The Air-Raid Warden Was a Spy: And Other Tales From Home-Front America in World War II (31 page)

On the following morning, the town of Ord turned out en masse for the two-and-a-half hour funeral, time mainly occupied with eulogies. Near the close of the service, the mayor of Ord announced to the congregation that the town airport would now be called the Evelyn Sharp Field.

After the funeral, the hundreds of townspeople moved on to the cemetery. Scores of men and women, eyes brimming with tears, came up to Nancy and told her how proud they were of Evelyn and all the women serving their country as ferrying pilots.

Evelyn’s casket was lowered slowly into the ground as a bugler played taps. Only then did Nancy, her official duties concluded, break down in a torrent of tears.
⁴

Cheers for a Lady

A
LTHOUGH WOMEN PILOTS
had been ferrying airplanes for hundreds of thousands of miles across the United States for nearly two years, they were still largely unknown to many Air Corps officers operating flying fields around the nation. Carole Fillmore lifted off from the West Coast to deliver a P-51 fighter plane to Newark, New Jersey. She decided to fly the southern route, and near the end of the first day, she radioed the tower at Athens, Georgia, for landing instructions. No answer. Again she called. Still no response. Now she was circling the airport and asking for radio check.

Then the angry male voice blurted into Carole’s earphones: “Will the woman who is calling please stay off the air; we’re trying to bring in a P-51.”

The veil of dusk was starting to cloak the region. Carole looked around for another P-51, but saw none. So she again asked for clearance to land.

Now the male voice was furious. “Will the [bleeping] woman who is clogging up the radio waves get off the [bleeping] air!” he shouted. “We’re trying to make contact with a P-51!”

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157

After flying all the way from Long Beach, California, Carole was near exhaustion—and her patience had run out. “For your information,” she bellowed into her mike, “the lady is in the P-51!”

Without waiting for a reply, Carole zoomed in toward the runway and landed at a speed in excess of one hundred miles per hour.

As Carole taxied toward the tower, a large number of cadets poured out of a building to get a look at the sleek fighter plane they hoped to be flying one day over Europe or in the Pacific. Coming to a halt, the pilot threw back the canopy, removed her helmet, and the breeze ruffled her long blond hair.

The phalanx of young men ground to a halt. One of the cadets shouted, “Good God, it’s a girl!” A few moments of silence. Then, as Carole stood on a wing, the cadets burst out in cheers and whistles, waving their caps wildly.
⁵

D Day Anxieties and Prayers

C
URIOUSLY, IT WAS NOT
the hundreds of Allied correspondents in London who broke the blockbuster news for which home-front America and the free world had been breathlessly anticipating: the invasion of Adolf Hitler’s Festung Europa (Fortress Europe) had been launched. Breaking the story was the German news agency, Transocean. It was early morning on June 6, 1944.

In New York City, the Associated Press picked up the Berlin flash and sent it to media clients across America, just past 2:00
A.M.
(eastern standard time). Radio stations interrupted regular programming to air the bulletin.

Broadcast commentators across the nation leaped to stress that there had been no official announcement from the headquarters of Allied Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower, and they cautioned that the Berlin announcement could be a Nazi trick to cause the large underground in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to rise prematurely, thus exposing it for destruction by the German army.

At precisely the same time in London, Colonel William Paley, the head of the CBS network in the United States, was pacing his office. In recent days, a message had been recorded by General Eisenhower, and it was Paley’s job to flash the brief statement to home-front America and elsewhere when Allied troops were ashore in Normandy.

Now Paley was nervously waiting for a specified officer to telephone him and give the single code word “Topflight,” which meant the Eisenhower message could be broadcast.

At mid-morning, the telephone on Paley’s desk jangled urgently. The colonel felt his heart skip a beat. Clearing his throat, he answered as calmly as

(Philadelphia Inquirer)

possible, “Yes?” After a split-second pause, the voice on the other end said, “Testing.”

Paley slammed down the receiver. His nerves grew tauter. About three minutes later, the telephone rang again. Paley heard the voice say, “Testing.”

Paley was angry. Minutes later, it happened a third time. The colonel exploded, telling the caller that if he made one more “testing” call, he would “knock your bleeping head off.” Don’t phone again unless it was the real thing, Paley shouted.

Within three minutes came yet another call: “Topflight!”

General Eisenhower’s recorded voice began swirling around the world, confirmation that the mightiest invasion that history has known had been launched.

Eyewitness reports from correspondents started flowing over American airwaves by 9:10
A
.
M
. (eastern standard time). These accounts were vague and repetitive. Big guns on warships sending shells onto the beaches and inland. Much smoke. Warplanes strafing and dropping bombs. Nothing specific. Allied Supreme Headquarters had put a tight muzzle on information about units involved to keep the Germans guessing. Nor was the locale of the invasion permitted to be told, other than “northern France.”

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159

As daylight of D Day seeped over a fearful and anxiety-ridden home-front America, tens of thousands of parents, wives, and girlfriends of servicemen known to have been in England nervously awaited more news. Casualties? Not a single word came over the radio.

