But there was something out there. She could feel it. She closed her eyes and let her brain sink into the empty sound, blocking out any other thoughts.
Dot lived for moments like this.
The moment the beep sounded, she was on it, the hair on her forearms standing to attention.
There.Deep in the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, north of Malta, lurked a lone U-boat. As far as Dot could reckon, the Allied ships drawing near the coast of Sicily hadn’t spotted it. The closest vessel to the sub, from her figuring, was the ship carrying the men of the 1st Canadian Infantry Division, among others. She touched the dial again, locating the boat exactly, then she hesitated. Protocol dictated she should get this information to Gerald as quickly as possible; however, she knew he was in meetings. This could not wait. She had not been given permission to transmit a message like the one playing in her head, but this could not wait.
Men could die. She could prevent those deaths. What choice did she have? Dot placed the tip of her middle finger on the curved surface of the tapper and began to transmit.
BE AWARE UBOAT 409 Position 36°12’20.4”N 13°40’54.7”E
Then she held her breath and waited. No sound came from the ship or from anywhere else.
Come on, come on, come on… she thought. Had they not heard? Should she type it again? She risked being overheard by the U-boat, but if the ship had not—
Dit-dah-dit dit dah-dit-dah-dit dit dit-dit dit-dit-dit-dah dit dah-dit-dit
.-. . -.-. . .. ...- . -..
Received
She exhaled and threw her arms into the air, silently triumphant. Here she sat, alone in a little room, thousands of miles from the war, and she’d just had a say in the lives of all those men. Because of her message, the Allied ships would either alter their course or chase down the submarine. Dot had forgotten the sense of elation that she felt now.
“Did you hear that, Dad?” she whispered, heart singing. “I did it.”
Her thoughts went to Gus, and she tried to imagine his reaction to what she’d just done, breaking the rules like that. He would be so proud. Her jubilation faded a little, wondering where he was. Was he all right? Was he safe? Would he come back to her? And what then?
She forced herself to clear her mind and focus. The chatter in her headphones had picked up, and it was thrilling to listen to the updates now coming through the wires. When the landing happened, the Italians on shore witnessed tens of thousands of Allied troops roaring toward them, and from what Dot was hearing, most enemy troops had panicked and withdrawn. The rest put up a token fight, but in the end the Italians and a spattering of Germans had been forced to flee. Victory belonged to the Allies. They still had a difficult operation ahead of them, but as of today, the good guys were one step closer to ending the war. And Dot was part of it all.
forty-fourDASH— Southampton, England —
Dash sat in the lecture room, twiddling with her pencil and staring out the window at the airfield while she waited for the instructor to join the class. Before she’d arrived in England, she had been confident she could bear the wait time before she was allowed to fly, but on her first day of training at Hamble, she’d watched all the experienced ATA women climb into planes, and her chest had ached with envy. Thankfully, she had a lot of distractions. Over the next ninety days, Dash and the others would squeeze in three years of learning. It was a lot, but Dash was determined.
Miss Tallis, their instructor, finally hustled into the classroom, heels clacking on the wood floor. She was tall and slim, with thick glasses that made her eyes look like an owl’s. Miss Tallis was not interested in wasting time.
“Workbooks open, ladies. Eyes up here. Today’s lesson will focus on navigation, map reading, course plotting, and meteorology. Quickly, someone tell me why you need to learn about these things.”
“So you know where you’re going,” one girl volunteered.
“Precisely. It is easy to get lost, especially because ATA pilots fly with neither maps nor radios. Now, pay close attention.”
When it came to classes on mechanics, Dash felt confident. She had learned from Uncle Bob and then Elsie MacGill. But these classes were more in depth in every category: hydraulics, automatic boost, and carburetors, which she’d thought she already knew. The new details were fascinating, and she soaked everything up.
Dash and her classmates had a number of instructors. One was pilot Robert Lister, a jolly Australian fellow, with thinning white curls, rosy cheeks, and a bit of a limp. At his first class with them, he had pointed out his eye patch before anyone could ask, then claimed to have misplaced an eye while flying over France fifteen years before.
“I hope you ladies can manage to keep both of yours,” he said, closing the subject. “Now, today, you will think back to every lesson you’ve been taught up to now, which I’m certain you’ve all memorized…” He peered around, eyebrow raised when some of the girls looked guilty. “If you have not, you will do that later tonight. For those who have, let’s teach the others what I’m talking about when I begin a preflight check.”
He led them out to a hangar to watch him demonstrate a preflight checkup on a Tiger Moth. Dash smiled, seeing the plane there. The Tiger Moth was almost identical to Uncle Bob’s Jenny. She watched and listened, feeling pleased with herself. Nothing new here. She’d performed this test many times before.
“Right,” Lister said. “Got it? Good. Let’s do it again.” He repeated the lesson. Then he did it again and again, making it clear that the tests were to be done every single time any of them got into an airplane. It was the same lesson Uncle Bob had taught her so long before.
“How are we going to remember all those things?” one of the girls asked, looking lost.
“I’m glad you asked. All you need to do is remember this: Hot Tempered MP Fancies Girls.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“HTTMPFGG.” He held up his hands then dropped one finger at a time. “Stands for Hydraulics, Trim, Tension, Mixture, Pitch, Petrol,Flaps, Gills, and Gauges. Of course there’s more, but I find the Hot Tempered MP helps.”
