Wyoming was great hunting. The ranges were full, and because of the war, no one was hunting those big herds of deer and antelope. We went out with carbines in weapons carriers. That's how I lost Ed Hiro, one of our squadron leaders. It was night, and we had about six deer in the back that I had shot. I cleaned them and piled them in the back of the carrier, and I was driving like a son of a bitch to get back to the base for chow. Hiro was sitting next to me when we skidded out, bounced across a ditch and nearly turned over. I finally recovered and began talking to Hiro, but he didn't answer me. Damned if his seat wasn't empty. So, I stopped and turned around. I found him doubled up, holding his side, madder than hell about falling out and busting a couple of ribs. We laughed about that episode for months afterward. Ed was later shot down and killed over Holland.
Sergeant Miller, who ran the flight line, knew how to make antelope roasts and steaks. One day, I drew a map for Miller and a few other enlisted men, who left base before dawn, armed with knives, carbines, and a map showing the backroads to a place where I had seen thick herds of antelope. I took off in a P-39 and began herding the antelope toward the road where Miller and his boys stood waiting. I charged one of the guns to fire one shot at a time and laid about ten antelope right at their feet. Roast would be the main course at the big squadron blowout before we left for Europe.
But before then, I almost bought the farm. Our fighter group staged a mock attack on a box of B24s. I was indicating about 400 mph when there was a roaring explosion in the back. Fire came out from under my seat and the airplane flew apart in different directions. I jettisoned the door and stuck my head out, and the prop wash seemed to stretch my neck three feet. I jumped for it. When the chute opened, I was knocked unconscious. A sheepherder found me in the hills and tossed me across his burro, face down.
I remember the date: Friday, October 23, 1943. I was supposed to fly to Reno later in the day and meet Glennis at the Kit Carson Hotel. Instead, I was moaning and groaning in a damned hospital bed. My back was fractured and it hurt like hell.
This was to be a great adventure. I bought my roundtrip ticket to Reno a few days ahead, went out and bought myself a cute red hat and a striped gray skirt and jacket. I wore white gloves and self-consciously carried an overnight case. I got down to the depot just as the train pulled in, and, to my horror, I discovered that it was a freight train. I approached the station master, showed him my ticket, figuring the freight train would pull out, and a passenger train, most likely right behind it, would pull in. Instead, he took me by my dainty gloved hand and walked with me down the station platform to the last car attached to the freight. It was a caboose. I was furious. "You sold me a ticket to ride in that!" I shouted. He had. There were no passenger trains between Oroville and Reno; it was a caboose or walk. So I sat in the caboose with an elderly brakeman, who must've thought I was crazy, but who shared his egg-salad sandwiches and thermos of coffee through the long, six-hour ride.
We arrived in Reno about three in the afternoon. I took a taxi to the Kit Carson Hotel, where I had reservations in my own name. I was very nervous and self-conscious, half expecting to meet somebody I knew from Oroville. The room was nice. I unpacked and with time on my hands before Chuck arrived, I decided to go out and take a walk. There was a jewelry shop down the street from the hotel, and I bought myself a small pair of aviator's wings, with tiny jewel chips in it. (I still have it.) Then I went back to the room to wait. Five o'clock, no Chuck. Six o'clock, no Chuck. He told me he'd be there before five. By seven, I was fuming, beginning to wonder if he would arrive at all. I thought, "How low can you sink, standing up a girl who has suffered through a six-hour ride in a caboose to shack up with you for a weekend?" Shortly before eight, I telephoned to his base in Casper. I got the runaround. No one would tell me anything about him because I wasn't a relative. Somehow, I got through to one of the boys in his squadron, and he told me what had happened that day: Chuck bailed out and was in the base hospital. He hurt his back, but he was okay.
I really don't know why Chuck appealed to me so much, but obviously he did. He was very skinny in those days, although my girlfriends thought he was cute. At first he was unsure of himself around me quite shy and a little intimidated. And his grammar was just atrocious; with his West Virginia accent, I barely understood every third word he spoke. Of course, I was very young, and those were dramatic times-all those young men preparing to go off to war. I had dated a few soldiers, but never a fighter pilot. I think that really impressed me, even if he was the most junior officer in his squadron. But, also, I sensed that he was a very strong and determined person, a poor boy who had started with nothing and would show the world what he was really made of. That was the kind of man I hoped one day to marry.
What to do? I called the Reno train station and found that a train for Oroville would be leaving in an hour. I was so low, so disappointed and upset, that I couldn't endure the idea of spending the night in that hotel room-our little love nest-without Chuck. So I checked out and took a taxi to the station. There it was: the same freight and caboose, waiting for me. That train ride home was the longest, most awful and miserable experience of my young life.
A few weeks later, we finally got together on his final weekend at Casper, before they shipped out for overseas. I flew up on a commercial airliner. The entire group, all three squadrons, had a big party in a downtown hotel in Casper. Chuck's back was still bothering him quite a bit, but he made light of it and we had a great time. He had gone hunting and killed nearly a dozen antelope, and they served antelope steaks. I danced with everyone in his squadron. The men were quarantined, confined to the base following the party until they shipped out on Monday morning. Chuck sneaked out to stay with me. When I returned home and went to work, one of the girls looked at me rather strangely. "What on earth happened to you?" she asked. "Look in the mirror." My face was a mass of tiny red pimples. I had chicken pox. I had to laugh thinking that through Chuck I had spread chicken pox among all those quarantined fliers.
Chuck called me the day he left. As the maintenance officer, he stayed behind for a few days to help pack and move equipment. He said he had loaded five hundred pounds of Christmas candy to give to children into the washing machines they were taking to England. Then he left for New York to catch up with the squadron. He wrote from England to say they had sailed over on the Queen Elizabeth. He wrote regularly, telling me he had named his fighter Glamorous Glen. He sent me his paychecks in war bonds to hold for him. We both agreed to see other people, but the only one special to me was in England.
ON THE RUN
Free-falling. Flat on my back. Spinning from 16,000 feet. Velocity doubling each second. Hold off. Get below clouds where krauts can't see chute. Yank that cord now, you're dead. Germans strafe guys floating down. Clouds whisk past. French countryside filling horizon. Even so, wait, goddamn it. Ground rushing up. Occupied territory.
Two fingers grip chute ring.
A canister of carbon dioxide hooked to my Mae West bangs close to my head. It's tethered to the dinghy we sit on in the cockpit, and the dinghy, which the CO2 inflates if we go down in the Channel flaps in the wind like an enormous doughnut. I unclip the canister and the dinghy; they fall away.
Corner of my eye-ground closing in. Smell forests and fields below.