John Moore/Getty Images

After spending much of the last six years covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I felt like I needed to visit Arlington National Cemetery this Memorial Day weekend. I felt like I owed it some time.

I went with my family - my pregnant wife and my young daughter. Separately and together, my wife and I have covered a lot of heart-wrenching stories around the world, but Section 60 was unlike any place we had been.

The beauty and serenity of Virginia’s rolling hills and awe inspiring views of Washington D.C. clash with today’s reality of national loss, where grief is raw and in your face. You step over grass sods still taking root over freshly dug graves. You watch a mother kiss her son’s tombstone. Two soldiers put flowers and a cold beer next to the grave of a fallen buddy. A young son left a hand-written note for his dad. “I hope you like Heven, hope you liked Virginia very much hope you like the Holidays. I also see you every Sunday. Please write back!”

Section 60 is not about a troop surge or a war spending bill or whether we should be fighting these wars at all. It is about ordinary people trying to get through something so hard that most of us can’t ever imagine it. Everyone I met that afternoon had a gut-wrenching story to tell.

Mary McHugh is one of those people. She sat in front of the grave of her fiance James “Jimmy” Regan, talking to the stone. She spoke in broken sentences between sobs, gesturing with her hands, sometimes pausing as if she was trying to explain, with so much left needed to say.

Later on, after she spoke with a fellow mourner from a neighboring grave, I went over and introduced myself and told her I was photographing for Getty Images and had brought my family on our own pilgrimage to the site. I told her we had been living in Pakistan for the last few years, how we had come back to the States for a few months for the birth of our second child.

Mary told me about her slain fiance Jimmy Regan. Clearly, she had not only loved him but truly admired him. When he graduated from Duke, he decided to enlist in the Army to serve his country. He chose not to be an officer, though he could have been, because he didn’t want to risk a desk job. Instead, he became an Army Ranger and was sent twice to Aghanistan and Iraq - an incredible four deployments in just three years. He was killed in Iraq this February by a roadside bomb.

I told her how I had spent a lot of time in Iraq and Afghanistan, photographing American troops in combat. I told her that earlier this year I was a month in Ramadi and then a few more weeks in a tough spot called Helmand. I told her how I am going back to Iraq sometime this summer and that I was very sorry to see her this Memorial Day in the national cemetery, visiting a grave.

Mary said that they had planned to get married after Jimmy’s four years of service were up next year. “We loved each other so much,” she said. “We thought we had all of the time in the world.”

After a few moments more, my beautiful wife, Gretchen, now almost 9 months pregnant, walked over with our two-year-old Isabella. Our daughter started climbing over me, saying “daddy” in my ear and pulling on my arm to come walk with her. I felt awkward and guilty about the contrast, but if Mary felt it too, she was nothing but gracious and friendly. I told her that I would forward her some photos of her from that day if she would like and she gave me her email address. We said our goodbyes and I moved on with my family through the sea of graves.

Later on, I passed by and she was lying in the grass sobbing, speaking softly to the stone, this time her face close to the cold marble, as if whispering into Jimmy’s ear.

Some people feel the photo I took at the moment was too intimate, too personal. Like many who have seen the picture, I felt overwhelmed by her grief, and moved by the love she felt for her fallen sweetheart.

After so much time covering these wars, I have some difficult memories and have seen some of the worst a person can see - so much hatred and rage, so much despair and sadness. All that destruction, so much killing. And now, one beautiful and terribly sad spring afternoon amongst the rows and rows of marble stones - a young woman’s lost love.

I felt I owed the Arlington National Cemetery a little time - and I think I still do. Maybe we all do.

Bruno Vincent/Getty Images

Competitors hurtle downhill during the annual cheese-rolling at Brockworth in Gloucestershire - a tradition thought to date back to Roman times. The activity involves scores of runners chasing a seven-pound wheel of Double Gloucester down a near vertical slope.

After a two-mile walk through shin deep mud and streams, I arrived at the bottom of the course where I was ushered into a make-shift press enclosure. A barrier made of hay bails kept all the media in one place as well as protecting all of the expensive equipment from the seven pound wheel of cheese (which I have been told can reach up to 70 mph). I captured the spills, flips and aerial ballet moves as the racers crashed down the near vertical face of the hill.

