And of course in a hundred missions, he got hit.  I think everyone got hit.  A fifty millimeter through the canopy of the airplane.  And of all things, he was trying to take out a megaphone that had been harassing the ground troops.  A small target, but important to the men on the ground.

He said he was really, really low.  Trying to hit something that small going as fast as he was.  He got it, but they got him.  He had leaned forward to pull back on the stick to pull out or, as he put it, "It would have cleaned the wax out of both ears."  He got the airplane back, in pieces.  But then, he had done that before in Korea.  He got hit seven times in his first twenty-five missions.  Two airplanes were destroyed, but he got them back.  They pushed them over the side because they were so riddled and messed up.  No need to repair a wreck.

So many of the pilots that got hit had to eject, and ended up in the Hanoi Hilton (Prison camp).  A number of them were our friends.  It broke your heart.

I never turned the news on.  What would be the point.  I didn't want my three children to watch it.  They were the only children in Pryor (Oklahoma) that had someone in the war.  And nobody talked about it.  In the middle of the USA, where there were no military bases, it was like nothing was going on.  Very strange.  Vietnam was raging, and it seemed like our town was not tuned in.  I don't blame them, if I hadn't had a husband in the war, I wouldn't have tuned in either.

It was a stupid war.  If they hadn't have instituted the draft, who knows how long it would have gone on.  But the draft changed everything because most of those drafted didn't believe in the war.  And they rebelled.  And things changed. But not before Ken's tour was up.

Deuteronomy 33:27a  "The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms:  and he shall thrust out the enemy from before you…"