Flygirl

by Sherri L. Smith

“Thanks, Grandy.” I hug him again. This hug is going to have to last me a long time. Because tomorrow morning, I head to California to start my first day on the job as a full-fledged WASP.

  Chapter 21

  “Ladies, welcome to March Field.”

  The lieutenant addressing us introduces himself as Charlie Washington. “Like the president,” he says with a little laugh. Charlie Washington is young, probably my age. But I don’t feel like a kid anymore. Something about the training, maybe, or all of the hours in the air, but in the past two years, it feels like I’ve gotten twice as old as I was when I showed up in Sweetwater. It’s the first time Lily and I have been back to California since Patsy died. I’m glad it’s not the same base. I’m not sure how I’d handle that.

  “I thought Roosevelt was president,” one of the girls says. Lily and I laugh. There are four of us new WASP assigned to March. The other two are from another class, half a year our senior. They’ve been reassigned from Delaware.

  Charlie Washington’s happy grin falters. “Uh . . . I’m supposed to show you to your barracks. They’re new, just finished last month. Before that, all the girls on base had to stay in town.”

  We nod. It’s a familiar story. Two years into the program and still half the army isn’t prepared to house women. It’s all part of what the WASP are lobbying for in Washington.

  “Anything’s better than the bunks we had in Delaware,” the taller of the two girls tells us. Her name is Lucille. She’s a big-shouldered gal from Tennessee, with hair the same color as a cup of black coffee, no cream. “That little state’s as cold as a brass bra in winter.” Her partner, Delilah, is from Massachusetts. I guess the cold weather didn’t bother her half as much.

  “It’ll all be changing soon everywhere,” Lily says. “Once we get full military status, the WASP will have real barracks like the rest of the army. Heated, too.”

  “A girl can dream,” I say. Sure, Jackie Cochran and Nancy Love have both been fighting for the WASP in D.C., trying to get us full soldier’s rights, but it doesn’t look like Washington is going for it. For one thing, if they make us military, then we get to stay, even when the war ends. It’s a nice thought for some, but a lot of WASP have a life not easily left behind. Some of the women have kids. Or mothers like mine, who want their daughters to have a normal life. And friends like Jolene, who just don’t understand. It’s a real mixed bag. And then there are all those men who’ll want their jobs back when they get home from the war.

  “Well, never say never,” Lily replies.

  I shrug. “If anyone can make it happen, Jackie Cochran can.”

  Charlie Washington leads us to a low cinder-block building at the edge of a cluster of other cinder-block squares. “Home sweet home, ladies,” he says, with another teenaged grin.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” I say, and we salute him before checking out our new home.

  March is the third base Lily and I have been stationed at since going on active duty a month and a half ago. It’s much the same as the others, except here the WASP have their own barracks. At our first assignment, in Arizona, we had to bunk on the floor of the base nurses’ rooms. Sleeping bags are a hard way to live for weeks at a time. Especially after having just slept in your own bed at home. The run-down boardinghouse outside our second base was no picnic, either. We were both more than glad to pull down target-towing duty out here in California.

  The officer in charge shows up at our barracks after lunch and tells us his boys are on night practice. We’ll be taking off as soon as it’s full dark, at about twenty hundred hours.

  I drop down onto my cot. It’s the second to last one, at the far end of the room, just like my old bunk at Avenger Field. It’s my own little superstition, and I’m sticking with it. Lily has taken up the bunk next to mine against the wall, where Patsy used to sleep. I’m glad of it, and I try not to think of it as a bad omen. I may have lost Patsy and Jolene, but Lily’s become the sister I never had. I’d die before I lost her, too.

  “Did I tell you I got another letter from Harry?” Lily asks me. Her eyes are as bright as her voice. I smile. Only a handful of letters have come for me since Jolene and I had our fight. I keep writing to Grandy and Thomas, who tells me Mama’s still mad I didn’t stay, but she heard what I had to say before I left, about having a job to do. She understands what that means, and she’s willing to forgive. When it comes to Jolene, though, I don’t know what to say. Lily’s better at long-distance relationships than I am.

  “What’s lover boy up to now?” I ask her.

