JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas –
(Editor's Note: This article is the third installment in a monthly series celebrating Kelly's centennial. Check back next month for more stories from Kelly Airfield's history, as well as information about the upcoming JBSA Air Show and Open House this November, which is expected to draw more than 350,000 visitors.)
More than 40 years ago, massive Lockheed C-141A Starlifters began touching down at Kelly Field, bringing hundreds of former American prisoners of war home from Vietnam.
The flights were part of Operation Homecoming, a massive four-month effort from February to May in 1973, that brought home more than 590 American servicemen held in POW camps in North Vietnam. The Paris Peace Accords effectively ended the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.
Kelly Field was the center of Operation Homecoming. Along with the medical facilities at then Fort Sam Houston and Lackland Air Force Base, Kelly Field provided a formal reception staging area that set the stage for an emotional return of these POWs, many of whom hadn’t seen American soil in nearly a decade.
Donna Leite, 64, is a San Antonio retiree who was part of Operation Homecoming. As a 20-year old part-time flight attendant for Texas International Airlines, Leite was hired on short notice by the Air Force and the City of San Antonio to be an official “welcome ambassador” with Operation Homecoming.
Leite had the opportunity personally greet dozens of POWs as they disembarked off their plane.
“We were expecting (these men) to feel joy, relief,” said Leite. “What we saw instead was how grateful they were to be home; how grateful they were that no one had forgotten about them.”
“That was surprising, if anything,” Leite added, “because our job was to show them how grateful we were, for what they went through in service to our country.”
Leite was lined up along a runway, positioned just between a gaggle of politicians, press, and a small group of cheering civilians allowed onto Kelly Field for the occasion. The crowd was deliberately kept small, Leite recalled, to avoid overwhelming the returning veterans.
“Most of these men were just glad to see any other Americans,” Leite recalled. “For a lot of them, I think the moment they saw how much all of us cared that they’d made it back home, that was the first moment they were really able to start (recovering) from what they’d been through.”
Carl Sandbergh, 57, is the stepson of one of the POWs who returned home to Kelly Field. Sandbergh, who lives with his stepfather in Austin, Texas, shared his experience about seeing his stepfather’s return home.
“The Air Force had been gracious enough to allow my mother and (me) on base to see him land,” Sandbergh said. “I was just a kid at the time, so I hadn’t really understood what he’d gone through over (there in Vietnam), and he still hasn’t really shared everything with us.”
What Sandbergh did understand was that his stepfather was glad to be home.
“I hadn’t seen him since I was about six, so I barely recognized (him),” Sanbergh said. “The last I saw him (in 1966), he was this huge, six-foot, barrel-shaped man, so my first thought was that he just seemed so much skinnier than I remembered.”
“My second thought was that he just seemed happy to see me,” he added. “That’s all you can really ask for.”
After landing at Kelly Field, Sandbergh’s stepfather didn’t get to go straight home. He had to spend the next several weeks receiving treatment.
“It’s been a tough road for him, I think,” Sandbergh said. “But he’s grown and lived his live as well as anyone, I would think.”
Sandbergh’s reunion with his stepfather was just one of many bonds restored during those four months in 1973. Operation Homecoming was more than a logistical effort to reunite families. It was meant to be a unifying moment to both these veterans and an American public still recovering from a decade of divisive politics rising out of the Vietnam War, according to information provided by the National Archives.
While the U.S. government saw Operation Homecoming as a chance to bring closure to a war that had divided the American public, the operation itself had to endure a spate of controversy.
Numerous protests erupted in San Antonio during the operation, as protestors who opposed the war showed up in force outside Kelly Field and at other military bases in the area. Many of these protestors aimed to draw attention to the hundreds of still-missing POWs and servicemen missing in action in Vietnam at the time, according to San Antonio Express-News records.
In spite of that, larger crowds turned out in support of the POWs.
“I think, as tough as the Vietnam War was on this country, we can all agree that bringing these men back was an act of healing,” Sandbergh said. “I know it was for us.”