Captain Charlie Plumb stepped onto the runway of Travis Air Force base in Fairfield on Friday, the same runway he’d stepped onto 50 years ago after spending nearly six years in a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam.
“We all kissed the ground in here,” said Plumb as the memory washed over him.
Plumb was among 600 American prisoners of war liberated from captivity in Hanoi in March of 1973 in what was known as Operation Homecoming, a prisoner exchange brokered by the U.S. and North Vietnam.
On Friday, the Air Force held a ceremony to commemorate the air operation that sent C-141 transport planes onto North Vietnam runways