ORIGINAL: Smoky Stoker
The NavWeaps discussion board sent me here, and I only regret that I am now out of story. I suffered from a bad case of "read instead of..." which included "working" and "sleeping"for a week, a condition that strikes every few years when something truly outstanding comes along.
I am still ambivalent about the ending, though. It somewhat interfered with my willing suspension of disbelief. You gave every one of them a happy ending because you care about them and you could. No Ira Hayes* here. But we all want it to be that way in the real world. We just know it will not happen.
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Hayes
I will have to plead guilty as charged here. Once the ship had survived the war, against all my expectations, I didn't have the heart to do ill to any of the characters in the epilogues.
I could argue that there almost certainly were some negative stories to come out of the post-war years. I just didn't chose to tell any of them. There were a fair number of crew who didn't appear in any tales beyond the end of the war and it is almost certain that some met with misfortune. Having endured all that they had endured, these were men who were not likely to be daunted by lesser challenges. But life is not always kind, or fair, and not all endings are happy ones.
All I can say, looking back, is that at the time it felt right to do it the way I did it. I was reluctant to say goodbye to the characters who had come so far with me and I wanted to leave them on something of a note of grace. I suspect many readers felt the same way. It wasn't necessarily realistic, but it seemed fitting.
Well done, and thanks from Vienna, Austria. 
