All the friends from flight school tried to get Mike to go see the Wall. He didn't want to go. For years he declined. He'd get close to it, get up there, he'd go by it, but he couldn't walk in there. On Memorial Day 1978 during a private 10-year flight-school reunion, Jon read a passage about the Wall from Maya Lin, the architect. 'Only when you can feel the pain can you accept the death and begin to heal.' Six pilots and their wives took the pilgrimage to the Vietnam Memorial, and Mike gave in. Jon Lee's home, tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, provided a reunion respite, but the group took the trip to Washington, D.C., on the first day, Memorial Day, so there'd be nothing left to dread. Each pilot had a list of the names he wanted to find. Each found his own face mirrored in his buddies' names, knowing it might have been the other way around. They laid mementos at the base of the powerful slab: a flight-school Green Hat with aviator wings, a worn class photograph and roster, a green T-shirt picturing a silhouette of helicopters in formation that read '1968-12 US Army Aviation Ten-Year Reunion.' Everyone in the group wore the identical T-shirt, and the pilots, no longer fresh-faced in their faded Green Hats, fingered the names of their friends on the black granite. Mike wore a three-piece business suit in respect and admiration. He found all five guys who died in his helicopter. No one held back tears. The last evening of their reunion, everyone lazed on Jon's porch leafing through old photo albums, watching the sunset. Mike brought out a copy of Life magazine dated June 27, 1969. Life published not only the names of the American soldiers who died during the week that included Memorial Day, but also the pictures of all 242 men who arrived home in body bags. Eleven pages of young American eyes, looking as earnest and hopeful as in a high school yearbook. The faces said it all, but Mike read the brief article aloud. 'When the nation continues week after week to be numbered by a three-digit statistic which is translated to direct anguish in hundreds of homes all over the country, we must pause to look into the faces,' it said in part. Jon gazed out over the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains and spoke softly from memory: 'And since they were not the ones dead, the American people turned back to their affairs.' Bonnie Bonner, a Bay Area writer, is a member of a writing group that produced an anthology, 'Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace,' edited by Maxine-Hong Kingston. Go to www.vowvop.org. 