The Air-Raid Warden Was a Spy: And Other Tales From Home-Front America in World War II (20 page)

Each ration book had stamps with point values for specific foods. Sirloin steaks and pork chops might go for twelve points; pineapple juice for twenty-two points; peaches for eighteen points; cheese for eight points and butter for sixteen points. Consumers paid for the grocery with stamps—plus cash.

At the end of each workday, the grocer—who often ran a mom-and-pop operation—was confronted with an accounting problem that might confound a Harvard business graduate. To replenish his stocks, the grocer had to count the stamps, then send them to his wholesalers, who in turn, had to sort out tens of thousands of stamps into an orderly manner. Then he turned the stamps over to his local bank to get credit for buying more food.

Often the grocery ran out of the gummed sheets on which to stick the stamps. Requests for more of the sheets sometimes got lost in the OPA bureaucracy, causing wholesalers to haul loose stamps to the bank in bushel baskets.

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Cuts of meat are marked with ration-point values and OPA ceiling prices at this typical American grocery. (Library of Congress)

On one occasion in Chicago, a violent burst of wind jerked a basket from a wholesaler’s hand as he was walking toward a bank. Millions of stamps were scattered over a large portion of the city.
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Nasty Bartenders and Redneck Cops

T
WENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD
Nancy H. Love, daughter of a wealthy Philadelphia physician, was present at a Washington press conference when Secretary of War Henry Stimson announced that she would be head of a new Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). It was September 10, 1942, ten days after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt suggested in her influential syndicated newspaper column, “My Day,” that “our women pilots are a weapon waiting to be used.”

WAFS would be volunteers and experienced pilots. As director, Love would set up headquarters at New Castle Air Force Base near Wilmington, Delaware.

At the time of her appointment, Love had been flying for ten years. Since 1936, she and her husband, Robert H. Love, had built a thriving aviation company in Boston, for which she served as one of the pilots. Nancy Love had been a pioneer, having safety-tested aircraft innovations for the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce.

Soon, eager female pilots, one by one, began arriving at New Castle. They were a varied lot: heiresses (Woolworth’s and Luden’s cough drops); one who had become the youngest licensed female pilot in the nation at age sixteen; a woman who had been inspired to fly in 1928 after reading an article by Amelia Earhart; and a former barnstormer who had some 3,000 hours of flying experience.

After a forty-day orientation period, Nancy Love’s pilots began ferrying aircraft from factories to Army Air Corps bases around the nation.

Only five days after the WAFS had been born, the War Department announced the creation of another Army Air Corps organization, the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD). A day later, its leader, famed aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran, went to work on a paid basis—one dollar a year.

An energetic, tough-minded, competitive, and outspoken woman, she had sent a sharply-worded letter to General Henry “Hap” Arnold, the Air Corp chief, urging creation of an all-female pilots organization—commanded by a woman.

Jacqueline Cochran numbered several Air Corps generals among her friends, and she was on a first-name basis with them. She had started flying in 1932, and was the only woman to enter the McRobertson London Melbourne race in 1934. That same year she became the first woman to compete in the annual cross-country Bendix Trophy race. Much to the chagrin of her male competitors, some of whom would become Air Corps generals, she won the race.

Born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1913, Cochran had pulled herself up from a poverty-stricken early life to become head of her own highly successful national cosmetics firm, established in 1935.

Jackie Cochran put out a call for volunteers for her new outfit. She was swamped with some 25,000 applicants, many of whom tried to beg or connive their way into a cockpit. She chose 1,830 of the most promising candidates, who had to pay their own way to Avenger Field in Texas, the nation’s only all-female base.

These recruit trainees for the Women’s Flying Training Detachment had experience piloting planes but had not logged nearly as many hours as Nancy Love’s WAFS, who already were ferrying aircraft. In the first group of recruits were a Hollywood actress, a Reno blackjack dealer, a stuntwoman from Hollywood, a Chicago stripper, and a Kentucky nurse who made her rounds on horseback. Most noticeable was a member of the Florsheim shoe family who arrived at a nearby hotel with seventeen trunks and a trio of finely coiffured Afghans.

During the first week the women were in training, more than a hundred curious male cadets from the several training schools in the region suddenly developed engine trouble and had to make “forced landings” at Avenger Field.

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So the field commander ordered the base closed to all but genuine emergencies. Avenger Field, therefore, became known as Cochran’s Convent.

By the early fall of 1942, Nancy Love’s WAFS had logged hundreds of thousands of miles ferrying military aircraft around the home front. On one occasion four of the women flew P-51 Mustang fighter planes on an arduous trek from California to a base in Newark, New Jersey. After turning over their aircraft to the authorities, the women decided to cross the Hudson River into New York City for an evening of relaxation. They entered the popular restaurant, Jack Dempsey’s, owned by the former world heavyweight boxing champion.

The weather was mild and the pilots were wearing the standard gabardine shirts and slacks. At the bar, they ordered drinks. The bartender glared at them. “No women in slacks,” he barked. “But these are our uniforms,” they protested. Moments later, they were hustled out of the crowded restaurant.

