by Diana Leigh

Created on: September 26, 2008   Last Updated: May 23, 2009

My husband and I were just kids when we married at the tender age of twenty. We knew we were in love and had to be together. That was a little more than forty years ago, and in those forty years we have come to understand the true meaning of love in our marriage.

To really understand where I'm coming from I need to give you a little background. We met when we were both eighteen, just out of high school. During this time our country was engaged in the Viet Nam War. On my boyfriend's nineteenth birthday he received his draft notice. He was being summoned to serve his country. He promptly enlisted in the Air Force, and since he was an accomplished musician, auditioned for the Air Force Band, was accepted, and left for basic training. After several months of training he received his first assignment in California. Since we lived in Pennsylvania, it was worlds away. We had a long distance relationship, a letter here, a phone call there. Back then long distance calls were expensive, so we didn't have the luxury of many. The time we spent apart was painful for both of us, and served to draw us closer together. It was during this separation we began to talk about marriage. Both sets of parents were opposed to these plans because we were too young, but we were convinced that we were truly in love and had to be together.

We got engaged that Christmas. I was 19 and he was 20. We planned to be married the following summer. Although they were resistant to the idea, our parents agreed to allow it. We were underage in this state and they had to approve. It was a busy spring preparing for the upcoming wedding, and rather difficult for the groom, since he was still in California. All was moving along smoothly until the week before the wedding when I received a phone call from my soon to be husband. We had planned to spend our time in California after our marriage, but the Air Force had another plan. He was being stationed in London, England, for the next two years. Needless to say it was quite the shock. I would be permitted to accompany him, but was I prepared to do that? Well, there was no doubt in my mind that it was what I had to do.

At our wedding that July most of our relatives, including my parents, didn't give us much of a chance of making it beyond the first year. Most of them were convinced that we were too young and didn't have any idea of what we were undertaking. Well, we were very young, but kids have minds of their own and think they know everything. They

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