On Wings Of The Morning (31 page)

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Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: On Wings Of The Morning
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Mama lifted her eyebrows “Well, from what I heard, she wasn't exactly waiting. Ruby told me she'd been writing to six different servicemen, trying to wrangle a proposal out of one of them.”
I smiled. “And did it work?”
She nodded, “She's going to marry George Sanderson when he comes home for his Christmas leave. I'm just glad you already ended it with her. I was worried that I was going to have to tell you all about it and break your heart.”
Mama was obviously scandalized, but I just laughed. After all those love letters, all those months, all the anguish and guilt I'd gone through, worried that I was keeping Virginia from finding love ... Fountain was right, a girl that looked like Virginia wasn't going to be lonely for long.
“Nope. You're off the hook, Mama. Besides, when it comes to heartbreak, it's too late. Somebody beat Virginia to it.” I was still smiling, but I'd surprised myself. I hadn't intended to tell Mama about Georgia, but it was too late now. I had to let her in on my secret. Maybe I'd wanted to all along.
“I met a girl during my training. Her name is Georgia. She's a pilot, and she's ...” I pushed back the kitchen chair, jumped to my feet, and started pacing, too unsettled to sit. “Mama, she's just the most wonderful girl! I never met anyone like her. No one has ever made me feel this way, and it's not just something physical, Mama. With Virginia, she was so beautiful that it took every ounce of self-control I had ...” I stopped, suddenly remembering that it was my mother I was speaking to, but when I looked at her, she seemed unperturbed, just inclined her head a little, encouraging me to go on. And I wanted to tell her. I had to, because Mama was the only one in the world who would understand.
“What I mean is, Mama, I know the difference between love and lust. And I love Georgia! I know that now. But we'd spent so little time together, and I was worried. I didn't want to tell her anything that wasn't true. I'd already been through that with Virginia. I didn't want to do anything that might end up hurting her later, but that's what happened anyway.
“She came to see me before I shipped out. Things got pretty passionate, and I ended up pushing her away. Not because I didn't want her, but because I did want her, so badly. But I didn't want to end up hurting her. I was trying to protect her!” I cried.
I stopped my pacing and grabbed on to the top rung of the wooden chair, facing my mother. “I kept thinking about you, Mama. I didn't know about Lindbergh then, but I did know that someone a long time ago must have made you fall in love and then left you.”
“Oh, Morgan,” Mama whispered.
“I thought I loved her, Mama, but I wasn't sure. Everything was happening so fast! And if I did love her, that was all the more reason to hold back. I was only hours from shipping out. I just couldn't take the risk. I didn't want what happened to you to happen to Georgia, but she ran off before I could explain. I should have gone after her, but I was so mixed up.” I loosened my grip on the chair and held open my empty hands. “I let her go.
“I told myself that it was for the best, that it was no good falling in love with a girl who was thousands of miles away, especially when I was about to go back into combat. I tried to forget about her, but I just couldn't.”
“Morgan,” Mama chided gently, “if that's how you feel about her, you should tell her. The war is over for you. There's nothing holding you back from falling in love now, if there ever was.”
“I know, Mama,” I said. “Believe me, I know.”
Frustrated, I rubbed my face with my hands. “When I was stuck on the island I thought about her so much. I realized I loved her. I did from the first minute I saw her.”
Mama smiled. “Seems like you did a lot of thinking out on that island.”
“There wasn't much else to do. I promised myself that if I ever got out of there, I would tell her the whole truth. And I did. As soon as I was well enough to hold a pen, even before I got back to the States, I wrote her a letter, explained everything, and told her I loved her. That was months ago, but I've never heard a word from her.”
Mama got up from the table and came to put a comforting arm around me. “Well, you should write her again. Morgan, you were halfway across the world when you sent that. Anything could have happened to that letter. Maybe she never received it.”
I shook my head. “I thought of that. I wrote again from the hospital in San Diego. That was weeks ago, and nothing.” I shrugged hopelessly. “No answer. Or rather, that is her answer—nothing. She wants nothing to do with me. She doesn't love me.”
Mama wrapped both her arms around me. And I let her. “Oh, Morgan,” she said. “Morgan.”
37
Georgia
Liberal, Kansas—November 1944
 
