A somber reminder grows in Ga.

FORT STEWART, Ga. -- Jamie Burgess looked at the young trees lining the windswept marching ground. Three hundred and thirty-six eastern redbuds, each dedicated to a soldier from the Third Infantry Division who had died in Iraq, stretched west to east in long, orderly rows along concrete sidewalks.

"Look at just how big this is," whispered Burgess, 23, from Merrimack, N.H., whose husband, Corporal Joshua Burgess, is serving in Iraq with the Third Infantry Division.

It is not big enough. As the US death toll in Iraq grows, Fort Stewart plants new trees to commemorate its fallen soldiers at the memorial founded in May 2003. At the time , President Bush celebrated the end of major fighting under a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," and Fort Stewart planted the first 34 eastern redbuds to pay tribute to the soldiers killed when the Third Infantry Division led the invasion of Iraq. Four years later, as the United States grapples with the escalating cost of violence that shows no sign of receding, the division continues to lose soldiers, and trees are quickly filling up the marching ground.

Late last month, with the Third Infantry Division deployed to Iraq for the third time and the existing walkways running out of space, Fort Stewart commanders began constructing a new concrete path, long enough to accommodate 96 more trees. But each time they expand the memorial, called Warrior's Walk, garrison commanders are also sending a somber reminder to the thousands of soldiers' families who live on and around the base. Of all the evidence that their loved ones are in harm's way -- their own empty homes; the Army base deserted except for a few troops and civilians; the yellow ribbons adorning trees, lampposts, and businesses -- the growing rows of trees make the reality of war the most palpable.

"If we go out there and start building additional walks, the subtle message is that we expect many, many, many more casualties," said Colonel Todd Buchs, garrison commander of Fort Stewart. "It's a very sensitive issue."

With Iraqi insurgents using increasingly sophisticated bombs to mount deadly attacks against American troops, the Third Infantry Division, according to Buchs' s grim calculations, may have to plant many more trees before its 22,000 soldiers return home in 2008. Fort Stewart commanders hold solemn dedications at the memorial almost monthly, commemorating the latest deaths. Ten trees were planted last month to pay tribute to soldiers killed in May. On July 19, the commanders will plant 12 more trees honoring soldiers killed in June.

"When you look at those numbers, we wouldn't have enough spaces to put new trees," Buchs said.

More than four years after the Third Infantry Division planted the first redbuds, "my question is, man, the people who had planned that, did they have any idea how it would grow?" said Karen Clayton, 44, whose husband, Lieutenant Colonel Duane Clayton, 49, deployed to Baghdad in March. Clayton, from Hinesville, Ga., visits the memorial at least once a month, each time Fort Stewart dedicates a new tree.

"At the time no one knew how long Iraq would last," said Michael Biering, the director of public works at Fort Stewart who oversees the memorial.

Approximately 3,000 soldiers' families live in Fort Stewart, and thousands of others, like Burgess, live nearby and often visit the base. As Burgess walked past the trees on a recent day, she paused in front of an eastern redbud to read the dedication to a soldier who was killed by a roadside bomb in 2005. The words: "CPL William Lopez-Feliciano. Iraqi Freedom" were etched into a granite marker. Someone had stuck a little Puerto Rican flag and a white plastic flower in a green plastic vase in the ground at the base of the tree.

"Josh's a corporal, too," Burgess said quietly, trying on somebody else's grief. On a tree a few paces away, a wind chime rang in the wind.

Many relatives of the soldiers commemorated on Warrior's Walk return here to remember their loved ones, the way they would visit a grave.

Brigit Smith, widow of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantry during the Iraq invasion, drives up five times a year from her home in Florida to visit her husband's tree, Buchs said.

Tiffany Little, 25, whose husband, Specialist Kyle Little of West Boylston, was killed in Iraq in May, has come here twice: for the dedication ceremony June 21 and again, two weeks later, just to sit in the grass next to his tree.

Little, who is expecting their daughter, Kylie, in November, said she plans to make the six-hour drive to Fort Stewart from her home in Alabama at least twice a month.

"He's buried in Massachusetts, and I can't take her there every weekend," Little said in a telephone interview. "So we have a place here to come and talk to him."

Captain Travis Corey, 34, a rear detachment commander for one of the battalions of the Third Infantry Division and a Shrewsbury native, said he sometimes strolls among the trees to think of the 10 men his unit has lost in Iraq.

But some soldiers say the trees evoke memories that are too difficult to bear.

"I've never walked it; I can't bring myself to do it," Corporal Derek Dalessio, 23, an East Longmeadow native, wrote in an e-mail from Hit, Iraq.

Dalessio's battalion has lost 15 soldiers since the war began, and granite markers at the bases of 15 trees on Warrior's Walk bear his comrades' names.

Amy Lambert, 40, who returns to the memorial often to replace old, tattered pennants at the foot of each tree with new flags, said she has learned to see the ever-growing alleys as "just part of life."

"As long as we're over there, as long as the war is happening, the trees are going to continue," said Lambert, from Duluth, Minn., whose husband, Sergeant First Class Scott Lambert, 38, from Lowell, will deploy to Iraq in August.

Anna Badkhen can be reached at abadkhen@globe.com