I never could get Ken to tell me how he won either of his two Distinguished Flying Crosses.  The only time guys like him talk about stuff like that is when they are all telling each other "war stories" and something comes out.  Usually lies.  The stories get bigger and bigger until you don't know what's the truth and what isn't.  

They had some kind of code--you couldn't ever be the hero in the story.  You had to tell something stupid or funny about the event to be able to share it.  I never heard a Marine brag about what he had done.  Only what went wrong and what happened next.

But I once heard Ken telling the story about how he got one of the DFCs. (I think that the DFC is the highest aviation award.  Getting one is unusual.  You have to be in combat?  Getting two, well, you have to be nuts is what somebody told me.)

Seems like Marines were pinned down in a valley between two cliffs.  There were caves in the sides of the cliffs and gooks (politically incorrect I know--but that's what they called the N. Koreans) were in the caves firing down on the Marines.  They called for an air strike to take the gooks out.  Problem was, to fire into the caves, you had to be perpendicular to the cave.  Impossible--when you have a cliff behind and a cliff ahead.   You can't fly sideways between two cliffs.

Ken described how he did it.  I'm not sure now, but it involved doing some kind of an inverted roll, etc. etc...  He said, "Should have hit the wall.  But didn't.  Which was good."  He went on to say, "Twenty-three year old kid.  More guts than brains.  Didn't have enough sense to know it couldn't be done--until it was all over and someone told me.  Kind of like when me and Pete did the mail run when they took us out of combat..." and then he--or someone else--was off on another story.

I loved listening when they sat around telling lies.  Truth was in there; you just had to find it.