H
ow did I get myself into this?
I asked myself as I peered in the mirror and I wiped the color off my lips with a tissue before applying a different, hopefully more suitable shade of lipstick. I pressed another tissue between my lips to blot the color, peered at my reflection again, and groaned. Too orange. How had I gotten to be twenty-three years old and still not own a tube of nice, pink lipstick?
If Fran were here to witness my frantic and clumsy attempts at cosmetic application, she'd have teased me mercilessly. “See?” she'd say. “All those times I tried to teach you about makeup and fashion, you made fun of me, but now I'll bet you wish you would have listened.” Yes, Fran would have had lots of fun at my expense, but in the end, she'd have pulled a pink lipstick from the depths of her purse and saved the day. Too bad she wasn't here.
I heard the crackle of rubber tires pulling into the gravel driveway of my landlord's house. I'd have to wear the orange lipstick. At least my new dress looked nice. It had been a splurge, but I couldn't very well eat Thanksgiving dinner in a flight suit; and, besides, in just a few more weeks I wouldn't be able to wear uniforms all the time. I was going to have to get some civilian clothes. I buttoned, unbuttoned, and rebuttoned the top button of my dress, deciding that modesty was the best policy, then donned the hat that the woman in the shop had assured me looked perfectly elegant with the dress. A quick look in the glass convinced me to take it off again. The big pheasant feather pinned to the side made me look like a relative of the main course. Maybe I should wear my WASP beret? Nope. Wrong color.
I heard a car door slam. Panicked, I ran to the window and pulled back the curtain to confirm my worst fears. I was hatless, petrified, and out of time. Morgan was here to pick me up for Thanksgiving dinner with his family.
How did I get myself into this?
 
Ten days before, I'd been pacing back and forth in my empty classroom, waiting to meet the man who was to take my job. All morning I'd felt like a pot simmering on a stove, just on the edge of boiling, and as afternoon and the introduction to my replacement approached, I became even more agitated. Ever since I'd let loose with that “Good thing you aren't in charge” barb in Hemingway's office, he'd made my last days as a flight instructor as miserable as possible, assigning every dimwit or malcontent on base to my class, suddenly deciding that my classroom should be made into a conference room and moving me to the smallest, mostly poorly lit and poorly heated space on base, then denying my supply requisition when I asked for a portable heater! And though I couldn't prove Hemingway was behind it, I certainly had my suspicions when my paycheck was mysteriously “lost” by the accounting department and it took them three weeks and thirty pounds of paperwork to issue a replacement check.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. What had I ever done to deserve this besides leave my home and business behind to serve my country?
Donna Lee had called it right: the days when newspapers ran glowing, glamorized stories about selfless, patriotic WASP pilots ably pitching in to help in the war were long gone. In its place were nasty letters to the editor and derisive newspaper stories that referred to the WASP as “powder puff pilots” and claimed female pilots were less qualified, cost more to train, and had higher accident and fatality rates than the men, all of which were outright lies. And the closer we got to a vote on the militarization of the WASP, the worse it got.
Shortly after Pamela's bridal shower, Donna Lee sent me a newspaper article from the
Galveston Gazette
that summed up the situation perfectly.
Ground Those Glamour Girls! Say Jobless He-Man Pilots
Today, the fiercest campaign in the historic battle of the sexes is being fought in the air. Thousands of well-trained male pilots complain that they are jobless, while the WASP continue ferrying planes, towing targets, tracking and doing courier work for the Army at $250 a month.
Members of Congress have received mountains of mail from unhappy male pilots, most of them former instructors with the now defunct Civilian Pilot Training Program. Reports from the Capitol say that few Congressmen are willing to take up the cause of the WASP, especially in light of the campaign mounted by male pilots' associations calling Jacqueline Cochran's WASP “glamour girls” that are more expensive, less well-trained, and less experienced than the men.
Some of the masculine comments are far from gallant. “Thirty-five-hour wonders” is one tag they've pinned on the lady fliers.
“This program is just bleeding the taxpayers dry,” said one disgruntled male. “Costs $7000 to train every female. It's the most expensive way to ferry planes.”
Another said, “If these girls had a shred of patriotism, they'd resign.”
“It just doesn't make sense,” sighed one baffled pilot. “Not when we have so many qualified men who are grounded.”
Those in the know on Capitol Hill say that the men won't go down without a fight and will keep on the pressure until the ladies holler “uncle.”
I wrote a letter to Jacqueline Cochran, asking how long we were going to sit there and take this, and why didn't she counter with some press releases and interviews of her own that would let the public know the truth? Eventually I got back an officially worded letter advising me that as head of the program, she felt it was best for the WASP to take the high road, that the accomplishments of the program spoke for themselves, and that it would be best to wait for the furor to die down. I knew that she and General Arnold had been pushing for a bill that would finally militarize the WASP, giving us the military pay and benefits that our male counterparts enjoyed, and between the lines, I felt she was saying that we couldn't afford to rock the boat and irritate Congress just as the legislation was coming to the floor. Wait it out; that was her strategy. It was the ladylike strategy, and it was wrong. The boys were playing hardball, and we should have done the same, but we didn't, and now it was too late. The WASP had been shown the door. I was infuriated by our summary dismissal, but I was even more infuriated by the unanswered attack upon our record. The women of the WASP had helped win the war with the same attitude of sacrifice, dedication, and patriotism as any combat soldier, and thirty-eight brave and skilled women had selflessly paid the ultimate sacrifice in the effort, but no one would ever know it. Unless someone corrected the record, the public would forever think of the WASP as the “glamour girl” pilots who did little more than joy-ride around in Piper Cubs wearing pink lipstick and five-hundred-dollar custom-tailored uniforms while looking for marriage material in the form of officers and good-looking male fliers.
Even now, just thinking about it made me want to throw something. Without thinking, I grabbed the P-38 model that was sitting on my desk and furiously launched it across the room and toward the door, which opened just before the model crashed into it.
“What the ... ?” Instinctively, my replacement lifted his hand to shield himself from the tiny P-38 attack and closed his fist around the body of the little plane as deftly as if he'd been catching a ball on the fly. “Is this some new kind of combat simulation?”
My hand flew up to cover my mouth, and my voice was muffled, blocked by my outstretched fingers. “Morgan?” I squeaked in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”
Previously distracted by the Lilliputian onslaught, Morgan now focused his attention on me. He looked just as surprised as I felt. “Georgia? I'm the new navigation and instruments instructor. They told me to come here and meet up with the instructor I'll be replacing.” His furrowed brow smoothed out as a smile spread slowly across his face. “I'm awfully glad to see you, Georgia. I didn't think I'd ever see you again. But”—he shrugged, confused—“what are you doing here?”
I'd heard from Pamela that he'd been found, and I'd thanked God for it, but Pam's letter hadn't said anything about Morgan being sent home. I'd assumed he was still in the Pacific. What was going on? “Morgan, is this some kind of a joke? Did Hemingway put you up to this?”
“Pardon me?”
I didn't answer. I was still trying to get my mind around this whole situation. But the confusion Morgan's face told me that, no indeed, he wasn't kidding. He glanced around the room, craning his neck as if the person he was supposed to meet might be hiding under a desk or behind the American flag that stood next to the blackboard.
“They told me I'd find the old instructor in here. I guess he must have stepped out for a minute. Have you seen him?”
“Yeah,” I said in a voice brittle with irritation. “I have. You're looking at him.”
 
