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173 Mustangs 5th Special Basic Class, U. S. Marine Corps Older by fifty years, we grouped for photographs beside apartment BOQs that once were Quonset huts. The new lieutenants held us in embarrassing esteem. Of some three hundred in our old battalion, three were killed in combat, and the rest lived on to die of the usual or simply to survive and re-unite. Necklaced with tags to prove we were who we were, we met without bravado. Grandfathers mostly, we drank black coffee like alumni and avoided politics. Two days together placed us squarely in our generation. No one pretended to be other than himself. We parted as we parted half a century before, uncertain when or where we’d meet again. Or if. ...

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