Emotions Flow at First Ever Honor Flight for Vietnam Veterans
SOURCE: MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
MEG JONES
AUGUST 5, 2013
114 Vietnam veterans traveled to Washington, D.C., Friday on the first ever Yellow Ribbon Honor Flight for Wisconsin veterans.
Aug. 03--WASHINGTON, D.C. -- They came to visit their buddies, men who are forever 19 or 20 or 21.
Jim Zitzelsberger came to see Keith McEnany. Dick Young found Kevin Ferguson.
George Gilles looked for Thomas Cole and found him. Jim Schertz visited Douglas O'Neill.
The faces reflected in the shiny black granite have grown gray and wrinkled. Their memories of their fallen comrades remain fresh.
"Him and I were close buddies in Vietnam," Gilles, 64, said of Cole.
"He was my closest friend in Vietnam. He was engaged to be married. He was only 30 days away from leaving the war," Gilles, a Marine from Oshkosh, said of his friend killed by a rocket in 1968. "I never made friends in Vietnam after that."
Gilles and 113 other Vietnam veterans traveled to Washington, D.C., Friday on the first ever Yellow Ribbon Honor Flight for Wisconsin veterans. The group left EAA AirVenture in the morning and returned after the air show.
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