Another Post on Overlooked women.

 RHYS BOWEN:  Today's post was all ready to go. It was on the places I was going to visit on my upcoming trip to England and France this week. Unfortunately that's not going to happen. John had a medical emergency a couple of days ago and has come home from hospital too weak to travel. Obviously I am not going to leave him, so the trip is no more.  

So this is a last minute post. 

Laura’s post yesterday highlights not only the bravery of young women during both World Wars but the cavalier and unfair way they were treated. The nightingales were provided with no parachute because they were expected to stay with the wounded if the plane crashed? Oh, right.

I just read an article about the Hello Girls. These were American girls who signed on to be telephone operators the first world war and were posted to the trenches with the soldiers. There they not only relayed messages from the front to the generals but sometimes had to translate those messages from French to English or visa versa. And after the war they were not considered proper army and thus given no veterans benefits, no GI bill.

The same was true of the women in WW2 who ferried planes from the factories where they were made to the various air force bases. Other young women flew crashed or damaged planes to bases to be repaired. They were not considered part of the military. If the plane crashed the girl’s family had to pay to have her body shipped home. After years of fighting for their rights some eventually did get a pension and military honors but most by then had died.

The way women were overlooked and ignored was one of the reasons I have written about several of them in my novels. (The Paris Assignment was the most recent of these).   I don't think men can understand that we women have to fight to be recognized on every rung of that ladder.  My daughter's best friend in college became an OB/GYN. When she came into the operating room the anesthetist looked up and said "Oh good, you're here."  Cheryl smiled until he said, "Now you can run and get me some coffee."  He had taken for granted that she was lesser, there to serve.

When I was in the BBC drama department I once had some producer make the same mistake. I told him quite firmly that my job was to run a studio and not get coffee and if he wanted his microphones to work and his actors to be heard he'd bloody well better be nice to me. (I've never been the shrinking violet type).

What examples do you have of having to fight for rights or being overlooked? (Perhaps with a woman president things might start to change???)

In Praise of Overlooked Women. A post by Laura Jensen Walker

RHYS BOWEN: It is my pleasure to host Laura Jensen Walker today. A lady after my own heart, writing about overlooked women in WWII. I am also determined to highlight bravery that has long been ignored and in this book Laura features some of the very bravest of all. What's more, Laura is the real deal, an airforce veteran herself. Tell us about them, Laura:

LAURA JENSEN WALKER:

Thank you, Rhys, and the rest of the Reds for having me here today—my first time on Jungle Reds! (And thanks to dear Catriona McPherson, for introducing me to Rhys.)

I’m thrilled to bits to share that my historical debut, DEATH OF A FLYING NIGHTINGALE, releases on 9/10. It is my privilege to shine a spotlight on a group of WWII women heroes that history has overlooked—the Flying Nightingales.

As an Air Force veteran formerly stationed at an RAF base in Oxfordshire a lifetime ago I was captivated to discover these courageous, forgotten women on an episode of Penelope Keith’s Hidden Villages. On this episode Britcom star Penelope interviewed a woman named Lilian West in the village of Down Ampney in the Cotswolds. Lilian, then in her late-nineties, thought she might be the last living member of the Flying Nightingales—air ambulance nursing orderlies—from World War II.

I was gobsmacked as I listened to Lilian relate that at the age of seventeen she joined the RAF as a volunteer nursing orderly in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. Lilian shared how she and the other air ambulance “nurses” were given only six weeks of training before being sent to combat zones—including the blood-soaked beaches of Normandy one week after D-Day—to bring home the wounded and care for them on the flights home.

Since the planes the nursing orderlies—dubbed “Flying Nightingales” by the press—flew on carried supplies and munitions, they couldn’t display the Red Cross emblem. Which made the Nightingales open to German gunfire. On the flights back to England, the nursing orderlies weren’t allowed to wear parachutes. They were expected to remain on board with the wounded if the plane crashed—twenty-four wounded men to a plane with a single nursing orderly on board to care for them all. The Nightingales changed bandages, emptied colostomy bags, cleared tracheotomy tubes, wedged sick bags beneath the chins of the wounded, and provided tea and comfort to soldiers with horrific injuries.

As a squeamish person who can barely stand the sight of blood, I couldn’t have borne the sights and smells those brave women endured: men with missing limbs, eyes, ears, noses… Horrible burns treated with butter. Gaping holes in chests and stomachs. Unimaginable. And yet, these courageous, British women kept calm and carried on, and never lost a man in their care.

Lilian West turned out not to be the last remaining Flying Nightingale—sadly, she died a year before I began writing this book—but her introducing me onscreen to this brave band of sisters made me say, “This needs to be a book!”

It was the honor of my life to meet via email Edith “Titch” (Lord) Joyce, in Australia, the last remaining Nightingale, it appears. Edith (106 years old) and I corresponded regularly through her daughter Colleen with Edith graciously answering my myriad questions about life as a Flying Nightingale. She kindly gave me permission to include her anecdotes in my book and I sent her a small token of thanks. Colleen filmed her mum thanking me across the miles. When I saw this unassuming, lovely lady on my phone say, “I’m very happy about all that you’re doing and hope the book is a success…” I burst into tears.

