Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  The last place I wanted to die was in a bomber flying over a freezing cold ocean, my family far away and missing me, my brother captured or dead without me even knowing what had happened to him. And what if he needed me? What if just that minute he was calling my name, hoping I’d come rescue him?

  The plane dropped again—twelve hundred feet this time. In my headset, I could hear the flight engineer and tail gunners swearing. I could hear the bombardier being sick on his stomach over and over again and the navigator yelling something at me, but it sounded like he was underwater. Then, from the back of the plane, I could hear Gossie, her voice as dramatic and loud as Katharine Hepburn’s: “It’s cold as a witch’s left teat, Mary Lou. Don’t you dare crash this plane.” Mary Lou was what she called me, since the moment I’d met her on a Nashville street, back when she thought I was a down-and-out and took me in to live with her above the Lovelorn Café, before I ever knew how to fly or went to Texas to become a WASP.

  I yanked off my headset and threw it on the floor of the cockpit. I could feel Helen looking at it, looking at me. I thought, To hell with this. And then I pulled back the throttle and pushed the nose of the plane up and up, just like I was headed straight for heaven and my mama and a boy named Ned Tyler who I’d loved and lost.

  I climbed till I couldn’t see the ocean, till we were above the clouds, above the overcast. Ceiling and visibility unlimited, Ty used to say. And only then did the air even out and the plane stop shaking, gliding once more like the waters of Three Gum River, high up in Sleepy Gap, North Carolina, on a mountain named for my mama’s people.

  One hour later, the B-17 broke through the clouds and the wind and the rain and soared toward the runway at Prestwick, Scotland. We’d left the ocean to cross over land miles before, but the earth was darker than the water because of the blackout regulations in Great Britain. I’d been told there was a short runway and a new runway, which was wider and longer and crossed the other one to make an X. The runways were grass, not the paved ones of Avenger Field or Camp Davis, North Carolina, where I was stationed after graduating from WASP training, but the long one was under construction to be paved. Because of this we weren’t supposed to use it.

  The rain was heavy and driving in our downwind leg, but we were back to dry weather again on the base leg. As I made the final approach, I put my headset back on, and we went right back into the storm. The water was beating down so hard I couldn’t see an inch in front of the windshield, which was completely misted up. When I was two hundred feet over the runway, the visibility cleared enough so I could just make out the ground lamps that were there to guide us, the only light for miles. They didn’t look any brighter than candle flames.

  Then I heard the control tower. A male voice came blurring through, growing louder and louder. He was shouting at me to pull back up. He said, “There’s a C-54 with broken landing gear in the middle of the old runway. You’ll have to use the new one. Use the new one!”

  A flash of red exploded right in front of us. Another flash exploded to my left, and then another to my right. Helen said, “They’re shooting at us!”

  “Flare pistols!” I couldn’t see a thing. I thought to myself: Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Then I pushed the throttles forward, faster than you were supposed to, and I got almost to flying speed. Just as we were coming up on the C-54, I hauled back on the stick and jumped over the wreck, like I was fence-hopping again with Ty around the farms that surrounded Avenger Field.

  Two work trucks sat on the new, longer runway. The grass had turned to mud, and Helen said, “We don’t have enough room to land, Hartsie.”

  I could see two, maybe three hundred feet at the end of the runway, just beyond the trucks. Then the new pavement gave way to gravel, and then nothing but grass and, beyond that, water. I hollered, “Hold on!”

  I thought of everything I’d been taught as a WASP—to trust my judgment, to know my compass, to fly blind if I had to, to picture an imaginary airport in the sky where I could land my plane safely, easily. I pictured it now as I came in over the ground—as black as a cave—so low that I thought we were going to hit those trucks and knock them into the sea. I flew as low as I dared, and then, after I cleared the second truck, I took the B-17 down, easing up on the throttle, my engines at fifty percent, then lower and lower again. I put my flaps to full landing and released the landing gear. We hit the earth, bumping once and then twice, and then one more time. I slammed the brakes as hard as I could, but we were sliding too fast across the runway toward the gravel and the water.

