Dreaming in jungle green and blood red

The morning before Golf Company veterans retraced their steps across the bridge, Danny Cholewa had yet to arrive at the hotel. Mr. Haught sat over his breakfast, his buddy on his mind. Then he glanced up to see him bounding toward him. “Danny!” He popped out of his chair and grabbed Mr. Cholewa in a bear hug.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to make it,” Mr. Cholewa said, joining him at the table, grinning, describing his decision and his preparations breezily, as if you jump on a plane to Vietnam on a whim.

A Chicagoan who lives in Benton Harbor, Mich., Mr. Cholewa is a motorcyclist with bodybuilder arms and confident patter. He is the winged spirit to Mr. Haught’s caution. But he would be the anchor this time, having returned to Hue in 1998 as a step in his own healing.

“It was great for me to have Danny here on this trip,” Mr. Haught said later. “He said he was worried about me because of the effect it had on him the first time he came back.”

The veterans who had previously returned seem to have the drill down, less riveted retracing old steps.

Amanda Cobb said her dad has dealt with his pain with humor. He enjoyed his friends’ jokes about the tree that saved his life: It was so badly injured that a younger tree now stands in its place.

But he was circumspect when asked if each trip back makes the damage easier to live with. He cocked his head, grinned and said, “a little bit.”

Mr. Cholewa, who like Mr. Haught was wounded in Hue, said he spent the first 15 years after the war struggling.