Velva Jean Learns to Fly (28 page)

After we finished singing, we marched back down the field, away from Jackie Cochran, away from the crowd. As I marched I looked at the faces of all the parents and children and sisters and brothers and husbands who were gathered in the stands and on the ground to watch us. The sun was behind them, so that they were just a sea of dark figures, outlined in shadow, the colors of their shirts or dresses breaking through here and there. At the very back, standing behind the very last row, was a man in a cowboy hat. He was wiry, with long legs and long arms, but I couldn’t see his face. There was something about the way he moved, even though he wasn’t moving. Even standing still he seemed to be in motion, with legs that looked like they were dancing.

When I broke free from the marching line, I circled back around to look for him. “Where are you going, Hartsie?” Sally hollered.

I didn’t answer her because I started running. My heart was in a clinch. Even as I ran, I told myself: Stop running, Velva Jean. What are you running for? Just because you saw some old Texas cowboy who’s probably somebody’s husband or father or maybe just some farmer from Sweetwater.

The crowd was breaking up now, everyone chattering and talking, shading their eyes from the sun, fanning themselves with their paper programs. I wove through it all, trying not to crash into anyone, dodging elbows and waving arms, and people who weren’t looking where they were going. I went up into the stands and back down to the ground.

I called out, “Daddy? . . . Lincoln Hart? . . . Daddy?”

But the man in the cowboy hat was gone.

The day after graduation, Sally and I were called to Jackie Cochran’s office. She said, “I’m sending you to Camp Davis, North Carolina. This is a secret mission, and the reason I’ve chosen the two of you is that you’re my most skilled pilots.”

At the words “secret mission” I felt my skin prickle. Just like Constance Kurridge. Just like Flyin’ Jenny.

“You’ll be flying almost everything—all big ships, like the B-34, the P-37, and maybe even the B-17.” The B-17 Flying Fortress was thought to be the most powerful weapon in the war. The people who flew it said it was so powerful that it could unleash great destruction and even defend itself all on its own without a man steering it. She said, “I can’t tell you anything more, but this is an important experiment you’re taking part in. I hope this assignment will serve as a stepping-stone to bigger responsibilities, perhaps even overseas. What you do at Camp Davis will affect not only the WASP program but the future standing of women pilots.”

It didn’t matter that Fair Mountain was four hundred miles away from Camp Davis. I was going home again, maybe not right up to Fair Mountain but to North Carolina, with its streams and waterfalls and tall, tall trees and green and mountains that curved and sloped—that were big but welcoming and not all sharp edges and rock.

Jackie Cochran said, “I won’t lie to you, girls—Camp Davis has its challenges. But I want you to remember that nothing can be more important to the future of the women pilots program than what you’ll be doing. As you know, we’re still civilians. We aren’t military. This is our chance to prove that women can handle anything they throw at us. It all depends on your success. I expect you to do your best.”

The next morning Sally and I packed our things while Mudge and Paula watched. When we were done, we all sat on our cots, facing each other, knees tucked up under our chins, and talked. Mudge was going back to Hollywood to fly stunt planes for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Paula was being sent to Aloe Army Airfield in Victoria, Texas. When she found out Sally and me were going on a secret mission for Jackie Cochran, she said three of the most colorful swear words I’d ever heard and then added seventy-five cents to the cuss pot.

I told Paula, “I’ll never forget what you did for me, going with me to Mexico.”

She blinked at me, and I could see her eyes watering. She said, “Shit, Velva Jean.” Then she wiped her eyes and added another twenty-five cents to the jar before we poured the money onto Sally’s bed and divvied it up between the four of us—there was $45.85.

One hour later Sally and I were flying over Avenger Field in an AT-17 Bobcat. Lieutenant Patrick Whitley was in the pilot’s seat, which meant Sally and me could look out the windows. We pressed our faces to the glass, watching Avenger Field and the brown of Texas fade away under the clouds. A lump grew up in my throat, and I suddenly couldn’t swallow. I thought of all the friends I was leaving behind, of Paula and Mudge and even Arnold Puckett, and I wondered if I would ever see this place again.

October 18, 1943

Hey, little sister,

I know I ain’t written you in a while, but we landed in England two weeks ago and as soon as we got here we started jump and tactical training. Something big is getting ready to happen, but I can’t say what. Just know that I’ll be in the action and that Hitler don’t stand a chance in hell.

