The next voyage that will take Iowa veterans to Washington, D.C., to see the nation’s war memorials will depart from the Fort Dodge Regional Airport at 6:20 a.m. May 7 and return that same day.

Aboard the plane will be 165 veterans from 26 Iowa counties, according to Ron Newsum, the president of the all-volunteer organization that conducts the local honor flights.

All of those veterans will be traveling for free.

“Veterans cannot pay for the flight,” Newsum said. “They’ve already paid their dues.”

Like all the flights that came before it, the upcoming one is paid for by donations collected by the Brushy Creek Area Honor Flight committee.

Newsum said the group heading to Washington includes three or four Korean War veterans and two or three people who served in peacetime between the Korean War and the Vietnam War. He said the rest of them are Vietnam War-era veterans. For the Honor Flight, people who served in the military between 1961 and 1975 are considered Vietnam War-era veterans.

Honor Flight committee members, a physician, three nurses and some people who volunteered to help the veterans will also be on board.

The plane will travel from Fort Dodge to Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. There, the group will board buses and head into the capital.

The group will visit the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam War Veterans Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, World War II Memorial, the Marine Corps Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. At the cemetery, the Honor Flight committee will place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Newsum said.

Newsum said the flight is expected to return to Fort Dodge at 9:30 p.m. that day, which is about an hour earlier than the return time of previous flights.

The veterans and their families will gather together with the Honor Flight committee for a banquet on April 23 at the Webster County Fairgrounds.