When the Port Smith City Council passed the emergency bill allowing civil service employees to take their examinations while in the military, Karen did not simply inform him of the fact and wait for his reply. The forms, old tests, and all the study books he needed came in one package. “Now I’m inspired,” she wrote. “With your permission, I’d like to go back to college in the evenings. Your parents are willing to mind Stephanie. The more I think about it, the more I feel that this is my big chance. After the war the colleges will be jammed with ex-servicemen. Also, one field with real opportunity for women will be opening up wide after the war—education. I will want to work even if we have more children; you know that. The success I’ve had with Steffie makes me think that I will like teaching and be good at it. I can do well, Joe, so please say I can try.”

He said yes, amused and curious about her asking his permission so carefully. In his letter he treated the issue seriously, because it was important to her and she would be straining to see if he really meant yes. If she knew him, he knew her better. She had to see that he was satisfied with her, and she had to know that she was doing her share.

In September, in an action over Holland, he and Billy Gibbs, separated from their squadron and assisting a crippled Liberator back to England, fought off a half-dozen Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfes, shooting down two, damaging two, and sending the others running. For the action they were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. They were interviewed by reporters from Port Smith and Oakland, a syndicated columnist, a commentator for the Mutual Broadcasting System, and a camera crew from Movietone News. All three Port Smith papers ran on their front pages a wire service photograph of Leland with his arm through a hole shot in the wing of the Thunderbolt while behind him his mechanic painted the ninth swastika on the fuselage. In a letter he received later Karen reported that all of her conversations concerned his exploits and that he had become a public property. People wanted to know what he was like and if she had had any idea that these things were going to happen when she married him.