On Wings Of The Morning

by Marie Bostwick

  “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.

  I was calm and confident. Until then, every time I had walked across the tarmac to approach the BT-13, she looked like so
me kind of menacing monster-machine, bent on my defeat. Every time I took her up was a contest of wills as I forced the reluctant beast clumsily through her paces. But that day, from the second the propellers began stirring in the hot Texas wind and I took hold of the wheel, vibrating with the power of four hundred and fifty horses, all my uncertainty vanished. I was never again afraid of the BT-13, or any plane for that matter. My anxiety was replaced by respect—respect for the plane and what she could do, and respect for my ability to make her do it better. That day I began to realize that every craft is . . . well, almost alive. Each plane has a personality with unique strengths and weaknesses, and it is up to the pilot to enhance the former and minimize the latter.

  That day the BT and I were like perfectly matched dance partners. We practically waltzed across the wide Texas skies as I led her through dips and dives, spins and stalls, with an easy confidence I’d never known was in me. I forgot all about Maytag, sitting in the passenger seat, waiting to pounce on the tiniest error. I focused my mind and heart on knowing this plane, feeling all the possibility within her and drawing it out. I felt brave and peaceful and vast beyond words.

  I walked the wind. I found again what I hadn’t even realized I’d lost—the joy of flying, of living—the joy I’d buried with Roger because his death had made living unseemly.

  I’d been going through the motions, and very convincingly. Once the girls had gotten to know my story, they’d been all admiration for how I’d picked up and honored Roger’s sacrifice by fulfilling his last wish for me. They used words like brave, patriotic, selfless, and sometimes I told myself the same thing, but it was all a sham. I wasn’t brave; I was terrified, and I was hiding my terror beneath a suffocating veil of obligation. I’d been trying to live on Roger’s behalf, trying to be what I thought Roger wanted me to be, trying to live the life I thought he’d been cheated out of and that I owed him because I hadn’t loved him completely until it was almost too late.

  I’d had it all wrong. As many times as I’d read the letter I wore over my heart, I hadn’t understood it. But now, somehow, something in the way the sunlight sliced through the clouds, separating light from dark, finally brought it within my grasp.

  I had loved Roger, not at first, but at last, and that was enough. There was no debt to pay, no fee owed. I could finally see the sky again. Aloft, there is no beginning and no end, and if you give yourself up to the sky, you see time as the limiting, contrived idea it is. We were not created to live such boundaried lives. No matter for how long or short a time, I loved Roger and he loved me, and because it had been, even for a moment, it always would be. The price of his love exacted no debt.

  Without voice, or words, I heard my husband speak to me one last time, words of love, words of forgiveness, words of release.

  I love who you are. I love who you will become. I always will.

  When we landed, I didn’t even stand around waiting for Maytag to fill out my evaluation. I didn’t have to. I knew I had passed with a perfect score. Maytag actually chased me down, waving the form and hollering, “Hey! Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  I turned around but kept walking, backwards, as he trotted up to me. “Don’t think so. Seemed like a perfect flight to me, wouldn’t you say?” I knew I was being cocky, but I couldn’t help myself. This man had put me through the ringer, and I vowed never to be afraid of him again.

  “You’ll do,” he said flatly and shoved the evaluation into my hand, but just the same, I thought I recognized a look of grudging respect on his face.

  When I walked into the ready room, Pamela, Fanny, and Donna Lee were waiting for me with anxious faces.

  I pulled off my helmet, ran my hand through my hair, fluffing up my flattened curls, and unzipped the neck of my flight suit. “Can you believe this is only March?” I said nonchalantly. “It must be one hundred degrees out there! I miss flying the PTs. It was nice getting a breeze in those open cockpits.”

  The girls examined me for a moment, trying to decide if I was teasing them or putting up a brave front in the face of failure. I couldn’t keep it in any longer.

  “Yee-haw!” My triumphant cowboy yell was accompanied by a spontaneous victory dance and the joyous shouts, squeals, and squeezes of my girlfriends.

  “You did it! I knew you would!” Fanny yelled as she threw her arms around me.

  Donna Lee grabbed the evaluation that was clutched in my fist. “Look at this! She got a perfect score! I didn’t know those existed!”

  “Tumbleweed, here we come! I’m buying the first round!” Pamela promised.