  Lily rummages through her duffel bag and pulls out an envelope. Draped across her bed on her stomach, red curls shining in the afternoon light coming through the window, she looks for all the world like a love-struck teenager mooning over some movie star in a magazine.

  “Here, he says he’s been keeping up on all the latest field medicine and the latest swing dances at the officers’ club. Oh, but he promises he never asks the girls their first names. Keeps it very polite.”

  Lily frowns at me. “That doesn’t seem right, does it? I ask people’s first names. I’ll have to write him and tell him to do it, too.”

  “That’s right,” I say. “Call them miss, or missus, or Mary Jane. Just don’t call them sweetheart.”

  Lily throws a sock at me. “Oh, he’d never do that. I don’t know why you make me worry so, Ida. What we need to do is find you a fellow, too, and then you’ll have plenty to keep you occupied when we aren’t in the air.”

  I roll over onto my stomach and try not to think of Walt Jenkins. “Oh, I don’t need a man to keep me occupied. I just wish we could get into another plane. Being a WASP sounded more glamorous before I became one.”

  “Well, that’s the way everything is,” Lily says. “I mean, look at me. I’m giddy as a schoolgirl about marrying Harry, but when was the last time you saw an old married lady get giddy over anything?”

  I sigh. “Nothing lasts, I guess.”

  “Nope,” Lily says happily. “Not a thing.” She flips onto her back and smiles up at Harry’s letter. “Including this horrid war. When it’s over, you’re going to be my maid of honor.”

  I smile. “Sounds great.”

  “It will be.” She hugs the letter to her chest, and we while away the rest of the afternoon until the sun goes down and it’s time to go to work.

  The Curtiss A-25, or Shrike, is a single-prop attack plane with a dark body, white belly, and stars set in a circle of blue on either wing. The Shrike’s a dive-bomber, with room for a pilot, a gunner, and a couple thousand pounds of bombs. Not that we get to do dives on towing duty. Target towing sounds simple, and it is. We go up, two of us together, Lily and me in one plane, Lucille and Delilah in the other, pulling giant target flags attached to the tails of our A-25s. That’s all the skill there is to it. Then we circle over the gunnery range in long slow lines. Down on the ground is where all the action is. Tonight the boys will be using 90-mm antiaircraft guns, big, long-nosed guns that can shoot twenty or more rounds a minute. Two soldiers man a searchlight, scanning the sky for the target, and the rest of the crew cranks that gun around as fast as they can, aiming to shoot a bull’s-eye on our flag.

  “La de dee, la dee da,” Lily hums as we take off. All systems are go and everything is smooth as silk. It’s a beautiful night for flying, too. All of that Link training has paid off. I feel just as peachy flying under the starry sky now as I do under the noontime sun.

  We do our first pass, and the deep thocking sound of the guns echoes from below. Lily looks out the window as I circle around. If you do it right, the target takes its time catching up to you, and you can see if it’s been hit or not.

  “One hit, not exactly a bull’s-eye,” Lily says with a chuckle. “They took the tail corner off.”

  “Not good enough.” I grin. We swing around for our second pass. It’s too loud inside the plane for us to hear the silk flag rippling in our wake, but I imagine I can hear it. It sounds just like the snapping silk sc
arf Bessie Coleman used to wear when she flew. I like the sound of that.

  “Holy Moses!” Lily shrieks. I see it, too. The cauliflower burst of a shell in front of the plane. Not behind us, where it’s supposed to be.

  “What the heck are they doing down there?” I ask. Lily is on the radio in nothing flat. “Target One to Gunner One, Target One to Gunner One. Adjust your aim. You’re targeting our plane.”

  I’m proud to say it, but Lily is calm as can be on the radio. You never want to sound hysterical, talking to the men on the ground. They get a kick out of scaring little girls, as they put it.

  “Gunner One to Target One, we copy.”

  “Good,” Lily says, exasperated. She hangs up the radio mouthpiece and scans the sky. I keep us steady and right on course.

  When the bullets hit us, they come right through the left wing.

  “Jesus, Lily, they’re shooting us!” I adjust the wings and speed up the plane. The faster we get out of range, the better. If we get killed by friendly fire, Mama would never forgive me or Uncle Sam.

