Liddy received a letter from Major Reid Trent that had been sent the day she left the base. Crik had picked up the mail when he was in town. He handed Liddy the letter and watched her as she read the return address. Of course Crik didn’t ask about it, and Liddy was glad her uncle wasn’t a prier. She went into her trailer and sat in the corner on the bed. She studied the handwriting before she opened it and as she read the letter, her heartbeat quickened:
October 28, 1943
Dear Liddy,
I hope you had a safe trip and are enjoying your leave. I am truly sorry about your father’s death. He must have been quite a man to have raised you.
I realized I never actually told you congratulations on getting your wings, so, “Congratulations!” The Army is fortunate that you will be flying for them. I’m sorry that I said Avenger may not be the place for you. I regretted it the moment I said it and I didn’t mean it. You were right where you were supposed to be the last few months, I hope for more reasons than to become a WASP.
The base is quiet today, but the new class and replacement base command are arriving in numbers, so that isn’t going to last long. Captain Charles and I leave tomorrow morning to report to Long Beach for briefing, and then we will join our squadrons and board a carrier.
My tour will last until spring. I would like to see you when I get leave. I hope you will write to me and be safe.
When Liddy finished reading the letter for the third time, she tried not to dwell on what Reid would think when he read the empty note she had sent from the train; instead, she pulled out some stationary and immediately answered his letter:
November 5, 1943
Dear Reid,—Calling you that is going to take some getting used to.
I received your letter today. Thank you. I don’t know where you will be when you finally get this, but I hope you’re well. I’ll look forward to your leave in the spring. It will be nice not to worry that you might have a pink slip for me when I see you.
My father’s funeral was the day after I arrived home. He knew a lot of people but we were still surprised by the number of folks that came. He was a character, so it was only fitting that the crowd was pretty colorful. I wish you could have met him. He was a flyer. I hope to tell you all about him someday. If you think I’m a challenge, well, I couldn’t hold a candle to Jack Hall.
I leave for Palm Springs in three days. I’m looking forward to getting through the training so I can just fly. There’s so much I’d like to write and will in time. But for now I just want you to know how thankful I am that I was at Avenger and for more reasons than to become a WASP.
Take care of yourself and keep humming,
Liddy couldn’t get to town fast enough to post the letter, and she floated for the rest of the week. Crik noticed and was happy for her. Of all the boys Liddy had dated, he had never seen one who made her smile like she was smiling now. Daniel noticed something too but he chalked it up to the fighter planes she was headed off to ride. Flying was the only thing that he had ever known to really wind Liddy up, so it was a natural assumption.
Holly Grove’s first snow of the season drifted in early and dusted the fall leaves, pulling them off the trees sooner than they had planned. It came the day before Liddy was to board a train to California, and it seemed a weighty sign.
Chapter Twenty
At the pursuit training base in Palm Springs, Liddy studied alongside male Army Air Force cadets. When the training was finished, she would be moving the planes from the factory and they would be flying them into battle. It was a class of thirty-two—thirty men and two women. Helen Long was the other female in the group. Liddy hadn’t gotten to know her at Avenger. She was a serious gal, and had a reputation for being somewhat of a loner. Helen came into the program with more hours logged than any of the other women in their class, and she was a by-the-book flyer. Liddy tried to break in with her, but soon accepted their role as classmates, and she missed her sister-friends.
The studying had gotten easier for Liddy and the flying was pure bliss. The planes were always fast and newer than anything she took up in training. She spent her off time writing letters home, and to her classmates who were spread across the country, and to Reid.
Every few days she wrote him a letter and would receive one back. Mail that crossed the ocean was pretty unpredictable, so they didn’t always arrive in the order that they had been written. But when an obvious gap showed itself, they just kept writing and it was all eventually pieced together. Even though he was thousands of miles away, he made her feel safe, safe in a way that no other man had ever made her feel. Not even Jack and Crik. With them she felt safe physically, but her spirit, her heart, it was all so new with Reid.
Liddy knew enough about combat from the war stories she heard growing up that she wasn’t surprised that Reid didn’t write anything about his missions or of the war, even if he could have gotten it by the censors, but he didn’t try. She did learn that he didn’t like the cold, grew up in Florida, and that he loved to fly as much as she did. She thought she could tell him anything and wondered if one day she would have the chance.
News came of the birth of Calli’s baby. She said Betsy Joy Marina Liddy Louise Duncan was born at seven eighteen in the morning and weighed 7lbs 3 ounces and was 21 inches long. His parents had decided to call him James Lee for short.
Bet was doing well and had one story after another about her latest adventures in the sky. Liddy heard from Louise regularly, but Joy Lynn and Marina seemed to be so busy with their love lives that letters from them were few. When one did arrive, the love of their life had a different name each time. Liddy couldn’t figure how they had time to fly.
She heard from lots of other classmates who were overjoyed with the flying, but many were working under attitudes of prejudice. Besides being ignored or berated, some of these women were subjected to checkrides on planes they hadn’t even been allowed to fly or even sit in. And many of the planes the women had to take up were no longer sky-worthy. WASPs were tough, but a few gals decided they were wasting their time or being put at an extreme risk and quit over it.
Liddy knew she was fortunate. The ferry division of the Army Air Force was understaffed, and the ferry command saw early on the benefits of employing pilots that the WASP provided. So, they opened their eyes wide enough to see they were also excellent flyers.
The base at Palm Springs lacked nothing in the social department. Unlike Avenger, women were a scarce commodity and the gals pretty much had their pick of men, and the pool the women had to pick from was mostly officers and flyers that were training to be fighter pilots. These men possessed the self-assuredness needed to do their jobs, an assuredness that brought with it an air that has a strong appeal to most women. And then there was the uniform. But Liddy didn’t have the desire to date any of the men. Not only was she content with her literary courtship, but she was quite a few years older than most of the male cadets and had more of a desire to protect them than to date them.