Bill Whitney’s captivity began when his B-26 Marauder bomber plane was shot down over the skies of Vichy France in spring 1944.

The Army Air Corps pilot spent time in a Gestapo-run prison. He later toiled at the Stalag Luft III prison camp in modern-day Poland and was part of a forced march to Germany during wintertime. By the time the U.S. Army’s 14th Armored Division liberated him, he had spent more than a year as a prisoner of war.

Whitney, now 87 and living near Quilcene, returned from the war, went to college, worked in the petroleum industry and retired in 1984. But his time as a prisoner of war will always stay with him.

“It’s something that’s part of the past, but it’s good to keep that bit of the past alive,” he said Thursday.

Whitney attended McChord Air Force Base’s annual lunch honoring prisoners of war and service members missing in action. He was one of 57 former POWs, most of whom served in World War II, at the ceremony.

An empty table — symbolically set with such items as a salty punch to represent tears and a slice of lemon signifying the bitter fate of those captured — stood out at the front of the large banquet room.

There was an active-duty airman in dress uniform acting as an escort for each veteran airman in attendance.

The event was held a day before Friday’s annual observance of National POW/MIA Remembrance Day.

Dave Carey, a Navy pilot who spent five years at the Hanoi Hilton after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam, delivered the keynote address.

The base holds the recognition day each year as a way to honor those who were taken prisoner and to remember those who never made it back, said Master Sgt. Fay Noil of the Air Force Sergeants Association.

More than 88,000 Americans remain missing from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Cold War, according to the Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.

“They really always do a nice job for us,” said Bud Peth, in attendance at his third McChord luncheon for former POWs.

The 84-year-old Bellingham resident said he’s “one of the fortunate people here” because he spent 3 1/2 months in a prison camp in Europe.

He served in the Air Corps as a radio operator and gunner on a B-24 Liberator and was shot down during a bombing run just inside Hungary in 1945. He was shuttled between four prison camps.

James Klasnic, an Enumclaw native now living in Bellingham, was the co-pilot on a bombing run targeting an airplane parts factory near Steyr, Austria, in April 1944. A German plane shot up the fuel tank, forcing the pilots to ground the plane.

He spent more than 13 months in the Stalag Luft I camp near Barth, Germany, before the Soviet army reached the camp. Klasnic and the other 9,000 or so POWs there had to wait two weeks before the Americans could arrange their transport home.

On the flight home, the plane’s co-pilot asked Klasnic if he knew how to fly. When the young lieutenant said he did, the co-pilot stood up and offered him one of the only seats left on the plane.

“I had to fly myself home from the camp,” he said with a wide smile.

“Can you believe it? That’s a story right there.”