  “And I’ll let you,” I said, laughing. “Too bad we can’t go right now, but I guess we’ll just have to hang on until tomorrow night. Right now I’m due at my meteorology class, and after that I think I might celebrate by sneaking off for a nap. Don’t look for me at lunch, girls.”

  I waved good-bye and scurried off to class. Opening the ready-room door, I hit a solid wall of scorching West Texas heat. But I didn’t mind it; I welcomed it. I welcomed the feeling of sun on my face and the smell of mesquite that perfumed the air. My eyes feasted on the endless expanse of blue that stretched across the horizon. Everything around me seemed bright and clear, as if it had been outlined in sharp-pointed pencil, demanding my notice, which I gave, wholly and gratefully.

  Purposefully walking through the middle of a whirling dust devil, I stretched out my arms and laughed at the insistent wind. And for the first time in a long time, I thought of how good it was to be alive.

  Was it coincidence, then, that I met Morgan the very next day? I suppose it’s possible, but you’ll never get me to believe it.

  16

  Georgia

  Sweetwater, Texas—March 1943

  I’d just finished a five-hour flight and was coming in for a landing “under the hood.” That meant I had to fly with a black curtain drawn across my windshield to block my view, relying completely on my instruments. Since the primary role of the WASP would be to ferry planes from factories and bases to where they were needed, our curriculum placed even more emphasis on this kind of navigation than the training of our male counterparts did. It wasn’t easy.

  Flying under the hood required complete focus. You had to keep your eyes glued to the instruments at all times—the airspeed indicator to know if you were going too fast or slow, the altimeter to make sure you were climbing or descending properly, the needle-ball to make sure you weren’t listing too far to the left or right—all the while listening to the instructor’s directions as they were shouted over the earphones and praying that those instruments really were accurate. You had to have great trust in your plane and your own ability, because you really were flying blind. It was exhausting.

  I was looking forward to using the bathroom (long flights didn’t include pit stops, and, unlike male pilots, we couldn’t take care of business in midair—even if we had, our oversized flight suits weren’t exactly designed to accommodate the female anatomy), taking a cold shower, and falling into bed. We were all supposed to go to the Tumbleweed that night, but I thought I’d just beg off and get some sleep instead. But once we landed, my instructor, Dave Kalinowski, pulled back the curtain and said, “Nice flight. Couldn’t have been better,” and I felt a sudden rush of energy.

  Maybe just the ladies’ room and shower, I thought. I was ready for a night on the town after all.

  I taxied up to the hangar and climbed out of the BT just in time to see another plane, a big, twin-engined monster of a ship, come in for a landing right behind me. Dave and I watched as it touched down.

  “What is that?” I asked. “I never saw anything like it.”

  “That’s one of those new P-38 fighters,” he answered. “They say that’s the plane that will win us this war. They’re fast and handle like a dream.” We watched admiringly as that beautiful airplane taxied toward us, the sun glinting off her silver finish and reflecting bright diamonds of light into our eyes.

  “I’d like to stick around and check her
out,” Dave said, “but I’ve got another girl going up in half an hour and I’ve gotta grab some chow. Say, I heard a rumor that the Fantastic Four were going to the Tumbleweed tonight, that right?”

  “Umm. Maybe,” I vacillated. “I’m not sure.”

  Instructors and students weren’t supposed to socialize, but, of course, a few did off base. Dave had hinted that he’d like to go out with me a couple of times, but I’d sidestepped the question. He was attractive, with a full head of wavy black hair and a sharp-jawed masculinity, and was a good teacher to boot, but I wasn’t going to risk my career by fraternizing with an instructor. On top of that, I just wasn’t interested. Not in Dave. Not in anybody.

  “Well,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you later, Georgia. Real nice work today.”

  “Thanks.” I waved as he walked off but kept my eyes fixed on the approaching P-38. It was one hot-looking plane and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to fly her myself. She taxied through shimmering waves of ghostly water brought on by the blistering heat rising from the tarmac, looking like a mirage of a plane, too beautiful to be real.

  She parked next to me, dwarfing my BT, which seemed suddenly very plain-Jane next to this gorgeous beast. When her engines were cut and the props slowed and ceased their whine, the canopy popped open, and the pilot stepped out, a man with dark eyes and a serious expression. For some reason, it had never crossed my mind that a man would be flying this plane.

  Without thinking, I blurted out, “What in the heck are you doing here?”

  The pilot pulled off his helmet. “Emergency landing,” he said.