I don't think today's generation could have functioned back in the 50's and 60's.  Dial phone--land line (No overseas calls--they were way too expensive), no computers.  No "nothing" electronic to speak of, except the radio and TV--if you were lucky enough to own a TV.  And only a very few programs to watch on TV.  Three stations.  Rabbit ear antennas that only worked part of the time.  The news came on in the evening--no round the clock news.  Everything on the TV went off at some point after 10--to a blank screen pattern of some sort.

So when Ken would go overseas, we would write.  That's it.  We didn't speak for 13 months at a time except in letters.  If I asked him a question, it was at least a week--sometimes more--before I got an answer.  So all decisions were up to me.  The Bible may have a chain-of-command plan for normal families who have a live-in father and husband.  That doesn't work in the military.  Having someone to lean on was a luxury.   From the time I was 18 until I was 28, I did it all.

Veterans serve the country.  If they are married, so do their mates.  When they ask everyone who served in the military to stand up (in church on the 4th of July weekend), I always have to resist the urge to get up out of my seat.  Spouses probably ought to get a medal for time served as well?

I know the Bible says the husband is the head of the house.  But that didn't work in our house because Ken was seldom there.  He turned it all over to me and basically said, "Good luck."  He was really good about understanding how hard it was.  He always brought the paycheck home.  I handled the checkbook.  Never in his life did he question how I spent the money.   He was a generous man.  He wanted the the four of us--me, Pat, Becky and Scott--to be taken care of.  Jon didn't come along until Ken had been retired from the USMC for four or five years, and was teaching college.  Pat, Becky and Scott had a Marine fighter pilot for a father.  Jon had a college professor.

I wouldn't trade those 13 years I spent as a Marine wife for anything in the world.  I learned more in that compressed military environment than most people learn in a lifetime.  Civilian life, since then, is a lark.  Everything stays where you put it.  You move when you decide to move.  You live where you want to live.  Would I do it again?  If that's what it took to be Ken's wife, I'd do it in a heartbeat.