  I’d taught myself to drive when I was seventeen years old. I’d learned to fly when I was twenty. I’d been singing since I was a girl, dreaming of the day that I’d stand on the stage at the Grand Ole Opry. Ever since I was little, before Mama died and my daddy went away, I’d saved my money to go to Nashville, Tennessee, so that I could be a singer. But then came the war and then I learned to fly, and now here I was, all the way across the ocean.

  The B-17 came to a stop, front wheels on the gravel, back wheels on the grass. It was an almost perfect landing.

  I climbed down from the plane, knees shaking, trying to get my land legs again, trying to get used to the feel of ground beneath my feet. Helen climbed down after me, pulling off her helmet and goggles and smoothing her dark hair with a slim and elegant hand, and then she sat right on the wet ground and held on to the grass and the gravel as if she were afraid she might go spinning off into the air. The navigator, the flight engineer, the gunners, and the bombardier came down after us, and then Gossie came lumbering out, stocky legs wobbling, landing ginger as a cat, a smile on her brightly painted mouth. One of the men said, “Swell landing, Waspie.” He slapped me on the back and I tried to remember his name. People ran to meet us, coming out of the moonless dark like fast-moving haints.

  There I was, Velva Jean Hart—twenty-one years old; from Fair Mountain, North Carolina; daughter of Lincoln Hart, blacksmith, wanderer, no-account, and Corrine Justice, who died too soon; Harley Bright’s ex-wife; singer and mandolin player and owner of a Mexican guitar; writer of songs, some good and some not-so-good; driver of an old yellow truck; WASP; the second woman to ever fly a bomber across the Atlantic—thousands of miles from anything I’d ever known or seen in a whole other country on a whole other continent. It was June 16, 1944, and I was in Scotland.

  TWO

  Prestwick Airfield sat on the west coast of Scotland, some thirty miles southwest of Glasgow between the villages of Ayr and Troon. The Scottish names, like the Scottish accents, sounded like music to me. The way people spoke reminded me of being back home, only I thought we were a lot easier to understand. A couple dozen American pilots, just arrived from the States, rambled over the base, getting ready to fly out to join their bombardment groups. But mostly the base was filled with British officers and pilots, young and sturdy, flying in and flying out, onto other airfields around Great Britain.

  It was Saturday, June 17. Helen and I had gotten a telegram that morning from Jacqueline Cochran, head of the WASP, saying, “Congratulations WASP Hart and Stillbert on remarkable achievement.” But other than that, no one was paying much attention to us and the fact that we’d just flown across the ocean.

  At seven o’clock on Monday morning, Gossie would sail for France, where she would meet up with other WACs and work with the 3341st Signal Battalion in Paris, and Helen and I would leave for home, unless I could figure out a way to stay here. I hadn’t said anything to either of them about Johnny Clay, but I was working on a plan.

  We ate breakfast at the mess hall, and while Gossie and Helen talked about how to spend the day, I stirred my food around and tried to think. I was here. I’d done it. I’d come this far. But what was next?

  While I was busy thinking, five young men came wandering over, swaggering as if they were in a movie, and sat down at our table. I knew by their uniforms that they were Americans. They’d arrived in Scotland the night before, not long after us. One of them was burly shouldered and go
od-looking, though not as good-looking as he seemed to think he was. He said, “Y’all are WAAF, right?” He sounded like he could be from Mississippi or maybe Louisiana.

  I said, “WASP, and Gossie here is a WAC.”

  He said, “Girl pilots. What d’ya know?” He looked at the other men and waggled his eyebrows, and I couldn’t tell if this meant he thought it was a good or a bad thing. “Lieutenant Alden.” He held out his hand and I shook it.

  They asked us our names and where we came from and how did we ever get into this war and all the way to Scotland. They said they were with the 801st Bombardment Group, and they were on their way to an airfield in England to join the rest of their squadron. When Gossie asked what kinds of missions they’d be flying, they clammed up, except for Lieutenant Alden, who seemed to love hearing himself talk.

  He said, “Dangerous ones. Our group has flown three hundred missions since just before and after D-day, and only one hundred seventy-three of those came back.”

