When our children were growing up, playing football, etc.,  I would wait behind the bleachers until after the flag was raised.  I couldn't watch the flag being raised without breaking into tears.  I still can't.  And I am not a crier.  Too many flags on too many caskets.

Ken once took a squadron aboard the carrier--they were getting ready to deploy for a year to Japan.  They all had to be carrier qualified--he had to qualify twenty seven pilots, day and night, before they could leave.  Dozens and dozens of landings.  They were flying an airplane that was notoriously dangerous.  That plane only lasted a year or two before it was retired.  They called it the Skyray.  And the bay off Laguna Beach, they called Skyray Bay because so many of those planes ended up there.

I remember one day, I had gone out to squadron headquarters to take something to Ken, and a pilot walked through the door in his flight suit, dripping wet, with his helmet in his hand.  Seemed to be a common occurrence--ejecting and getting fished out of the bay.  But as long as you could save the pilot, well, the plane was expendable.

The Skyray had never been used on a carrier before.  So getting everyone qualified was tricky.  That week, they destroyed four aircraft, broke one pilot's back and killed another one.  It was personal.  A squadron was like a family.  Every time someone was killed, something in Ken died as well.  Me, too.

Flying single seat fighters in the Marine Corps isn't like flying United.  It is dangerous.  Especially on the carrier.  Life insurance for aviators in that line of work was horrendously expensive.  You got special pay--flight pay--for doing it, but it didn't cover the bill for your life insurance.
   
After that horrible week of carrier qualifications, they all went to Japan for a year.  And never had another accident.   

Flags on caskets make me weep.  So many young men.