"And he's not a 'big jock.' He didn't go to football or hockey games and boxing matches all the time. He said he liked to just stay home with 'a good book.' And he played tennis a lot, or went running or rode his horse. I'd call him a 'small jock.'"
Those were good things to know about Stephen, but Barbara's initial assessment of him was hard for her to rethink. She believed he was still too macho, because he was a boxing coach and their concepts of how to make a man out of her godson were direct opposites.
Barbara ushered in 1943 during a rainstorm while flying another PT-19 to an airfield in New Jersey. But she didn't feel alone on the flight. She felt, as she often did, that two friends were with her, especially when she flew at sunrise.
While movies had been an escape for Barbara during other times, she rarely had time for them as a member of the WAFS. One night in February, however, she gave up some much-needed sleep to see Casablanca at a post theater. The Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman war romance was released on the heels of the Casablanca meeting in Morocco of President Roosevelt and Britain's Prime Minister Churchill. At the conference, they agreed that the war in Europe would not end until they achieved "the unconditional surrender" of Germany.
Barbara loved the movie but, near exhaustion from flying, fell asleep not knowing if Rick or Ilsa's husband would fly off with her to freedom. She only learned it wasn't Rick when the movie ended and the lights went on in the theater. Ever afterward, she wondered why Rick always looked to her like Stephen Collier, although he and Humphrey Bogart bore no resemblance whatsoever.
In February, the tide began to turn against the Axis.
GIs defeated the Japanese and retook Guadalcanal. Two weeks later, others newly arrived in North Africa under Major General George S. Patton began giving headaches to Germany's General Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps, stopping them in Tunisia.
It caused Allies all over the world to sing "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning," from the new Broadway musical Oklahoma! But the good war news did not come without a price. Over 60,000 American servicemen alone had lost their lives in battles thus far. It was a small sacrifice, then, for Barbara and millions of others on the home front who had to "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without," and that included wearing undies with holes in them.
By March, Barbara and her fellow WAFS were proud of their ferrying record. They had flown almost every day but without a single accident, even a minor one.