Suffice it to say, we didn't start off on a very good note. Certainly Morgan wasn't the first pilot I'd met who had been so unable to conceive of a female flight instructor that he mistook me for the secretary, file clerk, cleaning woman, or girlfriend of the “real” instructor—far from it—but somehow I'd expected more from him. We quarreled, and by the time it was over, I'd stormed out of my office and walked home without even showing him around.
By the time I reached my apartment, I'd walked off a good bit of my mad and actually felt ashamed of myself. After all, it wasn't his fault. All he'd done was taken a job; he didn't know it was my job. But, still, of all the people to have replace me! The man who'd wooed me one minute, rejected me the next, and then sailed off to the Pacific without ever sending me so much as a postcard. Of all the humiliations I'd suffered since Hemingway had triumphantly given me notice, this had to be the worst. For a minute, I thought of just going back to the base, turning in my wings, and going home. After all, it was just a matter of days until they'd force me to do exactly that. Why prolong the agony?
I spent the rest of the day and evening pacing, thinking, and riding the roller coaster of my emotions, but by nightfall I'd come to a conclusion. No matter what, I wasn't going to let them get to me. Uncle Sam, and Colonel Hemingway, and the reporter from the
Galveston Gazette,
and every man on the face of the earth who'd ever told me I should trade in my wings for an apron and a wire whisk could just kiss my backside. And if Morgan Glennon felt that way, well, then, he could pucker up and get in line! They could be as ungrateful and mean-spirited as they wanted, but I wasn't going to stoop to their level. I was going to do my job and do it well until the minute they said I couldn't. In the end, they'd force me out, but when they did, I'd leave with my head held high and my dignity intact.
Before I went to bed that night, I brushed my uniform and dragged out my ironing board, carefully pressing a knife-edge crease into my slacks and made sure my battle jacket was spotless and free of even the thought of a wrinkle. Come hell or high water, I was going to be the sharpest-looking, most professional instructor on base. Even so, I knew a well-pressed uniform could only mask so much. At least until December 20
th
, I was still a WASP, and if Morgan was smart, he'd best watch out for my sting!
Of course, that was before I heard about the stunt he'd pulled with Lieutenant Anders. When I got wind of that ... Well, let's just say that my opinion of Morgan Glennon was considerably altered.

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