Vietnam veteran shares experience on honor flight trip ahead of send-off to DC
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - Honor Flights of Colorado Springs will send 58 more war veterans to Washington, D.C. for free on Thursday.
The three-day trip will take 51 Vietnam Veterans, six Korean Veterans, and one WWII Veteran to different monuments and memorials honoring their service across the area.
The Vietnam Memorial carries a distinctive weight for the war veterans, bearing the names of almost 60,000 servicemen and women who died in the war. Vietnam War Veteran Harry King saw the monument for the second time during his honor flight to D.C. a few years ago.
"We had driven by the wall several times after it was built in our travels," King said while recalling his first time seeing the wall. "I wasn't ready to start searching the names. And then in 2017, I did a name search. I did the rubbings just like a lot of people do. A lot of the friends that I made on the trip, on the flight, they had a hard time."
King said it was too hard for him to choose his favorite part of the trip. One memory he said stood out was the on-flight "mail call." King said he and the other soldiers always looked forward to getting mail while away, but it was something he rarely received because of his position and remote location. He had better luck on his honor flight.
"The mail, we look forward to it, if it could ever catch up to us," King said. "They had mail call on the plane, and I did not realize that they had solicited friends and relatives and other people that we didn't even know for cards. When we got the cards, I couldn't make it all the way through them because I kind of broke down, and I wasn't the only one."
King had a send-off just like the one the 58 war veterans will get today before their flight to the nation's capital. It starts at 9:30 a.m. at the Colorado Springs Christian School. The public is encouraged to come out and cheer on the veterans.
Honor Flights will also host a return home ceremony at 4:30 p.m. at the school, also open to the public.
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