The Old Glory Honor Flight organization will be taking 52 Northeast Wisconsin veterans to Southeast Asia for a two-week tour that will bring these men back to a place where they counted the days until they could get out.
The campaign to pull this off took many months and has many working parts. Old Glory Honor Flight President Drew MacDonald typically takes military veterans to Washington D.C. for the day to visit the monuments and memorials in their honor. They've done that nearly 50 times over the years. This was a whole new ballgame…
“There are no other Honor Flight organizations that have done a flight like this where all the participants are from a particular area.”
The wheels started turning for this trip a few years ago when they took World War II veterans on a 5 day trip to Pearl Harbor.
“Back in 2012, we did a flight to Pearl Harbor with survivors. And that in essence planted the seed for Vietnam.”
But getting 50 or so Vietnam war veterans to want to go was a big question mark. MacDonald says they had no idea how many would be interested. Over 500 applications came in.
That led to the drawing to whittle the final number down. Emotions began to show when the people chosen were contacted.
“Almost all of them were overcome with emotions. Weather that manifested itself in tears. A couple of vets said they had to sit down. You submit an application you don't think you're going to be called.”
And then, MacDonald says those men had to have a long look at themselves to see if a return to a place where they saw friends die and suffered their own medical and mental wounds, was something they could actually handle.
“Quite a bit of medical screening. We do have a physician travel with us. A lot of questions of the vets and having them self-reflect. Make sure this was something felt physically capable of doing and emotionally of doing it.”
Diane MacDonald is a member of the Old Glory Honor Flight Board. She says arranging the flights, ground transportation, hotels, and the itinerary has taken the better part of the last year.
“We're celebrating our 10th anniversary this year for Old Glory Honor Flight and we wanted to do something big. I'm not sure we could do anything bigger than take a bunch of Vietnam veterans back to Vietnam.”
She says the cost for the trip, about $250,000, has been covered through donations. Like all their trips the veterans pay nothing. Although Diane MacDonald says the veterans have already paid… in ways many of us can only imagine.
“I look at it like we owe it to these vets to give them the best possible trip. And, it's not lost on me what these men have gone through and dealt with for the last 50 years. So it's absolutely emotional.”
And those emotions will be in full bloom until this deployment is finished March 9th.
