It became a family tradition to call out “Be sure and look for Gertrude!” whenever her relatives set off on travels. At the time of her disappearance, both sisters, Elizabeth Tompkins Whittall and Margaret Tompkins Wade, considered the possibility that Gertrude had flown off and into hiding. She was unhappy with her marriage, and her career as a WASP was coming to an end. Was it possible that she flew to Mexico, ditched her plane, and started life with a new identity? Entertaining this notion was one way the family dealt with the heartbreak of this unsolved mystery, a tragedy that two generations of Gertrude’s survivors have lived with.
For Ken and Laura Whittall-Scherfee the search for Laura’s great-aunt Gertrude had become part of the fabric of their lives, ever since Laura sent her first letter to the air force. The family needed some kind of closure, but search after search had revealed no hint of what had happened to Gertrude’s P-51.
At a WASP reunion in 2002, 200 WASPs and their guests sat at tables in a US Air Force hanger at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona. WASP numbers were dwindling as age claimed the valiant fliers.
Among the guests were Ken and Laura. They moved among the crowd, talking with WASPs who had known Gertrude, gleaning information from the misty memories of women who piloted World War II’s airplanes. They sat with Mickey Axton, who wanted to know all about what they had learned during the latest search. Mickey was Gertrude’s closest friend in the WASPs and flew with her at Pecos. Mickey believed that she, too, had been ferrying a plane out of Los Angeles the same day as Gertrude’s last flight.
The WASPs in attendance were mostly in their vigorous eighties and even nineties, hair neatly set and curled in shades of white and gray and pale blue.
They had volunteered to fly at a time when their country was fighting for its survival, during the darkest days early in World War II, when America was desperate for pilots. During the brief lifespan of the WASPs the women had flown over 60 million miles in service to their country.
This night they called out to old friends, squinting at name tags, talking in groups of four and five, sometimes hugging, sometimes holding hands. Many still flew, and some had piloted their own planes to the semiannual convention. Several used canes or walkers. Some still fit into their uniforms, and many wore their silver WASP pilot wings.
They looked on, bright-eyed and expectant, as they waited for the honor guard to begin the evening with the presentation of colors. Proud women unafraid of displays of patriotism, they fidgeted and looked for Old Glory. Where were the colors? There were mutterings amid the tinkle of glasses.
“I can’t forget that there were 25,000 applicants for my job,” said former WASP Vivian Eddy, peering over stylish half-glasses, as she waited.
“Do you remember Margie Collins? Couldn’t do lazy eights and so they washed her out. She was heartbroken.”
“The Chinese girl who died in the P-40 in Great Falls—what was her name?”
“Hazel Ying Lee.”
Heads nodded, remembering.
“Burned in her cockpit after a horrible crash.” Silence, as if to honor the dead.
Ten minutes passed. The young air force officers at the head table, hosts for this reunion, muttered nervously, sipping their drinks. One of the officers busily punched at her cell phone. Food servers lounged in clumps of three and four, waiting for the signal to start.
The honor guard and the American flag were still glaringly absent.
The air force major with the cell phone finally rose and took the microphone, her features flushed.
“I’m sorry ladies. There’s been a foul-up. The honor guard will not be with us tonight.”
“Well, what did you expect?” said one of the ladies in the audience loudly. “We’re WASPs. We’ve always been overlooked.” Ironic laughter rippled through the crowd, but the truth was discrimination was something the women never got used to. Once again the WASPs had received the back of their government’s hand, an attitude that lingered as a vestige of a war that ended 57 years before.
But they were no longer resigned to the discrimination and injustice that went with being a female pilot, a fly girl, as they’d been called during the war. The old feelings surfaced at the tables in the hanger. They were tired of hearing that the WASPs were “nothing but glamour girls in pretty uniforms.” They were angry at being marginalized.
Thirty-eight WASPS died in the line of duty flying for their country. Why couldn’t they be buried in Arlington National Cemetery, where other veterans had the right to be laid to rest?
The WASPs were never paid the same as regular air force pilots. They were never granted rank or military status, insurance or hospitalization. Their requests for veteran’s benefits were brushed aside.
Their premature and poorly managed dismissal from service in late 1944, a sad chapter in America’s military history, resided painfully in the heart of every WASP at the banquet that evening.
As the salad was placed before her, WASP Mickey Axton brought up Gertrude Tompkins Silver. Some of them remembered Gertrude, how she never seemed to quite fit in.
“Perhaps it was because she was older,” a woman with white hair said, and suddenly the focus of the table was this mysterious and handsome woman who took off in her P-51 that day, never to be seen again.
Before her death, Mickey Axton said, “We need to find Gertrude. We need all members accounted for. Because all we have now is a sky full of memories.”