Fewer than seven days to go and soon it will be flaps as 44 fellow veterans and I take off from Love Field for an “Honor Flight” designed to thank those who wore the uniform while serving our great land.
Please accept my brutal candor here. It took me some time to consider this a trip worth making. Why is that?
Well, I wasn’t sure a brief sprint through some of our nation’s hallowed memorials and monuments was worth the effort. Time also was a factor. Honor Flights leave in the morning of Day One and return the evening of Day Two.
As time marched on, I kept hearing reports from other veterans who have declared the event one of the highlights of their lives. Hmm, I thought: Well, if it means so much to so many of these veterans, then perhaps there’s more than meets the eye on these honor flights.
The vets who return talk of the immense respect they collect from strangers they encounter while touring the DC Mall memorials. You know, this might be all that it is cracked up to be.
The older veterans on this trip saw service in the Vietnam Era. Many of us actually reported for duty in the war zone. I will exempt myself from in any discussion of combat experience in Vietnam. I was a REMF. The acronym stands for Rear Echelon … you can assemble the rest of what the letters spell out.
And although I didn’t get the “baby killer” epithet or other hostile language, I did receive the cold shoulder from strangers –and, yes, even a few friends — when I mentioned my time in the war zone.
These Honor Flights are an effort to tell us that the nation is sorry for the way it treated us when we got home and to thank all those who wore the uniform that the nation is proud of them.
Six more days of prep — emotional and physical — are on tap for this ol’ geezer. I am looking forward to this whirlwind.