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George waited until Vivian left to pull her mother’s letter from underneath her pillow and reread it.

He’s not well enough to write you himself, or he would. Now I know you’re thinking you should come home. But don’t. He wants you to stay and do your job. He’s so proud of you.

Not once in the letter did her mother explicitly say that her father was dying, and yet every word said exactly that. Her father was dying, and here she was next to a mosquito-infested swamp, dodging a housemother, reduced to flying inconsequential planes for inconsequential reasons.

In her head, she made this point to Adele, who responded that the planes must not be too inconsequential or they would have been melted down for scrap. And that no one—not even the armed forces—allocated fuel for anything unimportant these days.

In her head, George argued that she should see her father, and Adele looked at her with such searing disappointment that it drove her from her bed.

She dressed and wrote a letter to her father and hurried out to mail it before heading to the airfield.

He wanted her to fly, and so she would fly.

No matter what sort of plane they put her in.

She’d show the men at Camp Davis with every maneuver what she could do, and would keep on showing them until they could no longer refuse to see it.

The Officers’ Club was just as bad as the airfield. “Why do we bother to come here?” complained Elliot. “The bartenders freeze us out, and the drinks are mostly water.”

“Wishful thinking,” said George.

“It beats the Knotty Pine,” said Vivian.

A group of them had ventured into the Officers’ Club after convincing themselves that the male pilots had been kinder that day. Talk of transfers had died down. But no real sense of welcome had followed.

George had given up hope of dancing and camaraderie with the men. She tried to ignore the salacious commentary, growing louder by the minute, coming from the tables nearby.

“I know,” shouted a young lieutenant. “Inspection time! Line ’em up against the back wall. We’ll start a pool—which one’ll be the first to go home pregnant?” The men roared.

“She looks ripe,” the lieutenant said, pointing at Gries, a plump and extremely pretty WASP.

Gries never missed church on Sunday mornings and sometimes even went back in the evening.

She’d been nursing a Coca-Cola and staring at the clock above the bar.

She was only at the bar because George had begged her to come. Now her mouth fell open in a shocked O.

George, who’d spent the afternoon in an A-24 with Gries and learned that her fiancé was missing in action in France, exploded. “Shame on all of you!” she said. “Pumping yourselves up at our expense. Cowards! All of you!”

A moment of silent shock, and then the jeering began.

“Settle down, sweetheart. We’re only teasing.”

“Must be that time of the month.”

“Come on, we’re just having fun. Give us a smile.”

George wanted to stand her ground, but Gries had tears in her eyes, and George’s own throat was dangerously tight.

She wasn’t about to cry in front of these men.

They already believed she was weak and overly emotional, and thus unfit to do her job.

She took Gries by the elbow and guided her toward the door.

“Awww, now they’re leaving.”

“No! Anything but that!”

“Don’t go, ladies! We were only teasing!”

“Whassamatter, can’t take a joke?”

The other women followed. George wanted to tell them to go back, to insist, by force of their presence, that the men accept them. But that strategy hadn’t worked yet, and she didn’t have much hope that it ever would.

“Good for you, George,” said Vivian as they swatted through the mosquitoes escorting them back to the barracks.

“Not that it’ll do any good,” fumed George. She was glad of the dark. She didn’t want Vivian and the others to see the tears on her cheeks.

“I don’t know, George,” said Susan Patterson. “I’m going to send a letter. It’s time Jacqueline Cochran knew what was going on down here.”

George doubted that Patterson’s letter would do anything but get Patterson reassigned somewhere less prestigious.

She remembered all too well Cochran’s no-complaints policy.

But it must have been a good letter, because Cochran flew in a few weeks later and ushered herself into Col.

Stephenson’s office. The next day, the colonel announced a change to the flight assignments.

He had determined, having now given the matter sufficient study, that the WASPs were ready to begin their target-towing training.

He emphasized that the training could not—would not—be rushed.

Until he believed they were ready, they’d be paired up with male pilots to train.

George was elated. Now she’d show them what she could do.

She couldn’t wait to try target towing. While she flew, an airman in the back of her plane would spool out a long target cable.

The Ack Acks—the artillerymen down below—would try to hit it.

The Ack Acks were supposed to feed coordinates into target directors, rather than aiming their 90 mm guns by eye.

