Seized by the Sun Read online

  World War II and the Draft

  When America entered World War II, it needed a lot of soldiers in a hurry, so an involuntary draft was instituted through a system called Selective Service. Men eligible for service were given physicals and were either rejected or deemed fit to fight. President Franklin D. Roosevelt convened a National Nutrition Conference in 1941 to see why 38.5 percent of all men called to serve were rejected. They discovered what welfare workers knew all along: the largest single factor was malnutrition, caused by the Great Depression of the 1930s.

  In the autumn of 1940, Gertrude was aware that only the fighter pilots of England’s Royal Air Force (RAF) stood between Hitler and an invasion of the British Isles. Hitler’s air force, the Luftwaffe, was ordered to destroy the Royal Air Force. Prospects looked bleak for the RAF. Fighting fiercely, the English pilots held the Germans at bay, in spite of heavy losses.

  Gertrude asked Henry Silver if he had family in Europe. The word was that the Jews were fleeing the Continent. But contrary to his last name (“Silver” or names with the prefix “Silver-” are common Jewish surnames), Henry was not Jewish. Even so, America had its own ugly streak of anti-Semitism, and kids had teased him in school and called him derogatory names.

  Although Henry was still interested in a relationship with Gertrude, her romantic interest was soon firmly directed elsewhere. It was probably at a dance sometime in late 1940 or early 1941 that Gertrude met Stanley Michael (Mike) Kolendorski, the man she would love the rest of her short life.

  Mike was a member of Eagle Squadron 71, composed of American pilots who volunteered to fly against the Germans for England. He had returned to the States for an unknown reason and was now waiting for a flight back to England. His destination was his air base at the village of Martlesham Heath, where he piloted a Hurricane, a swift single-engine fighter.

  Gertrude and Mike likely found common ground in the fact that they were both from New Jersey. They must have fallen for each other quickly because they spent much of the next several days together. With a war on, romances were often accelerated. Military men had short leaves and would return to duty to face death. One- and two-week romances sometimes ended in proposals of marriage.

  Did tearful kisses mark their good-bye as Mike boarded a train for New Hampshire and his flight back to England? Elizabeth was certain that an Eagle Squadron pilot was her sister’s “one and only” love, and it is likely the pair fueled their attachment with letters.

  News of the war dominated headlines. Moviegoers watched bombs falling and cities in flame. The newsreels showed English fighter planes taking off to meet the Nazi attackers. Gertrude must have worried, for this was a critical time for her Eagle Squadron pilot.

  England was bombed intensely for 57 consecutive nights. Eighty thousand Londoners were killed or wounded. A newspaper story estimated 300 English fighter pilots had met their deaths in combat since the war had begun. Called the Battle of Britain, it was the first time a battle was fought using only airplanes.

  On the ground, Belgrade had fallen to the Germans, the ninth European capital to capitulate to Hitler. President Roosevelt, while still maintaining America’s neutrality, ordered the US Navy and Coast Guard to defend against Nazi submarines attacking ships off America’s East Coast. The fires of torpedoed ships were seen from the New Jersey coast.

  There is no record of when Gertrude took her first airplane flight, but it is probable that it was with Mike Kolendorski, who rented a plane while he was in New York. After he left for England, she followed up with flying lessons.

  Gertrude’s first flight must have been exhilarating and life changing, similar to WASP Jean’s Hascall Cole’s description of her first flight.

  My first flight was a stunning introduction to a new world. Bounding along the grass runway, the Aeronca seemed ready to lift at a moment’s notice. My feet were on the rudders, one hand on the throttle, one on the stick, carefully following the movements of the instructor who was flying the dual controls from the front cockpit. Suddenly the plane roared into the air, banked to the left, and swept, gloriously, into the deep blue of a clear June sky. This was now my world, this incredibly wide, amazing beautiful new universe.

