I’m going on an honor flight.

Who? Me? Your New Favorite Writer? 

Who’d-a thunk it? 

You know what I’m talking about? Maybe not, since honor flights are a recent invention. 

Military veterans from a locality are flown, free of charge, to Washington, D.C., on a given day, ostensibly to view the nation’s war memorials. At the originating airport, on board the plane, and at the destination airport—Reagan, Dulles, or Thurgood Marshall—they are drenched with applause and special treatment. Veterans thus honored are often moved to tears.

The original notion was to honor men and women who fought World War II—the “Greatest Generation.” The National World War II Memorial had been completed in 2004, yet few WWII vets had gone to Washington to pay a visit. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines of that vintage were growing old and infirm. How many would live long enough to visit the memorial expressing the nation’s gratitude to them and their fallen comrades?

The Honor Flight Network, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, was founded by Earl Morse and Jeff Miller, two younger-generation veterans. Wikipedia says it “grew to a veritable forest of volunteerism, fundraising and goodwill toward the Greatest Generation veterans, who had been too busy building their communities to demand recognition for wartime service.” 

Why Me? Why Now?

Since its founding, the progam has naturally progressed to recognizing veterans of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts as well as World War II. 

Although I was involved with the Vietnam War, I never thought of going on an honor flight.   

Those junkets are laid on for doddering old men, I thought. Which certainly does not describe yours truly.

Moreover, I was hardly a gung-ho troop in the first place. In the years when I wore a uniform, bellyaching was the more fashionable posture. I was only too glad to gain separation from the U.S. Air Force 55 years ago. Since then, I have been mostly absent from veterans’ events, organizations, and affairs. 

So why am I listed on the manifest to ride the Badger Honor Flight this coming November? 

One good thing about living so long—I’ll be 79 tomorrow—is that one gains perspective. One mellows. 

Being a Veteran

Though never vocal about claiming respect as a veteran, I have come to realize that there is a point to it. Those who donned the uniform when called upon, whether we endured horrendous combat or performed other tasks, rightly earned our nation’s gratitude.

The historian Steven Ambrose described a particular outfit in World War II using words lifted from William Shakespeare: “band of brothers.” The phrase evokes an intense, unbreakable bond among those who have borne the battle, be they Britons at Agincourt in 1415 or Screaming Eagles at Normandy in 1944. 

The whole corps of us who served, doing any job at all, in the armed forces, may not rate such a heady epithet. The totality of U.S. military veterans, I think of as a “gang of guys with a certain sameness.” 

We have all been yelled at by noncommissioned officers in boot camp. We learned how to stand up straight and how to salute. Even decades later in civilian life, we align the plackets of our shirts to our belt buckles and trouser flies to achieve a straight “gig line.” Every one of us can still work the official P-38 can opener that was issued with tinned field rations in the days before the introduction of plastic-pouched “Meals, Ready-to-Eat” (MREs). 

These tokens held in common must not be taken lightly.

But, What’s the Point?

Even so, when my late friend Jerry Paulson, a fellow Vietnam-era veteran, came back from his honor flight a couple of years ago and insisted I should sign up, my reaction was skeptical. I am no doddering old man. But then, neither was Jerry, and he’s no longer among the living.

When I learned a bit more about the process, I changed my mind. You see, a veteran doesn’t just go on this trip. A veteran is accompanied every step of the way by a volunteer “guardian.” 

If you need help walking or boarding the airplane, even if you need a pusher for your wheelchair—your guardian is there for that. But what if you happen to be in tip-top shape? You get a guardian anyway! 

It’s right there on the website: “BHF uses a 1:1 Veteran to guardian ratio. We do this to for the safety and accountability of our Veterans. The most important reason is to ensure each Veteran can enjoy their ‘Trip of a Lifetime’ to its fullest.” I suspect they simply don’t want to pick and choose which vets need help and which ones don’t.

The program has volunteers ready to act as guardians. But—this is what snagged me, Dear Reader—you can nominate your own guardian. It can be a member of your family. It can’t your spouse, which would amount to an expense-paid holiday for two. But it can be your son, daughter, niece, nephew, or friend. 

I thought of our only child, Katie. Suddenly the project became compelling. 

My Guardian

Katie was almost fourteen when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The First Gulf War, which soon followed, happened when she was a teenager, far removed from any concern with world affairs. By September 11, 2001, she was 25—old enough to fight for her country in the Global War on Terror which followed. But military service, whether compulsory or voluntary, has always been a predominantly male thing. She did not enlist, nor did anyone expect her to.

Though women today serve in all branches, they do not generally grow up with a sense of their own eligibility, vulnerability, or destiny of military service. But young men do.

Historically, our country has provided about one war per generation, and the young men are expected to fight it. Not all of them, but some of them will surely go. The rules of the game—the degree of compulsion or free choice—vary by national policy and historical circumstance. Some are born too late for one war and too early for the next. But all young men live in the shadow of the next war. 

War for men is like motherhood for women. We don’t all experience it, but its very possibility shapes our lives. Those who go through it are formed by it. Those who escape it may feel they have missed out on something, even if it is something better avoided.

I have no memories of real combat, thank God, to haunt my days and disturb my dreams. In those days when battle was a live possibility for my generation, I could have burned my draft card and fled to Canada. A lot of men did. The reason I didn’t was not that I was a super patriot or convinced of the need to fight the Communists in Southeast Asia, but only that I wished to continue being an American, subject to our nation’s laws. 

(If you want the full rationale, look up Socrates’s conversation with his friend Crito. It’s filed under Plato’s Dialogues.)

Katie is still a young woman. She’s had no opportunity to understand the nature of the experience her father went through more than fifty years ago, or the resulting bond among a gang of guys with a certain sameness. 

But come November, she’ll accompany me as my volunteer guardian on what amounts to a road trip with a random sampling of that gang of guys. I don’t know who my fellow Badger Honor Flight veterans will be, but I reckon we’ll have a few things in common. Maybe Katie and the other guardians will catch a whiff of what our sameness means to us and therefore to them.

That’s reason enough to go.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer