On Wings Of The Morning (13 page)

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Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: On Wings Of The Morning
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“If you're a guy selling insurance in Peoria and your neighbor drops dead of a stroke while mowing his grass, you feel bad about it, but life goes on and you forget about it before too long. After all, it wasn't your fault. It's different for soldiers. We're a unit. When we lose a buddy, we lose a piece of ourselves. And pretty often that brother dies while we're watching, and we can't shake the feeling that it could have been, maybe even should have been, us. But who lives and dies is God's business. There's no ‘should have been's in a war, son. There's only ‘what is.' Somehow or other, you've got to find a way to live with it.
“On the battlefield, when the man who carries the company flag falls, one of his buddies comes up and carries it in his place. They can't do a thing about their friend who was lost, but they can pick up the ideals he died for and carry on. That's the greatest tribute we can offer a fallen comrade—not to die in his place, but to live in it. And to live well, in a manner that brings honor to his memory. Isn't that what you would have wanted Walker to do if the tables had been turned?”
“I guess so, sir. Yes.”
“Well, I don't know who was the better pilot, you or Walker, but Captain Conroy says you were two of the best he's ever seen. Conroy earned his wings before you were born, so that's saying something. He thinks you both rely too much on your instincts, but, thank God, your instincts are good. Nobody but you two could have held off that many Zeros for that long—long enough to save that bomber and her whole crew. You and your buddy saved a lot of lives. Walker is gone, and there is nothing you can do about it, but you can pick up his flag and carry it in his place. That's why I'm sending you home.”
“Sir?” I asked, not sure I'd heard him right. I leaned forward and crushed out the butt of my cigarette in the ashtray he pushed in my direction. “I don't understand.”
The congenial air of comrades-in-arms suddenly dissipated. The general was a general again, and I was a junior officer with only one pathetic bar on my uniform. The general stood up, and I did the same.
“I'm sending you stateside for a few months. You're going to train to fly P-38s, and then you'll be assigned to a new unit.”
“Excuse me, sir, but what about my current unit? The men in my wing are used to me and—”
“Well, they'll have to get used to someone else. We've got a new crop of junior officers coming. One of them will take over for you. They're arriving on a transport tonight, the same transport you'll be taking back, so you'd better get your gear packed and say good-bye to your men. You leave tomorrow morning.” He picked up an envelope from the inbox on his desk and handed it to me. I didn't have to open it to know that it contained my orders.
I wanted to argue with him, but there was no point. I took the envelope and said, “Yes, sir,” but couldn't keep the edge of bitterness from creeping into my voice.
The old man narrowed his eyes and looked me up and down. “If you were a different kind of man, Glennon, I'd probably ground you for that Jap-chasing stunt you pulled. But you're too good a pilot to lose. If you get yourself rested, retrained, and refocused, you might just turn out to be a great pilot. And I need every great pilot I can get my hands on. Don't disappointment me.” He saluted. “That is all.”
15
Georgia
Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas—March 1943
 
