Flygirl (27 page)

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.

“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.

Normally, there'd be a crew of eleven that goes up in these birds—pilot, co-pilot, three gunners, and a crew to handle targeting and dropping the bombs. Since tomorrow is just a lap around the airfield, Colonel Griffith wants us to take three of his men up with us.

“So you get the real feel of her,” he says. We both know it's so the men can take over if the girls choke.

 

“This is fine,” Lily says from her piloting chair. We've both strapped in and are getting comfortable with the reach of the controls.

“Oh, yes, it is,” I agree. This is a big plane, and she's going to be heavy as a sack of wet sand to pull off the runway, but it's a treat just sitting here. No sirree, these two girls won't fail.

So far, our stay at Birmingham has been pretty quiet. There's all sorts of activity on the base when we drive on in the morning and when we leave at night. But nothing that involves us. That's why it's a surprise on the morning of the third day when there's a crowd out to greet us on the tarmac. It looks like just about every doughboy this side of the Mississippi has shown up. Colonel Griffith rides out to the hangar with us in a jeep. He's in full dress uniform, so you'd think he had planned the whole thing, but he sure looks upset at the sight of all those soldier boys.

“Aw, hell. Who called them here?”

“Sir?” Lily and I are in our zoot suits and pigtails—one of the privileges of being full-fledged WASP, no more turbans for us. I've got butterflies the size of eagles this morning, and facing the masses when I'm in my flying jammies doesn't help.

Griffith drops down in his seat. “Keep going.” The driver takes us past the crowd of soldiers and into the hangar with the B-29. He drives fast, but not fast enough for Lily and I to miss one of the men shouting, “Another Widowmaker.”

“Excuse me, sir, but what's going on?” Lily asks.

“Begging your pardon,” I add. “But what did he mean by ‘Widowmaker'?” Every WASP knew about the first “Widowmaker”—the B-26 Marauder, a plane that tended to crash on takeoff. I look the colonel in the eye and wait for an answer.

Colonel Griffith actually blushes. He takes off his hat and steps out of the jeep. A full thirty seconds pass before he turns to us.

“Ladies, you have twenty minutes to get in that plane and get it down that runway. We've got a crowd out there, and we might as well use it.”

Lily and I exchange glances. I don't like not knowing what's going on, but this is the army. We don't have to like it. We just have to do what we're told.

Lily frowns at me, then shrugs. We both take a deep breath and start our flight check. While we're going over the wings, the rest of our flight crew shows up. Colonel Griffith, who has been pacing by the jeep like a daddy-to-be in a hospital waiting room, introduces them to us.

“Ladies, this here is Captain Hank Rhodes, Lieutenant Davis Warner, and Lieutenant Daniel Sparks.”

We shake hands down the line. Captain Hank is a square-jawed, dark-haired man, about Thomas's age. Davis Warner and Daniel Sparks could be twins, except Warner has brown hair and Sparks is a redhead. They both have freckles, blue eyes, and wide grins. They can't be much more than eighteen or nineteen. But then again, I'm only twenty-one.

“We're the bombardiers,” Sparks says once the colonel has returned to his pacing. “We'll be flying navigation and radio today in case . . . well. You can call me Sparky.”

I know what the “in case” is. The bombardier's seat is in the nose of the plane. If we can't fly this thing, it's the worst spot to be in for an emergency landing. I guess I can't hold that against him.

“Thanks, Sparky. You can call me Jonesy,” I say.

“I'm afraid I'm just Lily, but that'll do, too.” Lily shakes Sparky's hand.

“Sparks, let the ladies finish their flight check. Everything's got to go perfect if we're gonna pull this off,” Hank says. His voice is surprisingly high for someone with such a square jaw. He looks like Clark Gable without the mustache, but he sounds like Mickey Rooney.

“Thank you, Captain,” I say, and Lily and I double-check the wing before moving on to the fuel line.

“Ready, Eddy,” Lily finally says, checking off the last of our list.

I nod and open the door to the plane. Lily wheels up a stepladder. “Gentlemen first,” we say. Sparks seems to like that. He chuckles, shakes his head, and climbs aboard.

The men settle into their stations in the compartment behind the pilot and co-pilot seats and we head out of the hangar and onto the runway with little fanfare. I'm surprised the colonel didn't have us leave under cover of darkness, he seems so displeased by the crowd outside. Then again, maybe this is what he really wants.

“I just had an idea, Lily.”

“What's that? Fly us all to Acapulco for supper?”

“No. I mean, it seems to me the colonel is using us as an example. You and I both know that the army can keep a secret when it wants to.”

“That's for sure,” Lily agrees.

“Well, then, why do you suppose there just happen to be sixty soldiers with nothing better to do than watch us this morning?”

Lily frowns, then smiles. “Because they want to see what a girl can do.”

I nod. “With the ‘Widowmaker.'”