U.S. launched its first airstrikes on Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001.

"I really don't look at it as a job, it's just part of the daily task of being a citizen," says the 73-year-old retiree.

More than eight years later, this small, 365-day-a-year vigil may seem quixotic. But it stands apart for another reason: It has kept a steadfast focus on the war. Even though hundreds of thousands of troops have served, even though more than 800 members of the military have died, the marathon war in Afghanistan has, for long stretches, been off the nation's radar.

But one terrible month changed all that.

A record number of deaths in October forced the nation to take new notice of Afghanistan as debate raged over whether President Barack Obama should send tens of thousands more troops there.

The deaths of 62 Americans — including three federal agents — in ambushes, roadside bombs and helicopter crashes turned a spotlight on an often overlooked reality: The war is forever shaping lives here.

In the month of October, that was painfully clear as young children learned their fathers were gone; as young men who not long ago donned high school football uniforms were mourned; as some soldiers came home, and others prepared to leave for a war that began its ninth year.

In these 31 days, the war rippled across America.

Afghanistan ambush

The attack was quick and brazen.

With guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells, hundreds of insurgents stormed a remote U.S.-Afghan outpost deep in the mountains of northeast Afghanistan. They attacked simultaneously from three sides — a mosque, buildings and a perch on high ground in the Kamdesh district.

The fighting at Combat Outpost Keating lasted almost six hours; rocket and machine gun fire left large parts of the base in flames.

When the deadliest battle in more than a year was over, scores of insurgents were dead, but so were eight Americans and three Afghan soldiers; 24 other Americans were among the injured.