Now on to bigger things. Not only are you a graduate of the WASP, you’re on the cover of
Life
magazine. You could have knocked me over when one of the fellas all the way over here in England said, “Look at my latest pinup.” He’d ripped off the cover and tacked it up by his cot. I told him I was sorry and he said what for and I said for what I’m about to do, and then I punched him hard in the jaw. When he asked why, I told him because you’re my little sister and no one’s going to pin you up on their wall.

Congratulations on earning your wings, Velva Jean. I’m right proud.

Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a good long while. But know I’m not going to let anything happen to me. I know you’ll worry because you just will, and I know Granny and Sweet Fern are worried too. Daddy Hoyt wrote me and told me he was proud of me, and maybe he’s worried some, but you know him—he’d never show it.

Just remember: I promised you a long time ago, right after Mama died, that I’d never leave you and I aim to follow through.

Love,

Sergeant First Class Johnny Clay Hart,
brother of a famous WASP

P.S. What’s this I hear about you getting divorced?

October 20, 1943

Mary Lou,

Honey, I’ve been thinking about you. How is your heart?

I tried like hell to come to graduation, but at the last minute I had to go home because my little brother signed up for the navy, and Mother was fit to be tied. She asked me to come back and talk some sense into him, but of course he’s a Goss and he’s going to do whatever he damn well pleases. By the time I got home, he’d already climbed out his window in the middle of the night and run away. We just got a letter from him and he’s somewhere in South Carolina.

But, good grief, I wanted to be there to see you get your wings. How was it? Do you wear them everywhere? I sure would if I was you. Are you getting recognized on the street now that you’re famous? I bought three copies of
Life
and I’m sending one to you with this letter because I want you to sign it for me, just like a movie star.

I’m so proud of you, and not just for becoming a fullfledged WASP. I’m proud of you for going down to Juárez and getting yourself a divorce.

I’m going back to Nashville in two days, but I don’t know how long I’ll stay. I’m bored as hell without you and I’m tired of working at Gorman’s.

Sending you a big fat hug,

Gossie

October 21, 1943

Dear Velva Jean Hart,

I read with terrific interest the
Life
magazine article on the WASP, and of course I celebrate the wonderful cover photo. Congratulations on being accepted into such a prestigious program. I wondered where you had gone.

Are you writing songs? I’d imagine you don’t have a lot of time to write but that you’re getting plenty of material to write about. I’d love to see or hear anything you’ve been working on when you feel like sharing.

Let me know when you’re back in Nashville.

All my best,

Darlon C. Reynolds

THIRTY-ONE

T
he commanding officer of Camp Davis was a man named Colonel Randolph Wells, who looked like Errol Flynn without the smile. The first thing he told us was that the planes were expendable and so were we, which meant he didn’t care what happened to either the planes or us.

The second thing he told us was not to expect a warm welcome. He said, “I can’t speak for all fifty thousand men on this base, but the army air force pilots don’t want you here, and I don’t want you here. Remember that you’re civilians, not military, and as such you’re guests on this base. While you’re here, you’ll follow our orders and follow our rules.”

The last thing he told us was that we were there to replace two girls who had been killed in training exercises. When he saw our faces, he said, “Jacqueline Cochran didn’t mention that to you?”

Sally cracked her gum so it sounded like a rifle shot. “No,” I said. “She didn’t.”

Camp Davis sat on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean near the town of Holly Ridge. It was built on forty-six thousand acres of pine barren and swampland. There were hardly any trees, but there were more than three thousand ugly wood buildings and tents crowded together in tight little rows like they were trying to stay far away from the swamp. Colonel Wells said we should watch out for snakes and bobcats and Nazis—a half-dozen German U-boats patrolled deep below the water just a mile or two offshore.

He said, “The planes you’ll be flying at first are, for the most part, scrap. They’ve been retired from combat, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use them for training. Once you’ve cut your teeth on those, you’ll be ferrying newer planes to other bases, planes that will be put into service overseas.”

Just like Colonel Wells said, there were fifty thousand men on the base, including five hundred army air force pilots, three hundred German prisoners of war, a squad of Lumbee and Navajo Indians, one British unit that had already seen actual combat fire, and Lieutenant Bruce Arnold, General Arnold’s son. Not counting the women who worked in the hospital or in the offices, there were only twenty-five girls, including Sally and me, all of us WASP.

