News Honor Flight: Area veterans to be honored in DC Tuesday

Once again, I get to do the best job in journalism: Helping tell the stories of our Iowa World War II veterans.

I am one of the media members (along with an editor and photographer from the CR Gazette) who will accompany nearly 100 veterans and their companions to Washington, D.C., for the latest Eastern Iowa Honor Flight. 

Vinton veterans Bill Fuchs and Norman Walker will be among them.

The vets will visit the WWII Memorial, the Korea/Vietnam/Lincoln Memorial area, and the Iwo Jima statue. They will have a front row seat for the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington.

All this is great; but there are even better things for the veterans to see during their day in DC.

Bill and Norman and the rest will see a lot of awesome things on Tuesday.

Such as: 

A crowd of DC area residents (known as the Ground Crew), lining up to greet the vets with applause and hugs, and to help guide them from the terminal to the buses. 

Students gathering around the wheelchairs of veterans, asking them where they served and listening to their stories.

Strangers -- lots of  em -- walking up to shake their hand and say "Thank you for your service."

People who show up wearing uniforms the vets may have seen when they were serving our country.

Then, of course, there is the welcome home ceremony at around 10 p.m., at the Eastern Iowa Airport. Hundreds of veterans and members of other organizations, along with friends and family of the veterans, will form a line to welcome them home. You're invited, too. 

I will see and hear some amazing things, too.

The veteran behind me on the bus was telling me about his trip across Afrida. It was not until after he told me that he lost an eye to a grenade that I realized he only had one good eye.

I have spoken to men who fought on Iwo Jima, a sailor who survived 24 hours bobbing in the cold waters of the Pacific, and others who saw and did some pretty scary stuff.

I learned who Audie Muprhy was. And I learned how embarrasing it can be to tell a bus full of veterans that you do not know who Audie Murphy is.

I also learned what these veterans did after the war. Their generation saved a continent, then led this one into the age of technology. Many of them have remarkable stories that only began after the war was over. 

There will be nearly 100 veterans on that plane when it leaves at 7 a.m. Tuesday. That's 100 stories that deserve to be told. I will do my best to tell as many of them as I can; and to help others tell those stories, as well. 

The Eastern Iowa Honor Flight, like the other Honor Flight organizations across the country, relies on donations, corporate gifts, and fund-raisers. A special thanks goes to anyone who does anything to make these trips possible.