  Lily grabs the radio again. “Mayday, Gunner One, mayday. We’ve been hit.”

  “Not possible, ma’am,” the voice on the other end of the radio says.

  “Damn right it’s possible. You stop shooting right now. We’re coming down!”

  I’ve already got my headset open to the control tower. “Target One to tower. Emergency landing. We’ve been hit by Gunner One.”

  “You’ve been what?”

  “Hit by Gunner One. They’re all over the place down there.”

  “Are you safe to land?”

  I scan the instruments in front of me. Oil pressure is fine; I’m holding altitude. “Roger that. Mostly cosmetic damage, I think. But don’t hold me to that, and don’t leave us up here long enough for it to change.”

  “Copy.” The traffic controller clears a path for us to land. The base fire truck and a medical jeep are at the far end of the tarmac when we come in.

  The second we roll to a stop, Lily jumps to her feet. “I’m gonna kill someone,” she says. Her cheeks are almost as red as her hair.

  I unstrap myself from my chair. “You’ll have to wait in line.”

  “Is that really all we are to them, Ida? Guinea pigs? Disposable targets?”

  I think of the way Patsy died, the way the engineer tried to rush me through my flight check that day. Testing new planes and guns on WASP, like any other scientific experiment. “You might be right, Lily. God, I hope you’re not right.”

  The line of holes punched through the left wing makes my heart sink. I run a finger lightly over the edges of torn metal. For someone who wasn’t targeting us, Gunner One sure did a bang-up job. A few inches to the left and we might not even be standing here.

  This time, we don’t go through channels. We commandeer the med jeep and drive out onto the gunnery range. The poor driver barely brings the jeep to a stop before we jump out.

  I storm up to the first soldier I see who isn’t still manning one of the guns. His back is to me and his head is in his hand. I grab his arm. “Who the hell’s your CO?”

  He turns around, startled. It’s Lieutenant Charlie Washington, our guide from this morning. “It’s me, ma’am. I . . .” He looks lost. His eyes are big as a cow’s.

  “It’s my . . . my first commission as gunnery command. I . . . these guns are . . . I’m awful sorry. Are you and the other lady hurt?”

  “You son of a—” Lily stops in her tracks when she sees Charlie. I turn in time to see recognition dawn on her face.

  She pats Charlie on the back. “You poor kid. You poor, stupid kids.”

  She points, and I see that Charlie Washington is the oldest of the lot.

  “Holy moly. Is this what we’re down to?”

  Lily nods. “Uncle Sam’ll be issuing diapers next.”

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” I tell him. “This is going to be in our report. Do better next time.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says, taking off his flack helmet.

  “Helmet on, soldier!” a man shouts from another jeep that’s just pulled up. By his uniform, he’s a captain, and Charlie’s in a world of trouble.

  “This is an active gunnery range. Ladies, I’ll have to ask you to leave. We’ll discuss this in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir, Captain, sir!” Lily and I shout, and salute him.

  Later that night, Lily and I sit up in our cots playing Old Maid by moonlight.

  “How did this happen?” I ask her.

  “What happen?”

  I look at her face. The freckles are still just as fresh on her nose as they were the day we met. “How did we get to be so old? I mean, you saw those kids out there tonight. They were babies.”

  Lily sighs. “I know what you mean. Do you know what my mother said when she heard about Hitler invading Poland? She said, ‘These are the things that make us old.’” She shuffles through her cards and then stops, frowning. When she looks up again, her eyes are damp with unshed tears.

  “Ever since Patsy died, I’ve been thinking, what if this is it? What if this is it for all of us? There’s another accident, like there could have been tonight, or I don’t know, what if Hitler wins?”

  I stretch my arms and sigh. Sometimes I miss Jolene and my family so much that it wears me out inside. At least my family is talking to me, though. Jolene is like a hole in my heart that just won’t heal. “This war will make old maids out of all of us.”

  “I hope not,” Lily says. “Harry might not want to marry me if I’m an old maid.”

  I chuckle and drop my cards, my heart no longer in the game. We sit there on my cot beneath the window, watching the moon float in the sky like a bar of Ivory soap in a bath.

  “Now,” Lily says. “If only we could get our hands on a real plane. I feel like a bus driver up there in that Shrike.”

