June 3, 1941 1400 San Francisco

Carol Nispel looked down the aisle of the small military chapel, at the front stood Mark Fuller in his Army Air Corps uniform. Their eyes met for a moment and he smiled. Before she could return the smile she heard the organist begin the familiar wedding march and she felt her father’s hand on her arm signal her to move. Commander Dave Nispel was about to give his daughter’s hand to the man standing at the front of the chapel. He looked at her and smiled at her as they stepped off. At the front he placed her arm in Mark Fuller’s hand and stepped back to the front seat. His daughter was moving from his care to the care of the man that was standing next to her. Dave Nispel smiled, Mark was a fine young man, for a fly boy, that was. He was stationed nearby flying B-17’s. They were considered the coastal defense, he would probably be there for some time. Commander Nispel had been able to fly in from the Pacific to be at his daughter’s wedding. He would be returning to Pearl the following day on the Cruiser Boise.

The ceremony took only twenty seven minutes. They left the chapel in a flurry of rice. Mark and Carol took a three day trip up the coast and returned on Wednesday. Carol had just graduated from the Mercy Hospital Nursing program on Thursday, was married on Saturday and now would begin work there as an R. N. the following Monday. They would have married sooner but the program was for single women only. In spite of intense feelings for each other they had not been sexually active. Carol would have been dropped from the program immediately upon had she become pregnant. Mercy was a good school, and a very good posting, the pay was good and the hospital had good facilities. It was a place someone could stay for a career or leave to find a good position elsewhere, riding on its exceptional reputation. Carol threw herself into her work and making a home for herself and Mark in an apartment they rented near the hospital.

October 14, 1941

Mark Fuller climbed out of the B-17 and walked to the ready room. He had just returned from nearly two weeks of continual flying. They flew to the east coast, did one long over water flight every other day and returned to California without a break. The orders they were handed were a surprise to everyone in the unit, all had expected at least three days off. The news was bad, they were being transferred to Pearl for six months to allow a unit stationed there to be rotated back to the mainland. When he told Carol about the posting she burst into tears, ran to the bedroom and slammed the door. She lay on the bed sobbing, her husband was leaving to go to a land of skinny women in grass skirts. Finally he got up the nerve and went into the bedroom. When she quit sobbing enough to talk she said, “You’re going to an island of girls in grass skirts and you’ll have a fat wife when you come home.”