Another group of newly freed prisoners of war came home yesterday.
“There’s no way we can express our feelings and emotions as we walk once more on pills wonderful land of ours,” said Capt. Charles Gillespie of San Diego, on his arrival at March Air Force Base in California.
His plane was one of three, eaoh carrying 20 men from Clark Air Base in the Philippines to the United States. One of the flights, scheduled to land at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D. C., was diverted at the last minute to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois because of bad weather. The third flight was headed for Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.
Most of the 20 men who landed in California were pilots, shot down during 1967 and 1968. The flight also included a mysterious civilian, Bobby Joe Keesee, once an Army deserter who is now accused of having hijacked a plane to Hanoi. A State Department official who accompanied Keesee said that no federal charges were now pending against him.
In the first flight to land, the one at Scott, Col. James B. Bean, 40 years old, a prisoner in North Vietnam for five years and the senior officer aboard the plane, stretched his arms wide and told a crowd of about 400: “We love you this much. God bless.”
