Beyond the Horizon by Ella Carey

Author:Ella Carey [Carey, Ella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542091398
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE COMMITTEE: The committee acknowledges that there were bonds forged between you, but this was in the style of flying Girl Scouts. It was not in any way military in the proper sense. If you are granted full military benefits, we will have every organization coming forward, including the Girl Scout volunteers who were on the ground. Do any of these other so-called friends you made in the WASP really view the experience as military, looking back? And if so, what possible justification do they have?

EVA FORREST: I lost contact with them all. I have written to them, but I haven’t heard back. I had no choice but to move on.

THE COMMITTEE: So is this a personal revisiting for you, Mrs. Forrest? Are you simply here to try to reconnect with your long-lost friends? How could you truly have been sisters-in-arms, then, in the true military style, if your time there was so easily forgotten by your fellow WASP?

EVA FORREST: I do not believe that my fellow WASP could have forgotten our time together at Sweetwater. I believe that they felt the same bond during wartime as I did. But I was involved in an accident in the winter of ’44 that killed one of my close friends, Helena Cartwright, a fellow WASP. I worry that I did something wrong in that accident. I have been unable to recall the details of what happened, and I have tried to reach out to my WASP friends. But I have never heard back. What if I broke our military-style code of putting my WASP sisters before myself? I worry that they washed me out.

Winter mist curled over the empty plains as the cold weather unfurled over Texas. Inside, the hangars were freezing. Trainees and teachers started coming down sick. But the girls flew the final hours they needed to graduate, bundled up in their leather flying jackets, woolen collars turned up to protect their necks. Their cheeks were flushed red with the cold, where four months earlier, they’d burned from the relentless sun.

Dan’s replacement did not do anything to help morale. Their new flight instructor was an entirely different type of man.

Bob Sutton first addressed Eva’s flight group on an exposed outlying airfield, his light-brown hair immaculate in spite of the icy breeze. His blue eyes were cold. “I know you women are nearly graduating. You must be clever girls to get this far. However, the fact is you’re going to have trouble when you graduate. You’ll either be target towing while our men shoot up at you from the ground, delivering new planes from factories to bases, or testing planes that have been repaired. It’s all very well for you to have flown the three training planes here, but many of you won’t be strong enough to fly the bigger planes that we need you to fly.”

Eva sensed Bea tensing up.

“Women simply don’t have the strength.”

Bea cleared her throat. “I disagree, sir.”

Swift as a cat, Bob rounded on her, frost curling from his mouth.

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