“D
ah-da-da-da-duh! It's time to get up in the mornin'!” Pamela Hellman bawled an enthusiastic and off-key version of reveille into my ear. I threw a pillow at her and put my arm over my eyes, trying to block out the light, but it was no good. Pam cheerfully flicked the light switch on and off.
“All right, already! I'm up. Knock it off.” I pulled myself into a sitting position on the edge of the cot and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Why do you always have to be so happy in the morning?”
“Dunno. I was born this way, I guess. Irritating, isn't it?” she answered cheerily as she opened my footlocker and began rifling through it.
“I'll say. How can you be so perky at five in the morning? I feel like I've been hit by a truck.”
“Well, probably it has something to do with the fact that you were up practicing night landings until two a.m. while I was safely tucked up in bed by ten. Here we go!” She pulled a clean flight suit out of my footlocker and tossed it to me. “And one more thing, it isn't five, it's half-past six. You've got fifteen minutes until breakfast.”
“Fifteen minutes! Are you kidding? Why'd you let me sleep so long? I've got a flight check with Maytag today!” Panicking, I jumped to my feet and started peeling off my pajamas. Just a few weeks before I would have felt self-conscious about getting undressed in front of Pamela, but three months of communal living with six women in the cramped rooms we called bays had banished all modesty.
When I'd first come to Avenger, I'd been amazed at the number of girls. I knew there were other female pilots, of course. Growing up, I'd poured over newspaper accounts of famous lady flyers like the brave and tragically doomed Amelia Earhart, and the glamorous Jacqueline Cochran, two-time winner of the Harmon Trophy, aviation's most prestigious prize, winner of the 1938 Bendix Transcontinental Race, and now director of the WASP. But I'd rarely met another female pilot face to face, so I was surprised to find sixty-eight of them at Avenger, and that was just in my class! Before the program ended, more than one thousand women pilots would graduate from WASP training.
I was equally surprised to see the variety of our backgrounds and life experiences. We had everything from housewives to college professors and debutantes to movie actresses. My own baymates were a perfect example. We couldn't have been more different. Besides me, former waitress, sometime bookkeeper, airport manager, and recent widow, we had Carol Peck, a high school physics teacher from Pennsylvania and Betty Barry, a golf pro from Florida. Then there was Fanny Champlain, who had a degree in psychology from Mills College in California and had learned to fly through the college's CPT program. She'd been three weeks away from walking down the aisle with an architect from Oakland when she'd gotten her WASP recruitment letter, called off the wedding, and took the first train to Texas. Donna Lee Curtiss was the only daughter of a wealthy Chicago family who owned a chain of carpeting stores. When Donna Lee wasn't riding airplanes, she rode thoroughbred Arabian horses and had won scores of jumping competitions.
Pamela, my favorite, was a blue-blooded Connecticut Yankee from a well-off family in Darien. Her father was a banker and her mother a clubwoman. She was a tall, angelic-looking girl with a heart of gold and a decidedly wicked streak, at least when it came to her attitude toward her mother. After graduating from Vassar she'd moved to New York City's lower east side and taken a job in a settlement house. A position she'd taken because “I couldn't imagine a career that was further from my mother's plans for me. At least, not until I heard that women could fly airplanes. Naturally, I took that up as soon as possible.”
We were as different as any six individuals could be, but we had one thing in common: we all loved to fly, and that bound us together as tightly as if we'd been family. I loved those girls. If I hadn't, there would have been no way I could have shared a room and bath with them for all those months.
Actually, it wasn't as crowded now as it had been. Of the original six baymates, only four were left. Carol Peck had come down with appendicitis in the second week and had to leave, but she'd written and said she was going to join another class as soon as her stitches healed. Darling, athletic Betty Barry had washed out just the day before, sent home for failing to pass the same flight check I was going to take today, with the same demanding instructor. We called him “Maytag” because he had washed out so many girls. Betty was a terrific pilot. If Maytag had sent her packing, what hope was there for me?
“Pam,” I said, moaning. “How could you let me sleep so late? On today of all days?”
“Calm down,” Pamela said, unzipping my flight suit and holding it out for me. “I know you have your flight check today. That's
why
I let you sleep, and that's why I came to help you get ready. Relax. As long as you don't fool with trying to get made-up or fuss with your hair, you'll have plenty of time.”
“Makeup? Hair? Are you kidding? I gave up powder and lipstick the first week—anything to get an extra five minutes' sleep. If I didn't have to share a room with you, Fanny, and Donna Lee, I'd probably have given up on showering.”
“Well,” she said sweetly, “I'm sure we're all grateful you didn't. Where are your shoes?”
“I think I kicked them under the bunk,” I said, closing the zipper on my simply enormous flight suit and trying, unsuccessfully, to cinch it in at the waist. “This is like wearing a tent!” I complained. “Why do they have to make these things so darned big?”
“Because they never thought any women would be wearing them, that's why.” Pamela's muffled voice answered as she rummaged around under my bed and finally emerged with a shoe in each hand. “Here! Now what about socks?”
“Already on my feet.”
“Okay, you put on the shoes, and I'll make your bed. You've got ten minutes.”
“Pam, you don't have to do that, really. I can take it from here.”
“Are you sure? I don't mind.” I shook my head. “All right, when you make the bed, tuck those sheets in tight enough to bounce a dime on them. We're all going to the Tumbleweed on Saturday to celebrate passing our flight check, and I won't have you wrecking our plans by flunking inspection. Nothing breaks up the Fearless Four!” she declared.
I didn't mention that, until yesterday, we'd been the Fabulous Five. She already knew. There was no making either of us more nervous than we already were. “Thanks, Pam. You're a dear. What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this, anyway?” I teased.
“My mother, the Immediate Past President of the Darien, Connecticut, Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, asks me the same question every time she writes. She's convinced they switched infants on her at the hospital. My father, on the other hand, thinks I am a chip off the old block and brags about me to all the Masons.” She winked as she headed out the door. “Hurry up, Gorgeous! I'll see you in seven minutes.”
“I'll be right there,” I promised.
I made the bed quickly, tucking in the corners of the blanket until it was tight as a drum. I knew I should hustle down to the mess hall, but instead I sat on the edge of Betty Barry's vacant bunk. In spite of Pamela's reassurances, I was scared.
The last three months had been the most challenging of my life. The academic classes were beyond demanding. Lucky for me, the time I'd spent tinkering on engines with Stubbs gave me a definite edge when it came to the courses in engine operations, maintenance, and electronics. I was also fairly strong in mathematics, navigation, and meteorology. But the courses in physics and aerodynamics almost did me in. Even college graduates, girls like Pamela, who had a biology degree from Vassar, had a hard time with that stuff.
The endless hours of physical fitness training had us all falling into bed every night utterly exhausted. After the first night there was no chatter in our bay at bedtime; when the lights went out, so did we. We spent long hours on the exercise field doing calisthenics in the broiling West Texas sun and swallowing the blowing prairie dust as we counted our way through endless jumping jacks and push-ups. For the first time in my life I had biceps! I wasn't sure I liked the way they looked, but there was no question that my newly muscular arms made it easier to handle the controls of a 450-horsepower aircraft during long flights. Of course, the best part was the actual flying, but even that wasn't exactly a picnic.
Thanks to Roger's patient instruction, I didn't have much trouble passing the first phase of training when we had to fly the little PT-19s, basic open-cockpit trainers. In fact, it had been so easy for me that I was probably a little overconfident. When we graduated to the much larger BT-13 s, I was rapidly reacquainted with humility. Our instructors made us push those planes to the limit. We had to be able to perform complicated high- and low-speed turns, spins, climbs, stalls, and every kind of acrobatic maneuver imaginable. The instructors were demanding, and a few were known to yell, but by and large they were fair-minded. Maytag was another story. Even though there was a war on and every WASP who could fly domestic missions freed up a male pilot for vital combat duty, I just don't think he liked the idea of women flying for the military. He'd use the tiniest error as an excuse for sending a girl home, and there was no way to appeal his decision.
Unless I flew perfectly today, come nightfall I'd be dressed in my civvies on a train headed back to Illinois, and all my hard work would have been for nothing. I just couldn't wash out! I was so nervous that for a second I actually thought I was going to throw up.
I moved my hand up to rub my forehead and as I did, heard a crinkling sound coming from the breast pocket of my flight suit. I already knew what it was. My lucky charm, the last letter Roger ever wrote to me, dated the day he died. Mail coming from Europe was slow, so the letter hadn't arrived until nearly a month after I'd learned of his death. When the postman brought that letter and I saw Roger's handwriting on the envelope, I cried and cried.
Now I carried it with me wherever I went. It was my talisman against fear and a reminder of the reason I'd come to Avenger. Though I knew the words by heart, I took the paper out of my pocket and read it again.
Li'l Feller,
 