But they found the target directors slow and frustrating and often eyeballed the target instead.

The artillery rounds were live, even in practice, and no matter how skilled her flying, a pilot might take shrapnel in the tail of her ship.

After a few runs, most of the male pilots looked at the women with new respect.

But there were a few—George dodged them—who took the opportunity of time alone in a cockpit with a woman to “accidentally” brush a hand across her breasts, her thighs.

These men soon had their favorites among the WASPs—women George assumed didn’t thwart their advances, women who now drank with the male pilots at the O Club.

“Hey,” said Diana Rasmussen when Susan Patterson sneered at her one day, “I’m the one flying the A-26.

I’m getting more target-towing missions than you are.

And I’m not sleeping with anyone to do it either. ”

“I don’t believe that for one minute,” Vivian said. Neither did George.

George’s final training flight was with Simpson.

Simpson wasn’t handsy, just stingy about sharing the controls.

Conditions were choppy, and during the worst patches of turbulence, her flying had elicited appreciative grunts from Simpson.

She’d executed a flawless landing. The next time she flew, she’d be in charge of the ship.

She was ready. She’d done her night training with the Ack Acks firing up at her, diving low into “enemy” fire, live shells whistling inches from her aircraft.

As she entered the hangar, she heard, “I’m married, for God’s sake!” It was Patterson, red-faced with rage, hissing at an amused O’Leary.

“Me too, sweetheart. You wanna fly today or not?”

Patterson only needed one more training run too. Unfortunately, she’d been assigned O’Leary: very handsy, but happy to share the controls. For a price.

George whirled around and said, “Hey, Simpson, Patterson needs her last training run. Why don’t you take it?”

O’Leary’s amusement turned to fury. “I’m the one on the roster.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t want to fly with you. And we all know why.”

Simpson looked from Patterson to O’Leary, his reluctance to take Patterson up vacillating with his evident dislike of O’Leary.

“I never laid a hand,” insisted O’Leary. “Whiny little bitches.”

Simpson turned and began walking back to the airstrip. “Well,” he called over his shoulder to Patterson, “are you coming?”

“Liar!” O’Leary shouted after them. “Whatever she says to you, she’s a liar!” And then to George: “All of you are just a bunch of whiny, lying, little ...” But George had already walked away.

Still shaky with adrenaline, she entered the barracks in no mood to deal with Mrs. Mellon. The housemother had planted herself in the doorway, like a spider waiting for a particularly delicious fly.

“Oh, Georgeanne, dear . . .”

“Hello, Mrs. Mellon. Goodbye, Mrs. Mellon. Have to be somewhere.” She and Vivian had planned to spend the rest of the day at the beach, but George wanted to shave her legs first. She loved the ocean.

The breeze cut the humidity and kept the mosquitoes at bay.

The crashing waves drowned out their conversation, which meant they could talk freely there, away from the barracks and Mrs. Mellon.

“Yes, dear. You do. Just not where you think you have to be.” Mrs. Mellon sounded even more melodramatic than usual. “Oh, you poor girl. Your father ...”

She knew as soon as she heard the word “father.” She shivered, suddenly ice cold.

“Sit down, dear,” said Mrs. Mellon. “You’re in shock, naturally. Sit down right here.”

George lowered her trembling body onto a chair. I should be crying, she thought. Why aren’t I crying? Mrs. Mellon pulled her close, clasped George to her damp, un-air-conditioned bosom until the shivering subsided and George managed to say, “My mother. Did my mother call?”

“No, dear. Someone else. Let me think ... Helen. Yes, that was her name.”

George hadn’t gone home. And now her father was dead and her mother was alone. No, not alone. Helen was there. Capable, competent Helen, making the necessary phone calls. George’s tears came at last. She leaned into Mrs. Mellon’s softness and cried and let herself be held.

George waited for nearly an hour before the CO would see her.

An hour of pacing and trying to think of anything to keep her tears from starting up again.

She had expected him to belittle her for requesting bereavement leave, to say something about women not taking their service obligations seriously. But he brightened as she spoke.

“Request granted, Miss Ector. Go. Stay as long as you feel you need to. Still have a mother? Then she’ll need you. Consider that before you come back. Sullivan!”

Col. Stephenson’s aide trotted in. “Sir?”