  In May 1941 Gertrude received notification that Pilot Officer Stanley M. Kolendorski had been shot down by the Germans and was considered dead by the RAF. (Sometime later his body was recovered from the sea, and he was buried in Rockanje, Holland.) The news of Mike’s death plunged Gertrude into despair. For two weeks she stayed home from work. She later told her sister that she couldn’t stop crying, so she focused on learning to fly.

  Six months later, on December 7, 1941, Gertrude listened to the news of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Virtually every American found a radio and glued themselves to it on that fateful Sunday morning. The war had finally become personal, and America wasn’t ready. It turned to its women for help.

  At the war’s beginning all military branches began utilizing women. This was something that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had been supporting in her My Day newspaper column, which was syndicated in many cities across the United States. The army had the Women’s Army Corps (WACs); the navy formed Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services (WAVES); the marine corps had their Women’s Reserve; and the coast guard created SPARs from the service’s Latin motto, Semper Paratus—Always Ready. All were formed because of shortages of men.

  War news monopolized conversation everywhere. There was speculation among female pilots that they might be called upon to fly for their country. Some women pilots got their licenses through Civilian Pilot Training Programs at universities. Many women fliers paid to learn at flight schools scattered across the country. A few women flew professionally, mostly as instructors.

  In 1941, about 3,000 American women had pilot’s licenses, and many wanted to be of service. Two proposals were submitted to General Hap Arnold, one by Nancy Harkness Love and the other by Jacqueline Cochran. Both were expert pilots, but Cochran was almost a household name. She’d won the Bendix race and five Harmon trophies for her flying and had set many speed, distance, and altitude records. She owned a cosmetics company called Wings and promoted her products by flying around the country and giving interviews. Considered something of an aviation swashbuckler, Jacqueline Cochran had been born Bessie Pittman in 1906 in western Florida, where her handicapped father had sometimes earned 60 cents a day at a sawmill. To escape poverty, Bessie became a hairdresser, and while making her way to New York City, she changed her name to Jacqueline Cochran. Working at the cosmetics counter at Saks Fifth Avenue, she met and later married movie mogul and millionaire Floyd Odlum.

  Jacqueline Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love were very different. Love was from a well-to-do family and had an Ivy League college education. While in college she got her pilot’s license and made money by renting planes and taking students for rides. She became known as “The Flying Freshman.” She and her husband, Robert M. Love, an air corps reserve major, built their own successful Boston-based aviation company, Inter City Aviation, for which Nancy was a pilot. She proposed to the army a small unit of experienced women pilots to ferry aircraft from factories to military bases. Each pilot would have at least 500 hours of flying time. These women already had licenses. Her proposal went to the Air Force Ferry Command.

  It was approved, and the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) was formed under Love. She brought together 28 pilots who met her criteria. They underwent four weeks of specialized military training at New Castle Army Air Base in Delaware. The women learned to fly most of the aircraft in the army and were ready to immediately begin flying.

  Unlike Love, Cochran wanted to train large numbers of women to handle all kinds of domestic military flights, thus releasing many more male pilots for combat. While Love’s group began ferrying, Cochran was given the go-ahead by General Arnold to organize her training program, the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots—the WASPs.

  Using word of mouth and personal invitations, C
ochran began recruiting. Gertrude was about to embark on her greatest adventure yet.

  7

  THE WASPs ARE BORN

  On September 10, 1942, a New York Herald Tribune headline read: WOMEN PILOTS TO FLY FOR ARMY. It was Jacqueline Cochran’s announcement of the formation of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots. Gertrude must have seen the article. Like many American women, she had been waiting for this moment.

  There were many reasons women chose to apply to the WASPs. Patriotism was at the core, but flying, thanks to the movies, was also considered glamorous. Said WASP Jean Hascall Cole, “For each of us, flying was a passion, and some combination of daring, rebellion, and determination took us into the air.”

  Like Gertrude, WASP Nadine Nagle’s desire to fly for the service was personal. Nagle wrote: “In the summer of 1942 my husband (a B-24 pilot) was killed on a mission in England. I read an article on the women pilots the next month. I got this patriotic feeling that I was to fly in his place.”