The last thing the colonel said to us before we left his office was, “I’m giving you a chance right now, ladies. You can go home or you can stay. I advise you to go home and knit socks for the troops.”

Neither of us said a word to that, just stood there and faced him. I was a Women’s Airforce Service Pilot. Jackie Cochran had pinned on my silver wings. General Hap Arnold himself had said we were capable of flying anything put in front of us. I tried to stare down Colonel Wells like I’d seen Johnny Clay stare people down. I didn’t blink or flinch. But inside I wanted to run away from him and this place as fast as I could go.

We were assigned to the bay that once belonged to the dead girls. The only thing left to show that they’d been there were some white curtains with black polka dots and maps pinned up across one wall. But I could feel their ghosts all around us. Colonel Wells didn’t tell us how they’d died, and we didn’t ask.

That night Sally and me lay in our beds, and I wondered if it was too late to go back to Avenger Field and ask for another assignment. The barracks were right next to the runway, which meant the lights from circling planes and the control tower flashed in our window.

Sally said, “I hate this place. It’s the ugliest place I ever saw. Tomorrow I’m going to plant a garden right outside our window so we have something pretty to look at.”

We heard shouting and then running down the hall. There was a banging at our door and the door across from us. Someone tried the handle, but it was locked. I sat straight up and so did Sally.

A male voice said, “Come out, Waspies!” Then laughter. Then running.

I wondered about the girl who used to sleep here before me. What was her name? Where was she from? How old was she? Was she married? Engaged? A mother? A sister? Did she lie here in this same cot and think about how much she hated Camp Davis? Where did she hope to go next? What did she do before she learned to fly?

For the first month, Colonel Wells kept us grounded. We worked in the dispatcher’s office with an old woman named Louella Corbett, who was simple and polite, and who gave us letters to type and papers to file. Sally said, “I can’t believe I earned my wings just so I could go back to being a secretary.”

When we weren’t working, we went to ground school. This included classes on some things we already knew from Avenger Field and some things we didn’t know—military courtesy and customs, how to pack a parachute, navigation and weather, automatic pilot, flight regulations, aircraft maintenance, flight logs, fuel systems and carburetion, radio compasses, Ferry Command rules, and military law.

We went to classes with the men and we ate with the men, and when we weren’t going to class or the mess hall we were marching everywhere with the men. We found right off that Colonel Wells wasn’t lying—they didn’t want us here. They called the barracks telephone all night long asking for dates, but not the kind of dates a decent girl went on. They might as well have been calling the Alluvial Hotel and asking to speak to Lucinda Sink. They slipped notes under our doors and knocked into us in the mess line so our food spilled everywhere and laughed louder than they needed to if we missed a question in class. I thought I might as well be in the sixth grade again, up at the little one-room schoolhouse in Alluvial. These were grown-up men but they were acting worse than Hink Lowe or the Gordon boys ever did back when we were kids.

On November 29, Colonel Wells let us out from behind our desks and put us on the flight line. Each day after mess, we checked the flight board to get our assignments. The men had what was called a “ready room,” which was more like a lounge, where they waited for flight assignments, but we got ours in the dispatcher’s office, where we sat on hard benches and weren’t supposed to talk too loud.

Major Albert Blackburn started us off in the L-5, which was a small Cub-type airplane. He was a stout man who stood stiff as a poker and never looked us in the eye when he gave orders—like he couldn’t bear the sight of us. We had to fly low and slow, following a tree-top-level pattern over the camp, going round and round for hours, testing artillery tracking. I thought it was shameful. We’d been trained on bigger, faster planes than this L-5, and now here we were, puttering around like old men. As I flew circle after circle, I looked down over the base—at the runway where A-24s and B-34s were lined up, waiting for the male pilots to take off in them, at the B-17s, which loomed over all of them like silver giants, the daylight catching them and holding them so that they seemed brighter than the sun itself.

After the second day of shuffling about in the L-5, Sally sent a telegram to Jackie Cochran, telling her what was going on. The next day Miss Cochran flew into Camp Davis in her militarized Beechcraft and called a meeting with Colonel Wells.

