In the Rev. John Plummer's nightmare, the picture flashed huge, in black and white, as children screamed.

You have seen this picture. A 9-year-old Vietnamese girl, her clothes incinerated by napalm, flees an American-led assault on her village. A brutal image from a brutal war, it is imprinted on the American psyche.It is imprinted on John Plummer's psyche for more personal reasons.

One day in June 1972, he ordered bombers to rain fire on the village of Trang Bang. At the time it was just another attack on another collection of faceless foes, but then he saw the picture of Pham Thi Kim Phuc.

For decades, Plummer struggled with his conscience. He drank and divorced. He searched for God.

"It took a long time, but I came to realize I would never have any peace unless I could talk to her," Plummer said. "I had to look in her eyes and say how sorry I am."

So last autumn, Plummer went to Washington, to hear Kim address the Veterans Day observance at the black granite monument that bears the name of each American who never came home from war a generation ago.

"If I could talk face-to-face with the pilot who dropped the bombs," he heard her say, "I would tell him we cannot change history but we should try to do good things for the present and for the future to promote peace."

Plummer gasped. It was as though she was talking directly to him.

Plummer scribbled a note: "Kim, I am that man." He asked a police officer to carry it to her. Then Plummer pushed through the crowd toward Kim, and one fleeting chance to end the screaming in his dreams.

Plummer was 24 in June 1972, a gung-ho helicopter pilot and operations officer in the waning months of the Vietnam War. His main job was to order allied bombing strikes.

The June 8 strike on Trang Bang came off just as Plummer planned. South Vietnamese bombers smoothly dropped heavy explosives and napalm canisters on the village 25 miles west of Saigon. The American adviser in the village thanked Plummer by radio.

"It was over. I was pleased everything worked, everything had gone right," Plummer said. "I dusted off my hands and went back to work."

On a road outside the village, Kim and her brother ran screaming toward the camera of Associated Press photographer Nick Ut.

"It was at breakfast the next morning when I first saw it, bam, on the front page" of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, Plummer said.

Plummer looked at that picture and saw the anguished face of a little boy about his son's age. Behind the boy he saw Kim Phuc.

The jellied gasoline has burned off her clothes. Her eyes are screwed shut, her mouth spread wide in terror and uncomprehending pain. Her arms flap awkwardly, as though she does not recognize them as her own.

It took a moment for Plummer to understand the caption. He had twice been told that there were no civilians in the village, only soldiers.

"It just knocked me to my knees," Plummer said. "And that was when I knew I could never talk about this. I mean, how can I ever explain to people that I did everything I could to make sure there were no civilians?"

To his war buddies, there was no need to explain.

"Their reaction was just that, hey, there's a war on. War hurts people, including sometimes civilians," he said.

But then he went home, to a troubled marriage and a thousand new distractions. Although a day rarely passed when he did not think of the photograph, he kept his thoughts to himself.

Plummer estimates he told the story of Trang Bang and the photograph fewer than 10 times over the next 24 years.

Through his successful career as a military and civilian flight instructor, through three marriages and two divorces, the picture confronted Plummer in wakefulness and in sleep.

The picture accompanied Plummer as he drank too much booze that did too little to help him forget.

It accompanied him, too, on the day seven years ago when Plummer, until then a regular if unenthusiastic churchgoer, committed his life to God.

Tears shine in Plummer's eyes when he describes his religious awakening. "I realized I did not have to bear the guilt of my sins - all the hurt I caused other people," Plummer said.

He resolved to be a better husband to his third wife and a better father to his four children. Soon he resolved to make a new life entirely, leaving his job with a defense contractor for a career as a minister.

Plummer carried a middle-aged man's scars and lessons with him to the pulpit of Bethany United Methodist Church.

"My life makes plenty of good sermon material," Plummer said ruefully. "It adds validity to my ministry. When I talk about the evils of divorce, they know I know what I'm talking about. When I talk about the evils of alcohol, they know I know about that, too."

He preaches often about regret and more often about hope.

Until last fall, he did not preach about Kim Phuc.

"That was the one burden God elected not to take from me," he said.

He had come to cope with the pointless deaths of 23 of his friends in Vietnam; they at least fought for noble reasons, he said.

"I still cry when I go to the memorial. But I cry because I miss them, because they didn't get to grow up. . . . I don't cry anymore over the futility of it."

But he could not reconcile himself to that picture of a child's suffering.

"It sounded so cold to say, `I was just doing my job,' even though that is true," Plummer said. "I looked at the picture and said, `Look what I did. I did that to her. I'm responsible.' "

Nick Ut's picture won a Pulitzer Prize. It has appeared countless times in books and documentaries, and there was no escape from it.

"It just hurt every time," Plummer said. "It became very difficult to deal with."

In June, Plummer was absently watching television when that photo flashed on the screen. An announcer promised a story about the girl in the photo, grown now and with a child of her own.

"It was the first time I even knew the little girl was still alive. It was the first time I ever heard her name," Plummer said.

Plummer watched and saw for the first time the thick white scars the splashing napalm left on Kim's neck, arm and back. He learned how she had 17 operations but still lives with pain.

"Of course I was so glad she was alive. But I knew right then that some way I was going to have to find her."

A month later, at a California reunion of helicopter pilots, Plummer saw the picture of Kim among war memorabilia on a vendor's table. The proprietor, Linh Duy Vo, knew Kim. She lives in Toronto, where she fled with her husband five years ago.

Linh offered to put Plummer in touch with her.

A week before Veterans Day, Linh got word to Plummer that Kim planned a rare appearance in Washington, D.C., 90 minutes from his home.

"I knew then that God had put this together," Plummer said.

On Nov. 11, Plummer - along with some veteran friends and his wife - was far back in the crowd as Kim took the stage.

"We really had no idea how this was going to play out," Plummer said. "And then I saw this sweet little face way up there. I knew it was her."

Kim finished her speech, and Plummer feared he would lose her. A friend suddenly grabbed Plummer's arm and dragged him forward. He found himself swept along a few steps behind Kim as she left the memorial.

Apprehensive about the media and the crowds, Kim was eager to get back to her hotel. But when an escort from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund saw Plummer's note, he whispered to Kim that Plummer was right behind her. She took a few more steps, and then she stopped.

"I couldn't move anymore. I stop and I turn, and he looked at me," she said.

No news photographer took this picture. But in the lee of the Vietnam War Memorial, the soldier, now 49, and the child, now 33, embraced.

"She just opened her arms to me. I fell into her arms sobbing," Plummer said. "All I could say is, `I'm so sorry. I'm just so sorry."'

She patted Plummer's back.

"It's all right," she told him. "I forgive, I forgive."

Plummer and Kim talked and prayed for two hours that day. They are friends now and speak regularly. Each hopes to visit the other's church.

The next Sunday, Plummer faced his congregation and told his long story of war and remorse and remembering.

In his dreams, Plummer still sees the photo. But the cries of children have been silenced.

"Since meeting Kim, I don't hear anything in that dream. I don't hear any more screams. It's all quiet."