Six weeks later, we moved.  Again.  Nine moves in seven years.  From Quantico, Virginia, to Beaufort, South Carolina.  Once again, Ken was happy.  Ecstatic.  He was going back to a Squadron.  And this time as the Commanding Officer.  He had been in the Marine Corps for seventeen years, and finally he was going to get to put into practice all that he had learned--from both types of Commanding officers he had had in the past.  Excellent, and mediocre.

It turned out to be the best years of our lives.  We got to stay in Beaufort for three years.  Three.  We had a church that we didn't have to leave just when we were getting to know people.  I made friends.  Ken had friends from all the years he had been in the Corps--the air wing of the USMC is small.  Pilots knew each other, and knew "of" each other even though they may not have served together.  In all the years we had been married, I had never seen Ken so happy.

It was the middle of the Viet Nam war.  1963.  Every pilot Ken trained to fly maneuvers was going to end up in Viet Nam.  They were so young.  So inexperienced.  But very eager to prove themselves.  And they adored my husband.  They called him "The Old Man."  (He was 35.) They respected his knowledge of war--Korea, over 100 direct fire missions and 7 direct hits on the planes he flew.  And his two distinguished flying crosses that he earned in that war.  And air medals up the kazoo.  Those are awarded (as I recall) for so many direct combat missions.  (He quit turning his missions in when he was in Vietnam--he said, "I didn't turn my Cheerio box-tops in--twenty one years in the Corps, and too many lost lives.  What's the point of more medals?")

After he had been in his squadron for a couple of years, he became discouraged with the lack of support from "The higher ups."  Not enough JP fuel to train the young Lieutenants properly.  Ken would come home and say, "If I just had enough fuel to give them 10 more hops maybe they could make it.  I need to teach them more things that they need to know.  I don't have the fuel to do it."  Those young Marines were like his sons, and he knew that many of them were going to die.

I don't think 10  more hops would have helped much.  In Viet Nam, death from "ground to air fire" was random and even if you survived a direct hit and ejected, you had a good chance of landing up in the Hanoi Hilton as a POW.   From 1963 to1966--when Ken left for Viet Nam--the war raged.