Vietnam veteran finally gets welcome home after Honor Flight

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) - Veterans returned to Bedford Sunday after an Honor Flight that left Friday. 15 veterans came back from the nation’s capital. They were received with a warm salute from officials, veterans and their families.

This was the fifth visit Central and Southwest Virginia Honor Flight has organized to Washington D.C and the second since COVID.

David Wright enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1968. A year later he was deployed to Vietnam and returned to the U.S. in 1969. But went to Vietnam again in 1970. Now, almost 50 years later he says he finally felt that warm welcome home he needed back then.

“Well, we never had a welcome home. And that’s one thing I’ve been wanting ever since I got here. This trip is like my passport here. I’ve had it stamped everywhere I’ve been. My director said he thought it was a passport, like a Christmas present that never reached home,” said Wright. “I am a soldier. I reached home today. This trip has made me come home.”

The veterans and their guardians spent most of the weekend visiting the memorials and the national monument. They returned to the National D-Day Memorial Sunday.