Free The Girl in the Blue Beret by Bobbie Ann Mason

she had a habit of slinging her hip in a shooting stance. Her name was Annie, but the flyboys called her Nurse Begley because of her name tag bouncing on her chest. The formal name made it easier to mock their own lust for her and her great bazooms. Her name tag bobbed squarely atop the left one. Nurse Begley was Rita Hayworth in chestnut hair.
    Marshall had had his chance to impress Nurse Begley the night before. She had agreed to meet him outside Lilford Hall, where the nurses bunked. Lord Lilford hunkered in one wing of his place.
    “He’s probably down to a butler and three footmen,” Marshall joked.
    “We heard he sits in his basement with earmuffs on,” Nurse Begley said.
    “What? He doesn’t like airplanes outside his window?”
    “The noise of us nurses is probably worse,” she said with a laugh and a Hayworth toss of her hair. Her chest jiggled.
    “We take off right over his house.” Marshall grinned. “From the air, it looks like a toy palace in a train set.”
    “That’s nice, to think that his house might not be so grand,” she said. “Depending on how you look at it.”
    Nurse Begley was in her off-duty skirt and jacket, and her trench coat was unbuttoned. He backed her up against the ivy-covered wall of Lilford Hall, their bodies curving close.
    “What do you like to do at home?”
    “Do we have to talk about home?” she said, fondling his lapel.
    He kissed her deeply, jamming her into the rustling winter ivy.
    “Say—you want to give me a good-luck charm to take with me? Ten to one says I go out in the morning.”
    “What?” She was rummaging in her shoulder bag. “I need my hair clip, my lighter … Hmm.”
    “Knickers,” he said.
    Her giggles aroused him.
    “In the winter the English girls wear something they call woollies to keep them warm,” she said. “An English girl gave me some.”
    “That would be swell.”
    Thrilled, he watched as she wriggled out of the woollies, sliding them down her bare legs, crumpling them into a wad, and with a slight caress of his frontage, she tucked them into his pocket.
    “Good night, flyboy,” she said. “Good luck tomorrow.”
    He slept with his face in her woollies, and indeed they stayed roasty-toasty. In the morning, he stashed them in his leather flight jacket.

    “DROP YOUR COCKS and grab your socks, boys,” said the runner at 0400 hours. “Breakfast at 0500 hours.”
    The mess sergeant barked, “Combat eggs for breakfast. Load up, fellas. And pick up your sandwiches before you go. Nobody wants to be hungry in Germany.”
    “I’m not going to be in Germany, pal,” said Hootie. “I’m going to be over Germany.”
    Next, the Nissen hut with the big maps on the wall. The Nissen was a makeshift structure of corrugated metal where all that day’s crews crowded to learn the “Target for Today.” The room steamed with the body heat of flyers duded up in their leather jackets and bulky flight garb as the top brass unveiled the flight plan and the weather guy added his two cents’ worth. The big chalkboards listed each plane.
    When the target was revealed, there was a shocked silence, then nervous jokes and groans. As usual.
    “Send me to the rest home right now,” Grainger said to Marshall.
    The flyers watched the general with his pointer, the commanders, the couriers rushing in with news.
    The flyers rode to the equipment room to gather gear—chute pack, Mae West, flak suit—a bag of stuff big enough for a two-week vacation. Then the jeeps and trucks carried the flight crews out to the hardstands, where the ground crews were loading the bombs and making last-minute inspections.
    Next, Cupid’s leap—the contortionist act required to board a B-17. Marshall swung himself upward into the hatch opening of the Dirty Lily . Grab the rim with both hands, kick your legs up and in, then slide forward on your ass. One of the ground guys called, “See you at 1500 hours, Lieutenant.”
    The takeoff from Molesworth in the dawn was a