All 103 veterans on #HFC92 were treated to a visit from General Colin Powell, who stopped by the World War II Memorial to say thank you and spend a few moments speaking to the group.
On his Honor Flight application, Mr. Yates states he was an Army photographer in Korea, an understatement indeed.
“Welcome to Tan Son Nhut. We are under attack, everybody prepare for a crash landing.” Those were the first words Capt. Clyde Wilson and his fellow officers heard from their pilot as they arrived in Vietnam in 1968.
Jim Wightman knows he is one of the lucky ones. He spent his entire Army deployment in Korea during a time when many troops were being shifted to Vietnam, allowing him to dig deep into much of the Korean culture.
When Bob Vogeltanz volunteered for the Air Force three days shy of his 19th birthday, he did not know he would learn a highly specialized skill that would take him halfway across the world to Thailand during the height of the Vietnam War.
Don Tollefsen went from being a garbage man working in Cicero, Illinois, to being part of a Floating Battalion in the South China Seas.
Terry Schmidt had a long and successful Navy career, with many years of recruiting for the Navy Reserve, but the times he remembers the best are his two tours on a destroyer off Vietnam.
Bob Misevich was awarded three Bronze Stars as an Army combat medic in Vietnam, where he served during the 1968 Tet Offensive.
While following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who served in the Navy during WWI, Vietnam War veteran Joseph Martinek eventually found himself assigned to USS Enterprise (CVN-65): the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier.
Joining the Navy seemed just the right thing to do for young Stewart Margolis from New York City. It turned into a career that spanned three different decades.
Despite contracting a severe case of malaria that required hospitalization both during and after his service in Vietnam, James Blue, Sr., continued to serve as a reservist well into the first Gulf War.
The morning he left for the Vietnam War, John Aister’s father drove him to the train station and left him with words of wisdom he never forgot: "Come back home" and "There will be a day when you appreciate water and bread.”