Yellow ribbons flapped briskly Thursday afternoon on the Freedom Bridge over Interstate 5 near the Fort Lewis gates. In the businesses near the post, it was eerily quiet.

A few soldiers sat tight-lipped and stone-faced in barber chairs. They politely declined to talk about the 5th Brigade’s deadliest day in Afghanistan, which took the lives of eight Fort Lewis soldiers.

Civilians and Army dependents who did talk described a stunning sense of loss.

“It’s very sad for all of us,” said Galloping Gerties restaurant waitress April Dean. “They’re part of our families. All of the Strykers. They come in here, we wait on them. We joke around with all of them.”

In her pocket she carried a slip of paper with the names of two soldiers. “Were they on the list?” she anxiously asked a reporter. She was relieved they weren’t. She pointed to newspaper clippings on the wall showing the faces and names of soldiers lost.

Army wife Kristine Doyle, 23, sees the lines of “notification” cars carrying officers with grim news winding through the post and prays her husband, a member of the 5th Brigade, remains safe.

“It’s depressing,” she said. “You cross your fingers and think, ‘Pass me, pass me, pass me,’ but at the other end, you know” they’re delivering devastating news to another family.

And so many of the wives are young, she said.

“They’re 19, 20,” she said. “They’re not even legal to drink, and they’re already dealing with loss.”