WWII veteran connects with fellow 2008 Ellis County Honor Flight participant
- Charity Fitch
- Aug 10, 2023
- 3 min read
World War II veteran Charles Atchley, 96, sat down for coffee at the Waxahachie YMCA and started talking to the man next to him, Dave McSpadden, 79.
They soon realized they had both flown on the 2008 Ellis County Honor Flight and planned to wear their Honor Flight jackets together the next time they went to the Y.
Honor Flight is a national program that began in 2005 and takes veterans to see their memorial and other monuments in Washington, D.C., free of charge. In 2008, the first Honor Flight in Ellis County took about 43 veterans to D.C., including Atchley, who served in the 75th and fought in the Battle of the Bulge and the Colmar Pocket in France.
Each veteran was sponsored by somebody or by a business. McSpadden was one of the sponsors of the 2008 Ellis County Honor Flight and traveled as a guardian, meaning he was assigned a veteran to help. He also helped the program in Ellis County with its nonprofit status and helped organize paperwork. He got involved because of his father and because he too was a veteran but not for World War II.
“I was just a baby when he (Charles) was over there, but my dad was a World War II combat vet,” McSpadden said.
McSpadden had hoped to take his dad on the trip, but he lived in San Angelo, Texas, and was too frail to travel.
The “life changing” trip, as McSpadden described it, began at the Waxahachie Civic Center, where all the veterans and guardians piled into a bus. With an escort by the Waxahachie Police Department and the Patriots Motorcycle Club, the group traveled to Dallas Love Field Airport, where they flew on Southwest from Dallas to Baltimore, Maryland.
When they landed, McSpadden leaned over to his assigned veteran, who had been a bomber pilot over Germany, and asked if he enjoyed the flight.
“Well, this plane is pretty quiet, and nobody was shooting at me, so I guess it was OK,” he said.
As they approached the terminal, two firetrucks from the airport sprayed arcs of water over the plane. When they arrived at their gate, they were asked to wait while everyone else left the plane, so they could leave as a group, McSpadden said.
Entering the jet bridge, they could hear “God Bless America,” and there were red, white and blue balloons covering the terminal.
“When we walked in, everybody in the building applauded and cheered for us,” Atchley said.
“There were probably four to five hundred people in every place they could stand, applauding these guys as they came off the plane,” McSpadden said. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the area. It was remarkable.”
They visited the Pentagon, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, the World War II Memorial and more. McSpadden said they were able to meet “people in high command” at the Pentagon, and they watched a company of Marines do a drill exercise at the Marine memorial.
“It went like that for three straight days of whatever we could do and whatever they could arrange for us when we arrived,” McSpadden said.
“It didn’t cost the veterans anything, and it was amazing,” Atchley said of the memorable trip. “They gave us this jacket.”
McSpadden said the most powerful part of the trip was that it gave the veterans “mental and emotional permission to open up” and find peace.
“When you carry the burden of an entire war in your heart, it is difficult (to find peace),” he said.
During dinner their first night, the veterans were asked if they would like to share some of their experiences.
“Many of these guys and their generation would come back and never talk about it,” McSpadden said. “This was the first time they ever talked about it. Since they felt they were among their comrades and peers, they opened up about both the good and bad of what they went through in the war. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.”
For more information about Honor Flight in Dallas, visit http://www.honorflightdfw.org.
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