  There was no formal recruitment. Word of mouth and news articles quickly generated 25,000 applications for the WASPs. It happened so quickly that there were few written or regulated standards for admission. Applicants were interviewed by Cochran or one of her assistants. As Molly Merryman writes in her book, “The guidelines were a matter of choosing clean-cut, stable appearing young girls, women who best fit the image of the WASPs as Cochran saw it…. We do know that this subjective screening process had a detrimental impact on black women, who Cochran removed from consideration.”

  Cochran wrote that she feared that admitting African American women to the WASPs would jeopardize the program, saying she had enough difficulty establishing the WASPs and that “it might be the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Racial discrimination was institutionalized as part of the American military until President Harry S. Truman took the first step to integrate the army in 1947.

  However, two Chinese American women were accepted in the program, one of whom, Hazel Ying Lee, later died in a plane crash at Great Falls, Montana. One Native American woman flew for the WASPs, Ola Mildred Rexroat, an Oglala Sioux from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

  Gertrude was probably interviewed by Cochran herself in New York City. She met the standards: Caucasian, educated, respectable, and well mannered. Cochran was acutely conscious of the image of her WASPs, and she feared that a misstep by even one of them might be blown up by the press and reflect badly on the program and on her own reputation.

  The standards for application in the beginning included a pilot’s license and 75 hours of flight time. (In contrast, male applicants for pilot training did not need a pilot’s license or any flight experience.) The women’s flight time was soon lowered to 35 hours.

  Wrote WASP Jean Hascall Cole, “Many of them … squeezed in [to the WASP program] by various methods, not all of which were aboveboard. World War II was a very popular war. The country was totally involved and everyone wanted to be ‘in it’ or helping in one way or another. No holds were barred when it came to ‘getting in.’”

  WASPs Madeline Sullivan and Jo Wallace were on the way to their entry interview. Neither had the full 35 hours of flying time needed to qualify, but each tried to keep the fact from one another. Madeline asked Jo, “How many hours of signed time do you have [in your pilot’s logbook]?” Jo replied she had about 31. Madeline said, “I have news for you. Unless you have 35 hours of signed time, she [Cochran] is not going to put you into the next class in September.”

  “Oh my God,” said Jo. “Have you got a pen?” Both women went into the restroom and finished padding their logbooks. Upstairs, they were both passed for entry into the September class.

  One woman with bad vision cheated on her eye exam by squinting. Still another got her doctor to attest that she was taller than the five-foot-two-and-a-half-inch minimum required by the WASPs.

  About 1,800 women made the cut and were staged for training. Gertrude Tompkins was one of them.

  8

  WELCOME TO THE WASPs

  The home of the WASPs’ 318th Army Air Forces Flying Training Detachment (AAFFTD) was a busy base three miles from downtown Sweetwater, a town of about 10,000 in central Texas. When Gertrude arrived on May 23, 1943, Sweetwater looked to her like a Western movie set. The surrounding countryside was a forlorn-looking landscape where dust swirled in the sparse Texas brush. It had one hotel, the Blue Bonnet, with a corner drugstore that occupied the lower floor of the hotel. There were lots of ranchers and cowboys. They wore jeans, cowboy hats, and cowboy boots with spurs that jingled. The ones with guns on their hips must have presented an impressive sight to the trainees who arrived that day from many cities. The people of Sweetwater were friendly, and the women grew to love them.

  From Sweetwater the WASP recruits were driven to Avenger Field in the “cattle car,” a bus-like contraption towed by a truck. At Avenger Field Gertrude joined WASP Class 43-W-7 (1943-women-class number 7). There were 103 women in her class at the beginning, each with at least 35 hours flying time (unless they had forged their logbooks). Each woman had paid her own money to become a flier and to pass her pilot’s test. They’d each paid for their own tickets to Sweetwater.

  As they entered the gates of the base they saw above them the WASPs’ cartoon mascot, Fifinella, or “Fifi,” a comic female gremlin character in flight cap and goggles designed especially for the women pilots by Walt Disney. Fifi was said to play pranks on female pilots and could always be blamed for mischief that was otherwise unexplainable.