  I laugh and throw a pillow at her. “Amen, sister. Amen! They don’t call it the ‘Big-Tailed Beast’ for nothing,” I say, referring to one of the A-25’s nicknames. Inwardly, I shrug. Why worry about tomorrow when you can worry about today?

  Less than a week later, our prayers are answered. A letter straight from Deatie Deaton herself says Jackie Cochran has reviewed our records, and there’s something special she wants us to fly. Two days later, Lily and I say goodbye to Lucille and Delilah and take the train back east to Birmingham, Alabama, to see what the first lady of aviation’s got in mind.

  Chapter 22

  “Ladies, have you ever heard of the B-29 bomber?”

  Lily and I exchange glances. We’re in a briefing room at Birmingham Army Air Base. We arrived last night with no further instructions than to see the commanding officer. Colonel Leland Griffith is a kind-faced man with graying temples and a gruff voice. He made sure we had a hot breakfast at the officers’ mess before our meeting. It’s 7 A.M. Lily and I are in our dress blues. I clear my throat.

  “Yes, sir. It’s experimental, isn’t it?”

  Colonel Griffith looks uneasy, but he nods. “Do you know what the flyboys call it?”

  “The Superfortress, sir.”

  It’s the right answer. Colonel Griffith relaxes back into his chair. I feel a flash of pride. I’ve done my homework well.

  “Did you ever wonder why the army’d design a plane big enough to fit a platoon of elephants?”

  Lily answers first. “No, sir. But the army must have its reasons.”

  Griffith actually smiles this time. “Good answer, Miss Lowenstein.” He pauses, takes a glance at a file on his desk, and frowns.

  “Ever see one?”

  “No, sir,” we reply.

  There is an honest-to-God twinkle in the colonel’s eye when he asks, “Would you like to?”

  “Sir, yes, sir!”

  I break into a face-splitting grin before I can stop myself. I look at Lily, and she’s grinning, too, so I guess it’s okay.

  With another nod, Colonel Griffith rises from behind his desk and leads us out to a hangar at the back of
the airfield. In those few moments, with the crisp blue Alabama sky above us and the comfortable sound of transport planes overhead, I feel as if I could float away on a cloud. Or worse, wake up and miss all the excitement.

  The B-29 is the largest plane I’ve ever seen. It’s a mastodon compared to the little ATs and P-50s we’ve been flying. Daddy’s little Jenny would fit in the belly of this plane three times over. This is the real deal. Flying her will take skill, strength, and a little bit of luck. My fingers tingle just thinking about it.

  Lily claps once in delight.

  I can’t help but ask. “What kind of bombs are they carrying in this thing?”

  At last, the wrong question. Griffith frowns at me. “None, as of yet. Damn thing’s harder than a mule train to fly.” He stops in the shadow of the starboard wing and turns to face us.

  “Let’s get down to brass tacks, ladies. I’ve been reading your records. So have a few other folks up top. You’ve got three days to learn how to fly this thing.”

  Lily and I blink at him. “And then what?”

  The colonel glances up at the wing soaring over his head. He looks small compared to the big bird. And if he looks small, I know I look like next to nothing.

  “And then,” he says, “we’ll see.”

  For one whole day, Lily and I sit in a private office in the officers’ compound, poring over the specs of the plane. Nobody bothers us. Just a few flyboys who haven’t seen girls in a while “accidentally” knocking on the wrong door. The way we figure it, the B-29 must be experimental. It wouldn’t be the first time a WASP had flown something new or difficult. Planes like the PT-19 were considered too powerful until a WASP showed she could handle it. Lily and I are determined not to let the WASP down. We study every inch of that plane, and when our eyes get crossed and start seeing double, we have dinner with the colonel in his private dining room and get a ride back to the boardinghouse off base where women visitors have to sleep.

  On the second day, Lily and I head back to the hangar to visit the B-29 in the flesh, so to say. With a work light in one hand and the manual in another, we explore every detail. It’s a big plane, like I’ve said. It takes all day. But by the end of it, we’re both pretty sure of ourselves, sitting in that giant cockpit. Colonel Griffith joins us to explain the next day’s procedures.