It was so good to get your letter and especially the new picture. You're right, that Waco is one beautiful little plane, but not half as beautiful as you. I put it on the inside of my locker so I can see you every time I open that door and ask myself how I ever got such a gorgeous wife. I miss you so much, Baby.
Don't have much time to write as I'm flying today, but I wanted to get this out in time for mail call. I was thinking about that letter they sent you asking for women pilots. Honey, I think you should do it. I know you want to, so go ahead. From what you've told me, there isn't all that much business anyway. If we don't have any students, we might as well shut down the flight school for now. We can always get it going again after the war. Stubbs can handle everything else.
Georgia, the school has never run better than since you took over the accounts, but I didn't marry you because I needed a bookkeeper. I love you. That means I love who you are as well as who you will be. And, if you get the right kind of training, the kind that only the military can really supply, you've got it in you to be a great pilot. There isn't any reason you can't be as good a pilot as anybody—including me. There is no way I'd ask you to put your dreams aside just to keep house for me and look after a business, particularly one that is foundering anyway.
So, write back and tell them you want to fly for Uncle Sam. I'm behind you one hundred and ten percent. If the training is anything like what I went through, it'll be tough. Some days you'll want to throw in the towel, but I know you can do it. I'm so proud of you. You can do anything you set your mind to, Li'l Feller.
I'll write a longer letter tomorrow so we can work out the details, but talk with Stubbs too. Gotta run now and bomb a German factory so this war can be over and I can come home to you. I'm counting the days, hours, and minutes until I can hold you in my arms again.
I love you, Georgia. I always will.
 
With all my heart,
Roger
Blinking back tears, I folded the letter. The stationery bore creases as deep and familiar as memory, and the tidy rectangle fit perfectly in the breast pocket of my flight suit, directly over my heart.
I took another deep breath and stood up. I
would
fly perfectly today. I would pass this flight check, and the next, and the one after that. Nothing and no one was going to stop me. I would graduate. I would do all the things that Roger believed I could, all the things he never had a chance to do. I would do it for him, and myself, and us.
And I did. When I took off that day with Maytag in the passenger seat, I felt like Roger was flying with me. Maybe he was.

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