In large cities and small, Americans crowded into churches and synagogues to pray for loved ones—and for the success of the invasion. President Roosevelt came on the air to unify the nation in prayer:

Almighty God. Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon

a mighty endeavor. Lead them straight and true. Give strength to

their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

These men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight

to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They yearn but for the end

of the battle, for their return to their homes.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive

them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee, faith in our

sons, faith in each other. Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.

That morning in Philadelphia, Mayor Bernard Samuel and a large number of dignitaries and citizens gathered around the Liberty Bell, a treasured relic of the early days of American independence. It had been rung on July 8, 1776, to call citizens together to announce the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Weighing more than two thousand pounds, the bell was now struck with a wooden mallet by Mayor Samuel, its tone spread throughout the nation by radio networks.

That early-morning ceremony triggered the ringing of thousands of church bells in large cities and tiny ones. It was not a celebration, but a grim call for unity and a sense of national purpose.

In Marietta, Georgia, police cars with sirens screeching raced about in the predawn darkness of D Day frightening the sleeping citizens who thought the town was being bombed.

In Clayton, Alabama, the town’s lone fire truck, jammed with volunteers, charged up and down the streets clanging the vehicle’s bell.

In Columbus, Ohio, Mayor James Rhodes arranged to have air-raid sirens and factory whistles sounded as a call to prayer at 7:30 that night. When the cacophony of sound erupted, cars, buses, trucks, and streetcars halted where they were and people got out to join pedestrians in prayer.

In St. Louis, the historic Old Cathedral near the Mississippi River was packed with worshippers; many had loved ones in Europe.

In Chattanooga, long lines of donors waited patiently at the Red Cross blood center.

In Mount Vernon, Illinois, twenty members of a Cub Scout pack, each carrying an American flag, marched along the downtown streets.

Only sixteen people filed for divorce in Reno, Nevada, a remarkable reduction in the customary one hundred and seventy-five on a normal weekday.

New York City had been one of the nation’s most thriving locales since the war had begun. Known as the city that never sleeps, it had lived up to that reputation handsomely. Bars, theaters, and hotels were jammed day and night. Now, on this historic day, America’s largest city virtually shut down.

Macy’s department store closed at noon. Yet throngs gathered around the building because a loudspeaker had been set up to bring war news over the radio. Gimbel’s, Macy’s longtime competitor, locked its doors and sent its employees home.

Fashionable Lord & Taylor never opened its doors. The head of the firm, Walter Hoving, had sent the three thousand employees home to pray. “The invasion has begun,” Hoving announced. “Our only thought can be of the men who are fighting in it.”

Times Square in Manhattan had been a haven for servicemen on leave, many in search of female companions, so the square was usually crowded with prostitutes eager to do their patriotic bit for the war effort. Now, on D Day, these “working ladies” provided their talents to men in the armed forces at a greatly reduced fee.

Even many taxi drivers in Manhattan were stricken with pangs of patriotism on this occasion and refused to cheat on the fares for passengers in uniform.

Elsewhere, sixty-four-year-old Robert McCormick, owner and publisher of the influential Chicago Tribune, spent most of the day hunkered down in his posh office suite high in Tribune Towers, a downtown landmark. Never accused of being overly compassionate, the crusty McCormick was worried. His ace war correspondent, John “Beaver” Thompson, was scheduled to go ashore with the first assault waves.

During the Allied invasion of North Africa a year and a half earlier, Thompson had jumped with the U.S. 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion, becoming the first American correspondent to make a combat leap. As time neared for D Day in Normandy, he planned to bail out with paratroopers again.

However, Thompson received an urgent telegram from his boss, McCormick: “No more jumping out of airplanes into battle. It’s too dangerous. We don’t want to lose you.”

So instead of parachuting into Normandy, the thirty-four-year-old Thompson went in with the first amphibious assault waves at Omaha. It was not until three and a half hours after landing that large numbers of GIs had clawed, scratched, and fought their way to the top of the bluffs. A colossal debacle, one that could have jeopardized the entire invasion, had been averted by a hair’s breadth.

Calamity at Port Chicago
161

The triumph at blood-soaked Omaha had a gargantuan price tag—some 2,450 Americans dead, wounded, or drowned. When Beaver Thompson was able to send his story to the Tribune, he included a note to Bertie McCormick: “Dear Boss, you were right—Omaha Beach was very safe!”
⁶

A Virginia Town Is Jolted

I
N THE SMALL TOWN
of Bedford, Virginia, on D Day morning, an especially somber mood hovered. Hundreds of families had sons, brothers, uncles, nephews, husbands, or boyfriends in the 29th Infantry Division, a National Guard outfit that had been called to federal duty after Pearl Harbor.

The 29th had sailed for Great Britain in September 1942 aboard the converted British luxury liner Queen Mary. So there was no doubt in the minds of Bedford citizens on this historic day: many of their loved ones were involved in the savage battles for French beaches.