  As they stood in ranks, an officer strode before them. “Imagine an empty space where the person is standing next to you.” He waited, letting the women look at one another. He continued. “About half of you will wash out [fail to meet training standards]. This program is tough, and if you can’t cut it, you will be asked to pack up and leave.”

  WASP Alberta Fitzgerald Head wrote about recruits arriving at Avenger in the winter, “Some thin young shoulders were scantily clad and from the direction of the wind-whipped pleated skirts we heard a recurrent wail, ‘They said it was warm in Texas!’ They wore loafers and high heels, there were fur coats and sunglasses, plaits and extravagant hair arrangements…. The wind and sand mocked these gallant girls as they entered the ready room [a waiting room of sorts for pilots] for the first time.” Sweetwater could also be blazing hot. Recruits were herded into a large hall and were relieved of tennis rackets, musical instruments, high-heeled shoes, and golf clubs, which were shipped home. The first order of business was to swear in the young women. They raised their right hands and took a solemn oath to serve their country. After that, the business of becoming pilots got underway.

  Gertrude was 31 years old when she arrived at Sweetwater as part of the 318th Training Detachment, older than most of the recruits. Unlike many of them, she had lived with women roommates at Ambler. She’d traveled extensively and seen the world.

  On this breezy May day Gertrude stood proud in the ranks with her class as they formed company 43-W-7. But she was wholly unprepared for the first days of training at Avenger Field. Her face was burned dry by the sun and the wind as she waited for the medics to give her painful inoculations. She was fingerprinted. The flight surgeon made her run in place, then do push-ups and deep knee bends until she was gasping for breath. She learned she had to supply her own washcloth and towels, yet she was quarantined and confined to base.

  Six women were assigned to each barrack’s bay, and two bays shared a bathroom with showers and toilets. A bay was a room about 20 feet by 20 feet. The latrine (bathroom) windows were clear, and the recruits painted them black to obscure the views of outsiders. The army demanded that the women learn new routines: bunk sheets had to be turned down two hand widths, blankets stretched tight enough to bounce a quarter, shoes placed under the bunk with toes pointing to the center of the bay. On Saturdays they had inspections.

  Lights went out at 10:00 PM, and absolute silence was ordered. Each night an officer came through with a
flashlight. Once he left, the trainees often gathered in the latrine to play a quiet game of cards and to talk. When the lights went out during winter, so did each bay’s gas heater. The card players retired to their bunks after first drawing lots to see who would jump out of her bunk to light the heater in the cold dawn.

  WASPs sunbathing between barracks, Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas, 1943. Courtesy of the WASP Archive, Texas Woman’s University Libraries

  The women’s assignment to Sweetwater was supposed to be secret, but within days the word was out. Male pilots frequently made “emergency landings” at Avenger. An order from a high-placed officer stopped the male visits, and as a result Avenger Field became known as “Cochran’s Convent.”

  The class of 43-W-7 was separated alphabetically into two flights, or groups. Gertrude was in the second flight. One flight had ground school in the morning and flying time in the afternoon; for the other flight, the schedule was reversed.

  For early trainees, the program was 22½ weeks long, with 115 hours of flight training, 20 hours of simulated flight training, 5 hours of physical training each week, and 180 hours of instruction in navigation, communication, weather, aircraft and engines, and Air Transport Command procedures. By the time Gertrude arrived at Avenger Field, her program had been extended to 24 weeks, with 180 hours of flight time and 30 hours of simulated flight training.

  Training was in three phases: primary, basic, and advanced. Changes to the program were made constantly. Physical training for the women was increased. Male leaders thought women would need the extra strength to handle the controls of the heavy bombers.

  For membership to flight training, the WASPs had requirements to meet and rules to follow that weren’t exactly fair, by Gertrude’s estimate. The WASPs were a special nonmilitary institution created by Congress and were not covered by the same rules as the other men and women in military services.