Honor Flight

This evening when we arrived at Dulles airport to take a flight to Boston there was a group of school age children with red white and blue banners waiting to welcome a group of veterans.

We thought that maybe the veterans were just arriving at Dulles but when we reached our gate it turned out that just opposite was their flight back to San Francisco.

At the gate there was Glenn Miller music and some of the veterans, their companions and a number of volunteer performers were dancing.  The veterans (in the red t shirts) were all WWII service men and women and several of them, I was told, took part in the D-Day landings.

I spoke to some of the volunteers who organised these flights, via a charity known as Honor Flights.  They raise funds and organise flights for veterans from all over the US to come to Washington DC free of charge to visit the WWII memorial and take part in ceremonies to remember and pay homage to their fellow servicemen.

The flights arrive in Washington during the summer at the rate of several each day.  Other flights are organised for the veterans of the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

It was very moving to watch these happy and smiling veterans who were obviously pleased to have achieved a dream which they did not think that they would ever fulfill and who had no doubt enjoyed meeting other veterans along the way.