Halfway down the block, they heard shouts: “Ladies! Ladies!” The manager of Dempsey’s was running after them, having been alerted by an angry male Air Corps officer who had watched the episode. “Please come back,” the manager pleaded. “We thought you were, er, ah, er, well you’re wearing slacks.”

He had mistaken them for prostitutes. Hungry and thirsty, they agreed to return, and spent the evening at Dempsey’s on the house.

On another occasion, stormy weather caused four female pilots to make an emergency landing at Americus, Georgia. Leaving their aircraft in the hangar, they caught a bus into town to look for a hotel to spend the night. Soon after they began walking through the downtown area, a police car pulled up. Two of Americus’s finest got out and ordered the women to come with them to the police station. One cop said sarcastically, “‘Ladies in slacks are not allowed on the streets at night around here.” He, too, had mistaken the pilots for prostitutes.

The women were locked in a filthy cell. They protested that they were Army pilots in uniform. The police chief was unmoved. That would be merely another charge against them: impersonating military officers.

It was nearly 3:00
A
.
M
. before the women were allowed to make a telephone call. They contacted Nancy Love and related their predicament. She demanded to speak to the police chief. He winced, holding the telephone receiver away from his ear. Ladylike and refined most of the time, Love had acquired a rough vocabulary. She read the riot act to the shaken police chief, impugning his lack of patriotism and charging that she would go directly to President Roosevelt about this outrage.

Minutes later the women were driven back to the airport. After dawn they lifted off in their planes, anxious to put as many miles as possible between themselves and the rednecked policemen in Americus, Georgia.
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Plane Bombs Pacific Northwest

I
N SEPTEMBER 1942,
the Japanese submarine I-25 was approaching the dark shore of Oregon. Housed in an improvised deck hangar was a light reconnaissance plane. The pilot was not necessarily expected to return from a mission, but the aircraft was equipped with pontoons to make it possible to touch down near the submarine.

A month earlier, the skipper of the I-25 was in the craft’s home port, 9,000 miles from the west coast of America, and he conferred with the former head of the Japanese consulate in Seattle, Washington. The diplomatic official briefed the officers and men of the I-25 on a scheme to drop incendiary bombs on the thickly forested regions of Oregon and adjoining Washington State, an action designed to ignite roaring blazes.

Now, under the veil of night, the pilot of the submarine-carried airplane took off from the water, headed inland, and dropped two incendiaries near Brookings, Oregon, a short distance north of the California border. Small blazes were ignited, but the U.S. Forest Service rangers rapidly extinguished them before major damage occurred.

For nearly three weeks, the I-25 cruised along the coast. On September 29, the plane was launched again off the Oregon shore and two more bombs were dropped. A minor fire was put out. The submarine headed back to Japan, with the Americans never knowing that the enemy had started the forest blazes.
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Part Four

A Nation in Total War

Covert Project on Constitution Avenue

N
INE MONTHS AFTER AMERICA
was jolted into global war, an anonymous group of brigadier generals and colonels was hidden away in the old Munitions Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. These officers would never make the headlines, nor even get their names mentioned in newspapers. But on their shoulders rested the fate of Operation Torch, the first major American offensive of the war. It was late August 1942.

The invasion target was French Northwest Africa. No one in Washington entertained any illusion that the task would be easy. Never had a major invasion been mounted from three thousand miles away. There were no textbooks, and no precedents. An untested, partially trained force of some 38,000 soldiers, its vehicles, weapons, ammunition, and supplies would have to be moved to another continent from Hampton Roads, Virginia, near Norfolk.

The convoy, known as the Western Task Force, would have to cross an ocean infested with German U-boats, storm the defended shores, defeat whatever hostile force might be encountered, secure a large beachhead, and prepare to drive hundreds of miles eastward.

There was enormous reason for the secrecy. Should German spies learn of the looming operation, the convoy could meet with a monumental disaster at the hands of waiting U-boat wolf packs.

The officers tucked away in a loft in the Munitions Building were charged with the awesome responsibility of getting the right troops and supplies and weapons to the right place at the right time. There would be 700,000 different items, including 22 million pounds of food and 18 million pounds of clothing. Ten million gallons of gasoline would go ashore in five-gallon containers carried by individual soldiers or would land in bulk by tankers.

Included in the supply list were 508 rat-catchers, 200 alarm clocks, hundreds of stepladders, rubber stamps, steel safes, and cartons of condoms.

Further complicating the gargantuan logistics buildup was the crucial necessity of keeping a tight security lid on the Munitions Building planning. Hundreds of thousands of items would be delivered to ships along the eastern seaboard on cartons marked L-10, or Z-2, or XY, leaving GIs and enemy spies alike puzzled over the contents.

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In the knowledge that hostile ears and eyes might be anywhere, security officers in Washington planted rumors that the feverish activity in the Munitions Building was merely for the purpose of moving troops to the British Isles. “Britain” and “Ireland” were code words for Algeria and Morocco, two nations the Allies were to invade.

The planning process was compartmentalized. Some officers knew that a large movement was in the works. Others knew the size but not the destination. Still others knew the targeted locale but not the size of the operation.

Officers hunkered down over desks in tiny rooms never mentioned the words Oran, Casablanca, or Algiers. Even when only two men were in a room, they used code words for those ports, or else they used hand signals for conveying to each other the names of those Northwest Africa cities.