WASHINGTON -- We came here to look for traces of Rodger Snyder on a wall. He went to Vietnam long ago, and lost his life there, and now he is one of 58,299 names carved on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The nation honors its war dead this week. Now we call them heroes. But in the same hour, the leaders in the White House plan for new combat, and nobody knows what to call the thing that may be coming.

The Wall is 20 years old this week. Over the past few days, including Veterans Day yesterday, thousands gathered at the black granite memorial here to remember, and to recite out loud the names of the dead, and to wonder what might have become of their lives.

Rodger Snyder left for Vietnam wondering the same thing. He graduated from Milford Mill High School, off Liberty Road in northwest Baltimore County, and needed some kind of direction. That summer, he talked about becoming a paratrooper or a Green Beret. It sounded pretty romantic. It was still the mid-1960s, and nobody knew the nightmare that was deepening in Southeast Asia.

Nor do we know the truth about the Middle East. In the time of Vietnam, nearly four decades ago, we were just beginning to know our government's capacity for bending the truth, for lying about body counts, for hiding unpleasant facts behind clouds of devastation. It was Democrats, and then it was Republicans.

Today they finesse the language and hide the details, equating secrecy with national security and, in the post-Sept. 11 nervousness, nobody is supposed to question it.

But as visitors to The Wall gathered over the weekend, senior administration officials a few blocks away began to offer general scenarios. They talked of a bombing campaign, followed by ground action to seize footholds across Iraq and strikes to cut off the country's leadership in Baghdad. They mentioned 200,000 troops, or maybe 250,000.

This is for openers.

This time of year, Washington is beautiful. The sun was shining over the weekend, and the weather was balmy, and thousands strolled along The Wall. Some were veterans. They came home, long ago, to a nation that sometimes ignored them and sometimes vilified them for the awful things that were happening in that war.

We don't like to think about that now. Now we have names on a wall and we call the kids heroes. Many of them were. Rodger Snyder went to Vietnam and won a Bronze Star. The Army awarded it posthumously.

The official record says, "Specialist Four Snyder distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous actions on 4 February 1967 while serving as chief computer for the weapons platoon FDC in War Zone D, Republic of Vietnam."

It was close to midnight when they came under intense mortar attack. Rodger, "with complete disregard for his own personal safety, raced to his duty position and began computing elevation and charge settings for the guns and relaying the fire commands.

"Due to the noise of the incoming rounds, he had to stand and shout the fire commands through the counter mortar fire mission. ... He had to ignore the incoming fire and listen intently for the report of the enemy mortars. ... Only through his courageous stand in the face of all incoming rounds was the weapons platoon able to initiate effective counter-fire in the short time after the first enemy rounds exploded inside the perimeter.

"Specialist Four Snyder's actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army."

I saw Rodger's mother, Dolores Snyder, the other day. She and Rodger's sisters still live in town. There's a Jewish War Veterans post named for Rodger; they had a breakfast recently, and Rodger's mother was there. I looked at her and remembered 35 years ago, and we talked about everything but Rodger because there are no words to convey his family's loss.

He was pale and blond and wore thick glasses long ago, and he was so skinny you could count every rib in his chest when he took off his shirt. But he wanted to be a fighter in a war, when so many kids back then did not. He survived that night under fire, but not the thing that happened later, after he'd spent seven months in the jungle.

The Army said Rodger was standing in a field somewhere in a place called Qui Nonh. They never cleared up the rest of it. There was a shot from some trees or a small explosive blast. The details made no difference. He was gone.

Now he's a name on a wall. It's how we honor our war dead, and how we congratulate ourselves, too, for remembering them and their sacrifice.

We do this, and a few blocks away, a new generation of the nation's leaders prepares to send a new generation of kids off to war.

We hope we won't have to build them a wall.