Bruno Vincent/Getty Images

Among the various contenders were lots of Australian and New Zealand backpackers as well as others dressed in traditional costumes. One particular man managed to complete 30 percent of the hill backwards. Around 20 people had to be treated for injuries.

Bruno Vincent/Getty Images

After a few runs I was left to complete my own course back down the hill to find my car (which was not without its own challenges). However, it was far safer and a lot cleaner than the ancient sport I was leaving behind!

Sabia usted…

Getty Images’ latest mobile product, FotoMovil launched May 3, 2007 on Sprint and has been published daily since then, featuring News, Sports and Entertainment images with captions and headlines in Spanish. My colleague, Emerging Products Editor Reginald Lewis has been publishing FotoMovil since May 7, 2007. We’ll take turns as our schedules change monthly and new products in our horizon are launched.

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Thousands of demonstrators begin their downtown march to City Hall in one of several May Day marches in southern California and in at least 75 cities nationwide to press for immigrant and labor rights on May 1, 2007 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

Selecting images that speak to the Spanish-speaking population in the USA requires that we know the issues affecting the population at large, like gas prices and natural disasters, and those of particular interest to the people from the over twenty countries where Spanish is the main language.

Two dummies burn down during the May Day parade 01 May, 2007 in the Zocalo square in Mexico City. (Photo by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images)

This world outside the USA is not deeply covered in our major TV networks. We are more likely to find out about Labor Demonstrations in Mexico on the BBC or Univision. The latter features Spanish language programming, and has grown to become one of the top five largest networks among all audiences.

US President George W. Bush kisses Angelica Mora Arriaga of los Hermanos Mora Arriaga after a performance in the Rose Garden of the White House May 4, 2007 in Washington, DC. Bush attended the event to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

Hispanics have helped Spanish language program ratings go through the roof, which signals they are connecting with a growing audience, in Spanish. This is why FotoMovil features, in the US News category, events like Cinco de Mayo celebrations and MacArthur Park Rally, and World News (Mundo) features images of Venezuela’s nationalization demonstrations and the Pope’s visit to Brazil. Images are what we know best and we hope these will connect with a growing Spanish-speaking audience.

Here I am in action.

Growing up I was fascinated by the Life Magazine photographers like W. Eugene Smith and Larry Burrows. My passion for photojournalism started with a romantic notion of traveling the world and quickly evolved into a desire to witness and report. I am very much influenced by literature and great reportage of the late Ryszard Kapuscinski. I still try to read as much as possible as I feel that literature helps you see and feel the world in a much more intimate way. As a photojournalist, I am simply writing with a camera, using empathy and experience to connect with my subjects.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

My subjects in this image are young people driving in a red Mini through the devastation in Beirut.

I took this image after a long morning walk through rubble while documenting people returning to what was left of their homes. Let me be very clear about this, because there has been some misunderstanding about the matter - the image did not win an award because it was a portrayal of rich or poor Lebanese; it did not win because it showed people sightseeing. The jury in Amsterdam spoke about its contradictions and how it is an image that tells a story about war, an image one can keep looking at.

Long before anyone met these people in the car, I stated in an interview that it is not right to judge these individuals. As far as I knew, they had lost their home, or loved ones, in the war that summer as many thousands of Lebanese had. It does not matter if you were from New York or in the neighborhood where I made the image; we were all struck by the total destruction and carnage. They were just viewing the scene with a lot more panache than the rest of us.

They are not flattered by the image; I did not take it for them. What is important is it is reality, not staged or manipulated in any way. Moments like these can tell us volumes about cultures, individuals and the ability of people to persevere in war. Some have tried to alter the reality that this image celebrates, and that disturbs me greatly. In the end, I have a strong bond with and deep respect for the Lebanese people. This picture could not have been made on any other patch of land in the world. It is a picture about Beirut…lovely, sad, surreal Beirut.

We often think we know what war looks like, but it is not until we get to war when we realize it looks like us. I am not a war junkie. I do not consider myself particularly brave. It is a job I got into out of a passion for travel and reporting. I now consider it a duty to venture to parts of the world too often ignored. I always take precautions and follow advice from locals. While there are some very intense moments, mostly you wait and look and wait some more.

Hear more of what Spencer has to say on NPR. Spencer’s interview airs in most markets the weekend of May 5-8. You can find local times and broadcast frequencies by clicking “local listings” at the top of our website.