The day after she returned to Washington, D.C., we were ordered to go up solo in the A-24, which was a two-seater single-engine dive bomber, to test radar tracking by the gunner trainees. One of the other girls told us that these A-24s were returned from the South Pacific because they weren’t fit for combat anymore. Their tires were rotten, the instruments weren’t working right, and parts of the plane would fall off in the air. But it was better than putting around in the L-5, and we knew Jackie Cochran had gone to bat for us, which made us feel looked after and important.

The week of December 13, Sally and I checked the assignment board in the dispatcher’s office and this time our mission was tow targeting. We stood around the board with the other WASP, the ones who had been there longer, and I said, “What’s tow targeting?”

Janie Bowen said, “Just what it sounds like—you’re going to be pulling a target behind you while gunners shoot at it.” Janie was from Greenville, South Carolina, and she’d been here for three months already. She was one of the tallest girls, gawky as a bird, with curly blonde-brown hair. She didn’t wear a stitch of makeup.

I said, “Shoot at it?” I was getting a bad feeling, the same kind of sinking, nerves-on-edge bad feeling I had when I was running through the Terrible Creek train wreck looking for Harley, not knowing if he was alive or dead.

Janie said, “Fifty-caliber machine guns and twenty- and forty-millimeter automatic cannons. Did Jackie Cochran tell you she was sending you here on a secret mission?”

Sally said, “She sure did.”

Janie said, “Well, this is part of it. You’re not allowed to talk to the newspapers or tell the folks back home what you’re doing.”

Suddenly I wished for my yellow truck. I thought if I had that truck I would climb into it and drive back home right now. I’d drive up Fair Mountain, right up to Mama’s, and get on out and go lie up under the porch, which was where I always used to take myself when the world got to be too much.

On December 18, I sat in the cockpit of the Lockheed B-34, high above the Atlantic Ocean. There weren’t any uniforms for the WASP at Camp Davis, but for flight training we wore giant coveralls that looked a lot like our zoot suits. I was wearing my coveralls now and towing a raggedy cloth target behind my plane. One of the enlisted men, a fellow from Ohio named Gus Mitchell, was riding in the backseat, operating the target and cable. He had brown hair thick as a boot brush, and ears that stuck out like trophy handles.

As soon as we were over the beach, I radioed the artillery officer who was in charge on the ground, and at the same time Gus turned the winch handle and let out the cable that the target was attached to. I wondered if the cables were made of nylons, just like the ones Gossie and I donated back in Nashville—maybe a pair of my own nylons was being used on this very plane. After we’d flown up and down the beach, just over the water, I was supposed to swoop down, and Gus would release the target, dropping it to the ground so the gunners could see the number of hits they’d made.

To the rear of the plane I could see little black puffs of smoke, which meant the gunners down below and in near-flying planes were aiming at the target. Then there was a puff to the left of me, just by the cockpit. Then two more puffs even closer. Every fourth or fifth bullet was a tracer that sparkled just like a firecracker. These were to show the gunners where their bullets were going.

The B-34 was a twin-engine bomber a lot like Amelia Earhart’s Electra. I tried to think of this and think about what she might have done if they’d made her tow targets while cadets and officers shot at her. All I could really think about, though, was that I didn’t want to die up there, because there was so much I wanted to do in this world: sing at the Opry, make more records, see my family again, meet a man and fall in love and have it last forever. Three more black puffs exploded to the left of the cockpit.

Over the intercom, Gus said, “What the hell are they doing?”

“Trying to hit us?”

He said, “They’re trying to hit you, not me.” He said it like this was something I’d asked for.

I thought, I hope they do hit you. I hope they blow your ears right off. Then I swore into my radio, hoping Sally would hear me in her B-34. I said, “The gunners have chicken feed for brains. They’re trying to kill me.”

There was a blast of static and then I heard a faraway voice say, “I want to turn this plane around and head back, but I’m afraid they’ll shoot me out of the sky.” It sounded like Sally.

When I finally came down, the target was torn to shreds and the tail was shot full of bullet holes. There were three holes on the left wing and two in the cockpit door. I climbed out and ran my fingers over them. The holes were as small as quarters. I thought about the bullets that made them and how any one of them could have killed me.

Sally was still in the air, flying over the sand dunes. The gunners shot twenty or thirty rounds at her and finally the target she was towing fell blazing into the water before it could even be released. The officers and enlisted men standing on the ground started clapping and shouting “Good work!” I knew they were talking about the gunners and not us.