By the end of July, the apprentice pilots at Croydon OTU had learned what they could there. A.E. knew she’d done better than most of the men. She also knew the RAF powers that be were liable to wash her out anyway, for no better reason than that she had to squat when she took a leak.
But they didn’t. Things in the air were getting more desperate by the day. Even the RAF brass could see they needed every man, and even woman, they could find who had half a notion how to fly a fighter plane. Along with Shorty, Andy, and Red, she got posted to 609 Squadron at Middle Wallop, a little north and east of Salisbury and Stonehenge.
Before the pilots who’d trained together went to their squadrons, they threw a last bash. As Red Tobin said afterwards, it got pretty drunk out. Eat, drink, and be merry! seemed uppermost in everybody’s mind. A.E. remembered that that phrase had another part, too. No one came out and said For tomorrow we die!, but it seemed to be on more people’s minds than hers alone.
She drank less than most of the men did. For one thing, she was the oldest person in the training group. She’d just turned forty-three; one fellow was thirty-eight, a few more in their early thirties, but most of the men ranged from eighteen to twenty-five. For another, she never had enjoyed getting smashed for the sake of getting smashed. And, for one more, a woman with any sense didn’t get loaded with a bunch of young men.
She knew them all. She was going to trust some of them with her life, and they’d trust her with theirs. All of which had nothing to do with the price of beer … or wine, or scotch.
A South African she’d called Pete for a while before finding out he spelled it Piet slipped an arm around her and tried to kiss her. She didn’t kiss him back, which was one of the points to staying within shouting distance of sober. He scowled and gave her a reproachful stare. “What’s the matter with you?” he said, his accent sounding almost German in her ears.
“Nothing’s the matter with me. What’s the matter with you?” she replied. “I’m old enough to be your mother.” She wasn’t kidding in the least; his spotty face said he couldn’t have been much above twenty-one.
“My mother doesn’t look like you,” he said, and tried again. This time, he put a hand against the back of her head so he could mash her mouth against his.
But she knew what to do about that. She’d long since lost track of how many would-be wolves she’d dealt with over the years. A woman both good-looking and famous drew them the way a sirloin drew hungry hounds.
Instead of trying to pull away from his tug, she went with it. Not at all by accident, her forehead hit the bridge of his nose, hard. He yowled like a cat with its tail under a rocking chair. He also let go of her so he could clap both hands to the injured part.
They came away bloody. More blood ran over his mouth and chin. “You filthy bitch! You meant to do that!” he said thickly.
“Damn right, I did,” A.E. said. “I told you I wasn’t interested. Didn’t you think I meant it?”
“I ought to—” Instead of going on, Piet made a fist.
Before he could do whatever he was going do to, a large hand came down on his shoulder. “Leave the lady alone, shithead, or I’ll make you sorry,” Red Tobin said evenly.
Piet growled something that wasn’t English and didn’t sound like an endearment. Then he added, “You and who else?”
“I’m the who else.” Andy appeared behind Red.
“Me, too.” So did Shorty Keough, though you had to look hard to find him.
Piet’s bloody nose did nothing to improve his scowl. “Screw you all,” he said, and stamped away.
“Thanks, boys, but you didn’t have to do that. I can take care of myself,” A.E. said. The next step after the butt to the nose was the knee to the nuts. She didn’t believe in fair fights with anyone who thought she was nothing but a nicely shaped toy.
“We didn’t do it because we had to. We did it because we wanted to,” Shorty said.
“You bet.” Andy Mamedoff nodded emphatically. “Going after the Nazis is bad enough. You shouldn’t have to take on guys who say they’re on your side, too.”
“Thanks,” A.E. said again, this time with more warmth. She’d known the Yanks put up with her, even if they thought she was crazy for wanting to fly fighters. Till this moment, she hadn’t been sure they actually liked her. How much knowing that meant amazed her.
Red Tobin promptly nicknamed Middle Wallop “Center Punch.” He and the other two American men were quartered in the barracks with the other male pilots. Flight Officer Darley, the squadron commander, proposed billeting A.E. with the WAAF personnel at the other end of the airfield.
“Sir, if there’s a scramble on I may not hear it in time and I may not be able to get to my kite fast enough if you do that.” A.E. was picking up the RAF lingo.
“You’re serious about this,” Darley said slowly.
“Would I be here if I weren’t … sir?”
The pause before the honorific made him send her a sharp look. She stared back steadily. “What do you suggest, then?” he asked.
“Every time I wind up at a base, they stick me in a tent. That’s okay. I don’t mind.”
“You won’t like it so well once winter comes on.”
“If I’m still here in winter, we can worry about it then.”
Darley took If I’m still here exactly the way she’d meant it. This time, his examination struck her as measuring. “Quite,” he murmured, and then, “Well, let it be as you say.”
