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The day I turned twenty one was the turning point in my life. It was the day that I was finally old enough to apply to join the Women Air Force Service Pilots also known as WASP. We were right in the middle of World War II at the time. If I got the job I applied for, my primary objective would be to relieve male pilots from combat. Over one thousand women joined and became military pilots just like me out of the twenty five thousand that originally applied. We were stationed at over one hundred and twenty Army airbases across the United States carrying those men that were fighting this war for us overseas. I and all those women felt just as important as those men fighting overseas because without us there would have been no one to test the planes and no one to fly the planes while they trained. We may have felt that way but the rest of the military did not see it that way. The men received all the military honors when they passed away while flying with us women while we got absolutely nothing. We were seen as worthless in their eyes. Those unfortunate thirty eight women who lost their lives doing something great for our county never received any benefits and more importantly, no gold star in the window to honor them. My main job was to fly the B-26 bombers for the navigators and bombardiers for their training missions. I remember how all the men were scared to fly the bombers and it took the women to prove to them that they were safe for them to fly. To me I had the greatest job in the world no one until this point was doing what me and all these other women were doing. We all felt that what
we were doing was setting a new bar for the whole entire world to show how much more women really could accomplish. Even though I loved what I was doing it was really hard to leave my mom, dad and my two brothers. My mom at the time was working in the factories making jeeps on the assembly line. Her job was to paint the jeeps army green. My dad was also part of the front, he was a mailman and he was the one who brought all the families the letters from their loved ones overseas. My two brothers who were ages 8 and 13 loved to play war and also help find all the scrap metal they could that would help make all the planes, tanks, and boats that were being used during the war. The hardest time for me during my 2 years in WASP was when I received notice that my fiancé had been shot and killed during the storming of Normandy beach on D-day. That happening made me want to do as much as I possibly could to help the war effort and I wasn’t the only on because no matter who you were during those times there was a loved one that had been lost and all of America was somber yet driven. I hope America will remember what I Peggy Hering and the rest of WASP’S had helped do for our great country.
This is the official mascot for the WASP’s named Fifinella. She was designed by Walt Disney. We have arrived. It’s official!! Here we are!
Training Days Learning about airplane engines. Preparing for flights.
Graduation Day!! The official WASP Army Air Forces Diploma
