A flip of a switch would bring her to life for us. She would quiver when you touched the controls, talk to you when you pressed the mike button, and through some almost forgotten G.I. genius we could warm her belly in winter and cool it in summer.
Since we were lovers and not fighters anymore, it was appropriate to redesign the Lady, but she didn’t mind. In fact, she seemed to welcome the change. She liked the addition of the bar and the compact gas range and oversize refrigerator. The tables and chairs fitted in just right and the TV set seemed to have always belonged there.
Oh, we kept her in character. No gaudy paint jobs when we had cans of o.d. around. Outside on her skin we tickled her with brushes and brightened up the original markings. A few of the old wounds needed to be sutured up once more and she was all the better for it.
In one week we had her laughing again and a dozen weekends later she was ours, all ours, to love and cherish as we wished. Ah, what a second honeymoon we had! It took a lot of tailoring to get into our wedding clothes again, but we got the uniforms back on, the mold off the leather, and the film off the brass.
I’m glad Life didn’t see us then, coming out of the old tool shed that we made into a dressing room, turned out in old AAF pinks and greens and dress khakis. We saluted each other silly, patted the surplus chutes that hung from hooks under our names and slipped into the hangar under blackout conditions like back in England when we knew Jerry was upstairs looking for a target.
When the door was closed, Tiny said, “Everybody in?”
A murmur went around our heads, sounding strangely hollow in the vault of the hangar.
“Okay,” Tiny said, “Flip ’er.”
Vern pulled the switch, flooded the place with lights placed just so and for all the world we were back there on the stand waiting for take-off.
“Beautiful,” somebody said, “just beautiful.”
And in the same order, just like back in ’44, we climbed aboard the Dragon Lady to celebrate our wedding night all over again, bringing to her gifts to show our love... the same little bits and pieces we had all taken away as mementos years before, gently put them back where they belonged... and the night was consummated in grand style.
Now that was the beginning. You can only keep a beauty like the Lady quiet for so long. A man just has to brag, and having done so, has to back up his talk and before long the Dragon Lady had an entourage the way any royal dame should. Of course, only ex-AAF personnel were invited to a “flight” on that Baker One Seven, and even then they had to conform to spec. Orders of the day said you went on board in the appropriate uniform and those who didn’t have one, either borrowed Class As or dug up something in surplus.
You can bet one thing. Nobody was ever disappointed. Before long that old hangar became a lavish combination Officers’ and N.C.Os’ Club where men could be men in the old style, fight the war as they pleased, and forget the crazy old world outside. It was the place of the Permanent Pass, the Big Open Post, the Fabulous Furlough.
Nobody was old there. When they felt that way they could find their places inside the Dragon Lady and she would console them within herself and give them back their youth.
Of course, Vern Tice knew what he was doing all the time. The place was paying off in grand style and, although the fees were small, all the money stayed in the barracks and finally we had a bomber base to beat all bomber bases. Never was one staffed so adequately with so much rank and so many sergeants.
Never was the location of one base so carefully guarded.
Oh, those women on the home front knew something was going on, that’s for sure. They’d beg and wheedle to find out what it was, but what man in his right mind is going to give his wife the address of his mistress?
Now right here I have to mention that there was one woman who knew the score. That was Elaine Hood, who by now had become big in Hollywood — picked up an Oscar, but didn’t pick up Vern Tice no matter how hard she tried, and believe me she tried.
Vern didn’t know it, but all of us married pigeons knew it. Those already trapped can look back and see the pitfalls.
One thing you have to say about old Elaine. She never squealed. She knew all about our mistress and could have let out the big secret to the town at any time. Good kid, that one, no chicken anymore, but still lovely and with a complete sense of understanding. She became good friends with all the wives of the Lady’s original crew and sort of welded them together to the point where they began liking each other’s company and would even stand for hangar talk over the supper table at the country club.
In fact (and we say it was because they were afraid to compete with the Dragon Lady), they even helped when Tiny, Vic, and Henry pooled all their savings and started making electronic equipment. Lou Kubitsky sold his store, opened a sports arena, and made a bundle. Irene, his wife, sold tickets and loved it. Come to think of it, things like that were happening to everybody.
And back at the Happy Hangar way out there in the swamps, the fishing grew better, the duck shooting greater, and all the state would have wanted in on it had they known it was there. But it was our secret and none would give it away. Vern made his like he always did, but he wasn’t so happy about it anymore. You could tell. When the flight was over and the crew left for their bunks, Vern would take off in his Jag and go prowling around. Sometimes he’d go see Elaine, but when he came back you could see he was having a struggle with himself and it took a hard month to tell some of the women to lay off the matchmaking attempts and let him and Elaine be. If the guy didn’t want to get married, so let him live in a BOQ.
It was about then, at the end of summer, that two things happened simultaneously. Elaine finished her run on Broadway and the Air Force decided to reactivate Ellison Field, about 10 miles out of town. So Elaine moved into an apartment on Avery Road around the corner from us and the 332nd moved 50 F-l00’s into Ellison.
Those great big air-borne hogs overhead made all the kids happy and brought smiles to the faces of merchants, but to us old prop men they were just noise makers that needed too damn much runway to get off and ten times that to get back down.
But they raised hell with our hangar hours because whenever one of those blowjobs would go by overhead it made our Dragon Lady seem suddenly old and that was one thing we just couldn’t tolerate. It got so that when we saw one of those pink-cheeked pilots on the street we’d freeze him down, him in his blues that made him look like he never got out of the kaydets.
Maybe if it hadn’t been for the Vern Tice Elaine Hood sideline show we all would have had pilot fatigue, but those two were flying the craziest kind of sidewalk formations you ever saw. Everybody but Vern knew it was love, but, even if he did know, she was the enemy to be avoided. He enjoyed the combat angle, the boy-girl stuff, but when it came to the Big Tangle, he put his nose down and hit for the barn.
My wife was the one who put her finger on it. Vern had the old gang back together again and he was afraid that marriage to Elaine would be like bailing out on the return leg of a milk run. She’d have him off in Hollywood or back on Broadway and not even a goodbye kiss for his true lady fair in the hangar, and that he couldn’t stand.
It was right in the middle of the fall that everything came to a head. Vern and Elaine finally had it out and, from what I heard by way of eavesdropping on a phone conversation, she was going back to Hollywood to do a picture and Vern was going to stay put. I passed the word around because by now we were all on her side and hated to see Vern a permanent party in the BOQ when he could just as easily get married.