It was my fervent desire for Edith to hold a copy of DEATH OF A FLYING NIGHTINGALE in her hands. Sadly, she died a few months after her 107th birthday long before the book’s release, which broke my heart. Luckily, I had emailed her daughter an early version and Colleen read it aloud to her mum. I am forever grateful that Edith got to hear the story of her and her fellow Flying Nightingales in this novel before she left this earth. I wept when Colleen said her mum “loved” hearing the different anecdotes she’d shared with me in the book.

Fly high, Edith. 

Three very different young women serve as air ambulance “nurses,” bravely flying into WWII combat zones and risking their lives to evacuate the wounded: Irish Maeve joined the RAF after her fiancé was killed, streetwise Etta fled London’s slums in search of a better life, and farm girl Bety enlisted to prevent the wounded from dying like her brother.

Newspapers have given these women a romantic nickname, “The Flying Nightingales.” Not that there’s anything romantic about what they do. The horrific injuries they encounter daily take their toll, so when one of the Nightingales is found dead, they wonder: Was it an accident? Suicide? Or something else? After another nursing orderly dies mysteriously, it becomes clear that someone is killing the Nightingales.

Inspired by true events, this novel is a tribute to a group of overlooked WWII heroes who kept calm and carried on while the fighting raged about them. These courageous women proudly did their bit for King and country and found solace and camaraderie in the lasting friendships forged in war.

Bio:

Former journalist Laura Jensen Walker is the award-winning author of several books including the bestselling, Agatha-nominated Murder Most Sweet. Captivated by the tales of an overlooked group of WWII RAF women—the Flying Nightingales—Air Force veteran Laura knew she had to tell their story. You can find Laura at https://laurajensenwalker.com.

Five Things I can do that Others Can't!

 RHYS BOWEN:  I was at my health club the other day. When I came out of the shower there was another woman in the locker room, getting dressed. I took my clothes out of my locker, dressed, brushed hair and was about to go when she said, “How can you be ready so quickly? You just got here.”

        I replied, “When you’ve had four children you learn to be quick at showering and dressing. I perfected the one minute shower. Turn on. Soap all over. Rince off. Out and dry before anyone could draw on the walls with marker pens, feed their sister dog food, find the scissors or any of the other awful things clever young children can do.

So then I thought: this is a skill most people don’t have.

Then I tried to list other skills that I possess that most people don’t. I don't mean I can play the piano in Carnegie Hall or win the Olympic skiing type of skills. Nope. Don't have those.

Here is my list of five:

1: Shower in one minute.

 2: Can say the longest place name in the world in Welsh (I speak some Welsh)

 3: Play the Celtic harp (not brilliantly but enough to satisfy myself)

 4: I can put boiled eggs in cold water, set on the stove, go away and do something else and then think “those eggs must be ready” and they are always perfect: soft yolk and firm white.  When I’ve tried timing them it’s never as good.

 5: Write 2 and half books in a year. (okay, I know Jenn can trump me on this. But one of my is over 400 pages).

So Reds: what are your five things?

LUCY BURDETTE: I can think of three to four, and maybe there are more…

1. Spread my toes and then intertwine them like fingers.

2. Eat a bushel of peaches with minimal help in 10 days

3. Make a fried okra dish that would win over any northerner.

4. Buy more books when I’ve already got thigh high stacks–oh wait, that’s most of us!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: (Lucy? How did you learn you could do that toe thing?) 

      As for me.  Hmmm. Let’s see.

1. I can sing a song using only the first letters of the words. OSCYS? Btdel… (There is not much call for this.)

2. I always know what time it is. Always. No matter if clocks or not, I can tell,  This is probably from TV.

3. As a corollary, if you say: talk for one minute. Or ten. Or twenty. Or  seven. I can do that.

4. If there is a cord to trip over, I will trip over it.

5. I can put things in alphabetical order really quickly. There is not much call for this, either. 

JENN McKINLAY:

I am feeling very deficient presently. I don’t think I can do anything unusual but here goes…

1. I can always accurately guess the plot of every movie/show I watch. Always. My people do not allow me to speak anymore during viewings.

2. Like Hank, I always know what time it is. Probably from working on a reference desk for years where we changed out every hour on the hour. 

3. I’m an extraordinary packer. I can live out of a carry on for a month. I can pack an entire house (okay, slight exaggeration) into the bed of a large pick up truck. It’s like Tetras for me. I’m very very good at it.

4. I can always devise a work around. If something is broken or wonky, I can always figure out a way to MacGyver it until it can be properly repaired. Seriously. This is probably a skill left over from being a poor college student. 

HALLIE EPHRON:

I definitely cannot come up with five. And most of my feats are easily replicated.

1. I can recite from memory the children’s book MADELEINE (“In an old house in Paris, all covered with vines…”) and MR. BROWN CAN MOO (“Mr. Brown is a wonder… Mr. Brown makes THUNDER!”)

2. I’m another one who can guess the endings (and twists) of most mysteries on TV, and I have a hard time shutting up about it.

3. I can get 95% of the meat out of a cooked lobster with my bare hands.

4. I make a great version of Julia Childs’s bouillabaisse and also her onion soup.

RHYS:  What a talented bunch we are. Which talent should we use to audition for America's Got Talent. I vote not me taking a one minute shower. Not a pretty sight!

Who has the most unusual talent (a prize for the best!)