Read The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945 for Free Online Page B

the name and the fact that the Daughters of the American Revolution had refused to allow her to sing in Constitution Hall in Washington because she was black. “Of course the professors at Dakota Wesleyan made sure we knew about that and properly condemned it and what a great woman she was.” So McGovern said yes, sure.  Anderson had asked that a representative of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard join her on the stage. She had them stand in a semicircle behind her for the entire two-hour concert. She chatted with them between songs, which was a big thrill, but the biggest was hearing her sing.  “I don’t think I’d ever heard such music and never again would hear anything so beautiful,” McGovern recalled nearly a half century later. When she concluded with “America the Beautiful,” the service- men and everyone in the audience wept. Some were visibly sobbing. To everyone present, that was what America was all about. “That was one of the great moments of my life.”2 The privates continued to march and otherwise learn the rudiments of soldiering.  After thirty days, they shipped out, their destination colleges and universities all over the country - there were 150 schools involved - for five months of testing and ground school training. McGovern went to Southern Illinois Normal University in Carbondale. There it was dorms rather than barracks. McGovern was one of 125 living in Anthony Hall, all from the Great Plains and upper Midwest.  The same number lived in other dorms. Many of those men were college students from New York City and they called the rural boys “shit kickers.”3 The Army Air Forces had by then become what was called the largest single educational organization in existence. It had a total strength of just over 20,000 when the war began in Europe, representing a bit over 10 percent of the Army. By 1944 it was up to 2.4 million personnel in its ranks, almost one third of the total Army strength.4 Nearly all of them had to be taught highly specialized skills, beginning with pilots. This put an enormous strain on the AAF. To respond, it had an apparently unlimited budget. “Everything is expendable in war,” Eisenhower once said. He added, with a grin, “even generals’ lives.” And went on, “so long as you win.”5 The only limitation on the AAF’s purchases was the capacity of American industry to manufacture airplanes of all types, plus supplies and equipment. In manpower, there were no apparent limits.  The AAF built barracks and airfields. It rented college dorms and hotels. It hired civilian instructors. It spent more than $3 billion 1940s dollars in the course of the war. All this and more was done by a prewar cadre that had never seen more than a few aircraft flying in formation at one time. The AAF put the potential air cadets through a multitude of physical and mental tests before embarking on about as rigorous a training program as could be. During the first months of the war it wanted to graduate 30,000 pilots a year, along with even more thousands of bombardiers, navigators, engineers. By October 1942, the goal was up to 100,000 pilots a year, and proportionally more crew. The AAF determined that it needed one million air cadets to reach its goal.  For the men being tested, the most feared word was “washout.” The process began immediately - slightly more than 50 percent of them failed either the initial physical or written tests and were packed off to the infantry. The AAF expected that result, and further that more than 40 percent of those left would fail to complete the courses of Primary, Basic, and Advanced schools.  To reach the required numbers, the AAF’s policies evolved. On December 10, 1941, Chief of Staff Arnold dropped the requirement that all air cadets had to have completed two years of college - he substituted a qualifying test to replace the requirement. In mid-January 1942, he dropped the ban on married applicants for the air