For her first couple of weeks at the base she got ferry duty, taking Spitfires to other bases where they were needed and coming back in a Miles Master or some other two-seater. Since Shorty, Red, and Andy drew the same kind of assignments, she didn’t complain. And every hour in a plane she was still learning did her good.
Sure as the devil, the Germans kept hitting England, and particularly RAF bases, harder and harder. Middle Wallop took a walloping. A.E. had just landed in a trainer when Ju 88s appeared overhead and started unloading bombs.
She stood frozen for a moment. Red’s warning shout unfroze her in a hurry. She dashed for a trench by the runway, and dove into it just before the bombs started bursting.
The roar, the blast like a slap in the face, dirt pattering down on her from a couple of near misses … This was combat, combat when you couldn’t shoot back. The war suddenly felt less abstract, more personal. Those Nazi sons of bitches were trying to murder her! She wanted the chance to pay them back.
Red Tobin popped up from another trench not far away. He didn’t seem to notice he was wearing a good-sized chunk of dirt in his hair, the way a pretty girl might wear a flower. Grinning at A.E., he said, “Wow! That was fun!”
“Now that you mention it,” she answered tightly, “no.” Despite her effort to control her voice, it wobbled. She felt as she would have after a crash landing she managed to come out of unhurt. You always felt the consciousness of disaster when you flew. Sometimes you felt it like a slap in the face. This was one of those times.
She got her first chance for revenge a few days later, when the squadron CO declared her and the other three Yanks “operational.” She wasn’t sure she liked that; it sounded as if they were new bits of machinery bolted on to the RAF.
She also wasn’t sure she liked the job they got handed. RAF fighters flew in vics of three: a leader and two wingmen. Two vics made a flight; two flights made a squadron. The nice, neat—to A.E.’s mind, rigid—squadron needed a couple of extra planes weaving along behind to keep an eye peeled for trouble from the rear and above.
“Tail-end Charlie, that’s me.” Andy Mamedoff sounded more cheerful than he looked.
“That’s all of us,” Shorty Keough said. Plainly, when you were buzzing around by yourself your chances were worse than they would have been with friends close by. If you lived for a while, you’d graduate to a spot in the formation. If you didn’t, somebody else would get a chance … till the limeys ran out of somebody elses, anyhow.
They went into action the next day. Before they did, Flight Lieutenant Darley spoke to his pilots in the crowded little wardroom. “I want you all to take a good look around. Most of the men sitting here with you will be dead a year from now.”
The charming Air Vice Marshal Leigh-Mallory had told A.E. much the same thing. No American would have. Americans always were, or at least acted, sure they could come through anything. Englishmen took a grimmer, or maybe just a more realistic, view of the world.
“Those Nazi bastards are going to try to knock England flat,” the squadron leader went on. “We’ll do our damnedest not to let them. Good luck, one and all! Let’s go to the planes.”
They scrambled several times that day, but never got airborne. As the sun finally set that evening—England lay so far north, summer days seemed to stretch like taffy—A.E. didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
One of the genuine Englishmen in the squadron, a pilot who’d seen a lot of action in France and over the Channel, had no doubts on that score. “Any day they aren’t shooting at you, my dear, is a bloody good day, and you may take it to the bank,” he told her.
My dear grated a little; he wouldn’t have said that to Andy or Shorty or Red. But he would have called them old chap or old boy or something like that. She decided it wasn’t worth fussing about. Next to burning in the cockpit like a rump roast forgotten in the oven or taking a bullet or a shell fragment in the leg or in the face, it didn’t seem so bad. You had to pick your fights. She’d picked hers, by God.
The squadron did go into action the next day. The Yanks alternated on rear-guard duties. A.E. would have flown before; that day, it was Red and Andy’s turn. Andy barely made it back to the base. A 109 had shot up his Spitfire from behind. The plane had been elderly when he got it, and was a write-off now.
He wasn’t a write-off himself for one reason only: his armored seat back had just about kept a couple of 20mm shells from getting through. The steel was dented; Andy Mamedoff’s back wasn’t … quite. He got out of the cockpit as if he’d suddenly aged fifty years, and went on hobbling after his boots hit the grass.
“I bet I’m all bruised up back there,” he said. “Felt like somebody hauled off and slammed me with a Louisville Slugger.”
“With a what?” asked a groundcrew man who didn’t speak American.
“A baseball bat,” Mamedoff explained. “But I never saw the son of a gun”—he winked at A.E.—“till he opened up on me. I was flying along, getting ready to make a run at one of the Stukas over the Channel, and then—wham! After that, I was just praying I wouldn’t have to ditch.”
“Glad you’re here,” A.E. told him.
He winked at her. “You ain’t half as glad as I am, believe you me you ain’t.”