The Spitfire Girls(72)
Ruby hugged him and committed every inch of her new husband to memory. Her love for him and her love of flying threatened to tear her in two, but she had a job to do.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said. ‘Stay safe.’
Tom held up a hand as she backed away then ran through the rain after May and Polly. It was her wedding day, and instead of a blissful afternoon with her husband, she was going to be flying a Spitfire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SWEETWATER AIRFIELD, TEXAS,
OCTOBER 1942
LIZZIE
‘Dunlop.’
She looked up and saw Captain Montgomery striding towards her. Trust him to be the first person she laid eyes on as she walked outside for fresh air. Lizzie held up a hand to shield her face from the sun, irritated by his presence.
‘Good to have you back,’ he said briskly.
‘I much prefer Texas to Washington,’ she replied. ‘Four days of meetings there and I’m pleased to be back.’ She’d been visiting her family before that, too, so it had been a week since she’d been on base.
He made a sort of grunting noise. ‘Well, we’re pleased to have you. You’re good for morale.’
She stifled a laugh. Good for morale? She certainly hoped she was good for more than just that!
‘We’re going to be sending our best graduates to specialised training centres from here,’ she told him. ‘I’ve received confirmation from General Arnold that they want our WASPs to be able to deliver as many planes as possible. It looks like we’re going to be kept busy – they’re preparing for the Europe invasion.’
Montgomery nodded. ‘Good call. They’ll be delivering planes to every port and base in the country, so it makes sense. And it’s great news that women are now permitted to fly in military planes with men. I’m thinking your time in Washington might have given rise to this new decision?’
Lizzie gave a wry smile. ‘It seems women aren’t such a terrible distraction after all.’ She couldn’t help the sarcasm; the rule had been ridiculous and she was pleased it had finally been scrapped.
‘Oh, I’m sure they all think you females are a terrible distraction, but it makes sense for women to catch a ride when they can. But don’t think they were trying to placate you – I’d say it’s simply someone higher up trying to save time and money on buses, trains and commercial aircraft to get women back to base.’
Lizzie had to agree. Honestly, she wanted to shake the men making the decisions in the army most of the time!
‘Walk with me?’ she asked the captain, hoping she wouldn’t regret it; he seemed to rub her up the wrong way at every step. But something about him kept drawing her back, and she had to remind herself that it had been Jackson who’d picked her up and pulled her through her darkest hours after losing the bomber flight, and him once again who’d broken the news of her father’s heart attack. Perhaps she’d been too hard on him when she’d first arrived home, and not given him enough credit.
‘How is the new intake coming along?’ she asked as they passed the Link Trainer, which was a faux-type plane that never left the ground. ‘Has their instrument training progressed well this week?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, they’re all doing well, although it does take some of them time to get used to listening for instructions through the headpiece rather than looking through the cockpit window.’
She nodded. ‘It’s a useful skill. The women I flew with in England would pass with flying colours.’
‘I don’t know how they haven’t lost any women over there,’ he said. ‘Flying without instruments and radio is unheard of.’
‘And terrifying!’ she replied. ‘They have their instincts to follow in bad conditions and nothing else. I can’t believe May didn’t push harder for something to be done, but whenever she tried they just reminded her of her excellent wastage rate.’
‘It’s an awful term, wastage rate,’ he said. ‘But they were an incredible bunch of women.’
She smiled, not sure whether he was including her in that praise. ‘They most certainly were.’
They passed a classroom, windows open, so they could hear the instructor talking inside. Lizzie was so proud of their training facilities, and she only wished she could somehow show May and Ruby how everything looked and what was going on. There was only so much she could convey in letters.
‘Are you happy with the training schedule or are there any changes you’d like to make?’ she asked.
He frowned. ‘The programme you’ve designed for them is solid. The only thing I’d like to do more of is stalling mid-air. It’s one thing to know what to do in a controlled environment, and another altogether in an emergency.’
She nodded. ‘Done. So they’ll start with emergency landings and lazy-eights, slow rolls and so forth, and then we’ll go straight into stalling mid-air and spins. It’ll scare them silly to begin with, but if they do it every day for a couple of weeks, spinning toward the ground and then having to get out of it without crashing, they’ll be prepared for anything and it’ll become second nature.’
Jackson nodded, then laughed.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘See the well there?’ he asked.