Ken spent three years--after he returned from the war in Korea--teaching cadets who had qualified for Naval flight school to land on the carrier.  He saw every kind of accident that could be imagined.

He took me out once on the deck and pointed to the "coming aboard end of the ship."  There were dents along the edge.  "That's where Mike didn't do what I told him; there's where Nate didn't listen.  They think they can judge the pitch of the deck.  They can't.  And they didn't."

Where the LSO stands on the side edge of the deck there is a chute for those crash occasions.  The LSO can fall backwards into the chute which takes him down below deck.  If he tried to turn around to go down the chute, you couldn't make it because it all happens so fast.

If a wire snaps, the LSO has somewhere to go.  Not so for the people working the deck.  The wire slithers like a snake.  It's so hot, it cauterizes amputations that occur. 

I just kissed him goodby each morning and tried not to think about it.  "Is your insurance paid up," was a lighthearted phrase everyone used from time to time.  

I never saw Ken rattled.  I don't know how he did what he did.  I don't know how any of our military do what they are sometimes called on to do.

God bless the USA.  God bless the Marines.