In late June, we left Nevada to begin training in bomber escort and coastal patrol operations at Santa Rosa, California. The morning we left from the train depot, Taxine and the gals from the local cathouse came down to see us off with sandwiches, doughnuts and hot coffee, and gave us a heroes' send-off. For us the war was drawing ever closer.
But I unexpectedly found myself close to home. Travel orders sent me to Wright Field in Ohio, to be-of all things-a test pilot. The assignment was temporary: to do accelerated service testing on a new propeller developed for the P-39. I was chosen because of my maintenance background and flying ability, and all I had to do was fly as much as possible and keep careful records. And because I couldn't keep my hands off airplanes, I managed to get checked out in the P-47 fighter, and began to fly that big old fighter regularly.
Early one morning, I took off thinking that my hometown of Hamlin was only 130 miles away and I could make it down there in only half an hour. I had about two hours of fuel. I followed the Ohio River into Huntington, West Virginia, then banked south across the thickly-wooded rolling hills. Hamlin looked a lot smaller from the air, although even on the ground it was only a few city blocks. I could pick out streets and my high school, but I had trouble finding my house. It was about seven in the morning when I kicked everything wide open on that P-47 and dived on Main Street, shooting across town at 500 mph. Then I pulled up, did some rolls, and came in again just over the tree tops. That night, back at Wright Field, I called home. I think if I had been there, my folks would've shot me. I was accused of wrecking the town and causing such fright to one old lady that she had to go to the hospital. One farmer claimed I blew down his entire crop of corn; another complained that I terrified his horse while he was plowing, and ruined his crop. God knew how many cows and sows miscarried because of me. One old guy even insisted that I flew underneath his pasture fence. And everyone knew who was flying; I was Hamlin's only fighter pilot.
Anyway, I didn't stop. I buzzed Hamlin regularly and people gradually got used to it and actually began to enjoy the air show. Once, I even buzzed Grandpa Yeager's place. He lived on a small farm so deep in a holler that you had to pipe in sunshine. I spent a summer up there once slopping the hogs and hoeing in his garden. I flew to his place in a P-47, but that damned holler was so crooked and narrow, I couldn't get down in it. Finally, I discovered that if I turned extremely tight around the hilltops and kept my wing pointed straight at Grandpa's house, I could corkscrew my way down. And sure enough, I saw Grandpa standing on the front porch, shading his face from the sun. I found out later, he called into the house for Grandma to come out. "Adeline," he said "come out here. There's an airplane up there with no wings on it." My wing was pointing straight at him and he was looking only at the fuselage.
I got back to California on the day my squadron flew from Santa Rosa to Oroville, the next stop on our training schedule. That first day in Oroville, Mack and I went over to the local gymnasium to try to arrange a USO dance, a way for our guys to meet the local girls. I remember walking the length of an enormous gym to a small office where a very pretty brunette was seated behind the desk. Her name was Glennis Dickhouse. She was eighteen, had just graduated from high school, and was holding down two or three jobs, including social director for the town's USO. I asked her if she could arrange a dance that evening for about thirty guys. She looked so annoyed I thought she might throw me out. "You expect me to whip up a dance and find thirty girls on three hours' notice?" Glennis exclaimed. I said, "No, you'll only need to come up with twenty-nine, because I want to take you."
Glennis did it. The Elks Club gave her their hall and it looked as if every available woman in Oroville showed up. I took her, and she was both the sharpest looking and the best dancer there. I could two-step, but we sat out anything faster; so we sat out a lot, and it was tough to make small talk with her because she complained that she couldn't understand my West Virginia accent. "That's how they talk in your neck of the woods?" She couldn't believe it. But I made her laugh, and that's always a good start.
I asked her out again, but I had to wait my turn. She didn't lack for dates, including our squadron's physical training officer, "Muscles" Muldoon. Glennis was too young to take to a bar (I was underage, too, but being in an officer's uniform, nobody asked to see my I.D.), so we went to the movies and ate popcorn, and discovered that we had similar backgrounds and interests. She had been raised on a small ranch and her Dad taught her how to shoot, hunt, and fish to help put food on the table. She was a great shot. Not only was she a champion swimmer and dancer, but she was also as tough and gutsy as she was good-looking.
Glennis was living alone. She stayed behind to finish high school when her parents moved to Oakland, where her Dad found a job in the shipyards. She held down three jobs-as secretary to the superintendent of schools, as bookkeeper for a drug store, and as social director at the USO. Hell, I couldn't help getting serious about a girl as pretty as a movie star who made more money than I did.
Mack dated her girlfriend, and the four of us spent the weekends together going on picnics, swimming in the Feather River, or hiking in the hills. Glennis had her own apartment, but some people in town did not think too highly of local girls who dated fighter pilots. Working for the school superintendent, she had to be careful, especially living alone without her parents. So, it wouldn't do for her landlady or anyone else to see me visiting. I used to climb out the back window and shimmy down a tree. One night, I slipped and crashed on to the back porch below, knocking over two garbage cans and scattering half a dozen cats.
By the time the squadron left Oroville (we were there only two months), Glennis gave me her picture, and we promised to write. We never talked about the future because in a few months I'd be in the middle of World War II. We would wait and see what happened, and try to get to know each other better through the postal service.
Sorry as I was to be leaving Glennis, I was glad to be leaving Oroville. I was in trouble at the base. There was a basic training school for cadets about twenty miles away, at Chico, and I flew over there one day and bounced those cadets right in the traffic pattern and began waxing their fannies in dogfights. They flew BT-13s, and one of them followed me back to Oroville and landed right behind me. I thought "What now?" when out charged a furious bird colonel. He was Chico's commanding officer and he wanted me drawn and quartered on the spot. He accused me of busting through the traffic pattern, endangering the lives of his cadets, and disrupting his training program. Boy, he chewed on me. Then he blasted into base headquarters and began chewing on all our squadron's officers for allowing a menace like me to fly without proper supervision. So, moving on to Casper, Wyoming, for the final phase of our training, was welcome to me: I needed all the mileage that I could get between me and Chico airspace.
At Casper, the group commander led us in a simulated attack on a box of bombers, but instead of turning to the left, as he instructed us, he turned right and had his tail chewed off by another P39. We were in such a tight formation that the tail pieces nearly knocked us out of the sky; but all of us chuckled watching the old man bail out.
We lived in drafty barracks with coal stoves. One freezing day, I came in and saw a bunch of guys sitting around the stove shooting the breeze. I walked up to the stove as if I had some coal in my hands and dumped it in. It was actually a handful of fifty-caliber bullets. I put the lid back on and then began to walk fast to get out of there. The guys detected something wrong in my actions and scrambled in every direction. One dove under a bunk, but the others ran for the door just as that ammo knocked off the lid in a big cloud of soot. They never trusted me after that. The word on me was, "Keep your eye on Yeager and your back to the wall."