  Then, without telling us where they had flown or what the missions had been, Lieutenant Alden and the others started talking about a pilot buddy of theirs who’d been shot in the neck, right through the larynx, but still made it back to base. They told us about another friend, someone they had gone to training camp with, who’d flown one mission—his first and only—and had been shot down and killed over Saint-Lô, which was somewhere in France. They told us about another who’d been captured by the Germans, and another who’d been shot in the head as he was flying over the drop zone. They told us about other pilots who’d just disappeared and never come back and no one had ever heard from them again.

  The girls and I sat in silence, not eating or drinking, and the men looked smug, like that was exactly what they wanted, like maybe they were trying to teach us a lesson for being there. Helen took a drink of tea, which was all you could have now that coffee was so hard to find, and I saw that her hand was shaking.

  Suddenly, the beginnings of an idea popped into my mind. I said, “It sounds like you’ve got a shortage of pilots.”

  Lieutenant Alden said, “That’s why we’re headed that way, honey.”

  Gossie squinted at me across the table just the way my older sister, Sweet Fern, did when she knew I was up to something. I didn’t catch her eye, even though I knew she wanted me to, and I didn’t say a thing, just nodded and took a sip of my tea, like a proper lady.

  Base Commander Colonel McNaught, wide and unsmiling as a brick wall, sat behind his desk. The light poured in through the window behind him, making what was left of his pale red hair glow like the sun. He’d offered me a seat when his secretary first showed me in, but now he looked as if he wanted to take it back.

  He said, “It’s unheard of.”

  I said, “You need pilots. The 801st Bombardment Group has suffered losses. Great losses.” I couldn’t believe it, but my voice sounded as calm as if I were discussing the weather or the list for the market.

  He shook his head. “It’s not done, Miss Hart. Women in combat, flying bombers.”

  I said, “I’ve survived a crash in a B-29, the biggest bomber on earth, when someone cut my rudder cables. I’ve flown a B-17 Flying Fortress across the ocean because General Henry Arnold and Jacqueline Cochran believed I could. I’m a good pilot. I’m a great pilot, and I’m volunteering. I can be useful in this war besides just ferrying planes from base to base.” I thought: What are you doing, Velva Jean? What are you getting yourself into?

  He leaned over his desk and folded his hands and stared at me good and hard. I stared right back at him, not blinking, something I’d learned to do from Johnny Clay. For one minute, I thought he was going to yell at me and tell me to get the hell out of his office and off his airfield, and maybe even out of Scotland.

  Then he sighed. “It’s dangerous work. It can be deadly work.” But he said it in a bored way, as if he were tired of saying it, tired of things that were deadly and dangerous, as if they’d lost all meaning and were just a normal way of life now. In those two lines, I could hear how worn out he was from years of war, how ready he was to have it be over so he could go home. My eyes glanced along his desk to a picture of a woman and two little girls. Home to his family. I wondered when he’d seen them last. His eyes followed mine to the photograph and lingered.

  I glanced up at the wall, at the pictures of Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt. Just above his desk was another picture—it was a photograph of Colonel McNaught and Eleanor Roosevelt, the first lady. Beside her he was warm and smiling, the tired lines around his mouth and eyes cleared away.

  I looked back at him—the real, live him—and his eyes were still on the picture of his family. After a moment they wandered back to me. Before he could say anything, I said, “Eleanor Roosevelt says, ‘We are in a war and we need to fight it with all our ability and every weapon possible. Women pilots are a weapon waiting to be used.’” It took all the strength and willpower I had to sit with my hands folded in my lap, my back straight as a board, and not glance up at the picture of him and Mrs. Roosevelt. I thought about how I must look to him, dressed in my Santiago Blues, my silver wings pinned on my shoulder. I didn’t smile because I didn’t want him to think I was some silly female, wasting his time with chitchat. Instead, I stared at him straight, like we were regular men having a discussion.

  Finally, he said, “I would have to get approval from General Arnold and Miss Cochran, of course.”

  “Of course.” I told myself: Stay calm. Don’t smile. Breathe.

  “Among others.”

