The most important thing author Bryan Bender learned while writing his recently released book, "You Are Not Forgotten: The Story of a Lost World War II Pilot and a Twenty-First Century Soldier’s Mission to Bring Him Home," is that all Americans not only have a moral responsibility take care of its military and veterans but also a civic responsibility to know who they are – to know their lives, their stories.Bender, a national security affairs reporter for the Boston Globe, expounded on this lesson and more during his presentation for the Institute of Land Warfare’s Lemnitzer Lecture series at the Association of the United States Army’s (AUSA) headquarters in Arlington, Va.His book focuses on the Joint POW/MIA Account Command’s (JPAC) search, led by Army Maj. George Eyster, for the remains of WWII Marine Corps pilot Maj. Marion Ryan McCown Jr. in Papua, New Guinea. Bender weaves together parallel narratives of the lives, missions, and times of these two majors.McCown was shot down on Jan. 20, 1944, while escorting bombers over the Japanese air base in Rabaul, New Guinea. It wasn’t until 2009, through the arduous work of Eyster and his team, that McCown’s remains were found and sent back to his family for interment.The late pilot’s nephew, Navy Capt. John Almeida, USN, Ret., invited Bender to the funeral and gave him his uncle’s wartime diary."I remember sitting in the hotel the night before his funeral reading the diary, and I have to say – I was trembling," Bender said. "To hear him in his own voice…he was an amazing young man, an amazing writer, a unique chronicler of the human condition.""Some of the most beautiful enteries were about Helen, his girlfriend," he added.And, as fate would have it, Bender met Helen, who gave him a shoebox of McCown’s letters, the next day at McCown’s funeral."I didn’t realize who she was at first," Bender said. "It was only a little later it dawned on me."Bender compared McCown’s life and service with Eyster’s."What I learned the most during the whole experience…was that in many ways, they were the same guy – they were similar in so many ways," Bender said of McCown and Eyster. He explained that both men were southern, both came from families with deep military traditions, and both wanted to serve something larger than themselves.Eyster, an Iraq War veteran, ended his last tour in Iraq "pretty determined to get out of the army" after losing good friends in the conflict."That’s when the army offers him his post at JPAC," Bender said.According to Bender, Eyster and his soldiers [most of whom also served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan] gained a new sense of meaning from these missions."They all have their own war stories, their own demons, like Maj. Eyster, that they’re working through," Bender said.These missions were not only important to the families of the missing, Bender stated, but also important to the JPAC soldiers because it showed them that if they ever went missing, someone would be out there looking for them – they would not be forgotten.The important contrast that Bender found, though, was not in the personas of these two war veterans."What really stuck me was what changed us – the American people" and their relationship with the military, Bender said.While in McCown’s time most of American society had a vested interest and personal connection to the military and war efforts, our current populace often overlooks or forgets its men and women in service, Bender said."I felt like this JPAC team…was forgotten as well," Bender said.Adding, "We have the greatest generation living among us and we hardly know who they are."Bender said it was imperative that American society become more engaged with its military men and women. He even outlined an idea he is currently working on to promote this relationship: the U.S. military could "partner with ancestory.com or the National Archives" to build digital memorials."I’m actually surprised something like that doesn’t exist," Bender said. "You could do it just by getting the American people to help you."