Without them we'd have only bodycount headlines...and wouldn't hear stories like this.
Noticing that other troops had flags from their home states, he called his mother, Sonja James, who lives in Payne Springs.
Mrs. James said she looked for a Lone Star flag, but couldn't find one in any stores.
"Marge will know," Mrs. James said.
She called Gun Barrel City Mayor Marge Puck, who is also the Americanism Chairman for VFW Post 4376 in Seven Points.
Puck and the VFW delivered a flag to Mrs. James, who sent it overseas to her son.
"We hung it out on the porch [of the tent] for about a month," James said.
Then, the flag went on one of his unit's airplanes. It flew with the aircraft over Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Africa -- "Everywhere we landed," James said.
When members of the unit began rotating out, James took the flag back to his tent and displayed it there, where it stayed until he returned to America in August.
On Oct. 18, James arrived at the Seven Points VFW in full uniform with his family: parents, brother, wife, and sons.
The crew chief and aircraft mechanic returned the widely-traveled flag to the Post. Along with the flag, James had a signed certificate authenticating its flight over Baghdad in April.
He also presented the Post with an American flag.
The Post is framing the certificate and ordering a shadowbox for the Texas flag. Both will be displayed in the VFW.
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