  “Yes.” Don’t look too happy. Don’t make him take back what he’s saying. Don’t make him change his mind.

  “I doubt they’ll agree to it. It’s just not done. Just not done.” He muttered something to himself, but I couldn’t make out the words. “I leave the decision to them. I assume that’s fine with you.” This sounded a little jeering, but I didn’t change my expression. I sat as cool and calm as the Virgin Mary, and nodded. I thought of asking him if he knew anything about where or how to find my brother, but decided not to push my luck.

  “Do you think your base can spare you?”

  I thought of Camp Davis, North Carolina—the swamps and the mud and the ugly wood barracks, the five hundred Army Air Force pilots who didn’t want women there, the jabs and looks and mean comments, the sabotage that had killed my friend Sally Hallatassee, one of the best flyers I’d ever known, that had nearly killed me. I thought of Butch Dawkins, part Creole, part Choctaw, blues-playing and blues-singing guitar man, my friend and maybe more, who used to be there too but now was somewhere in Georgia or England or maybe even France. And then I thought of Johnny Clay, who wasn’t in the United States but was somewhere over here, and how I’d made up my mind to find him, no matter what.

  I wasn’t sure if the colonel was mocking me again, but I said, “Yes, sir. I think they’ll be just fine.”

  I walked outside and stood in the hard, summer light—a mix of sun and clouds—surrounded by the green of Scotland, a green brighter than emeralds or Fair Mountain on a full spring morning. Under blue sky and sunlight, it was hard to imagine bombs and machine guns and tanks and people bleeding into the earth.

  Gossie and Helen stood by the door, arms folded, waiting. Helen said, “What did you do, Hartsie?” I looked at Gossie, and by the look in her eyes I knew she’d figured it out.

  I said, “I’m not ready to go home.” Not without my brother, I added in my head. “One hundred twenty-seven men killed while they were flying missions over France, and that’s just one division. Think of them all. This is what we trained for. How can I go back home to ferry planes when they can use me here?” As I said it, I knew suddenly that every single word of this was true, and that this was bigger than Johnny Clay.

  Gossie said, “Did he go for it?”

  “I think so.”

  She said, “Well done, Mary Lou.” Something cracked in her voice, just enough to let me know how proud she was of me. She coughed once and starte
d clearing her throat, patting her chest, pretending she’d swallowed a bug.

  Helen had a strange look fixed on her face. I knew she was anxious to leave, to be the third woman in history to pilot a bomber over the water. I looked at her and she looked at me, and finally she said, “Oh hell.” Then she sighed and tossed her head back in a way that I was always desperate to copy. It made her seem as confident as Bette Davis. She marched off into headquarters, the door banging shut behind her.

  The next morning, Colonel McNaught called Helen and me to his office and read us Jackie Cochran’s message: “Glad you can use WASP Hart and Stillbert. Let them know our pride in them. The world will soon see what women pilots can do.”

  As I listened to the words, I thought of all the centuries of stories in Prestwick and Troon and Ayr. I came from a place in North Carolina where the mountains were the oldest mountains on earth, but everything else felt new. I guessed I was a part of the history of this place now too.

  When he was finished giving us Miss Cochran’s message and finished giving us our orders, Colonel McNaught said, “Just for the record, I want you to know I believe this is a bad idea and I’m against it.”

  Helen and I stood like soldiers. I listened to everything he had to say about why we shouldn’t be flying and why we should be going home, leaving the war to the men, and the whole time he talked I stared at the picture of him and the first lady. I thought, You can talk all day if you want to, Colonel, but it doesn’t change the fact that Helen and I are going to England to help our boys in the invasion of France.

  Attention: Commanding Officer

  Upottery Airfield

  Devon, England

  June 18, 1944

  Dear Commanding Officer,

  I’m sorry I don’t know your name or who to direct this to, but my brother Technical Sergeant Johnny Clay Hart is a member of Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, U.S. 101st Airborne Division. According to Colonel Bradley Burns of the Bluie base in Greenland, Johnny Clay did not jump with his unit on D-day, and hasn’t been heard from since winter of last year, when I believe he was sent to Upottery.