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9 Beyond the War Life Goes On Nancy Batson and Paul Crews may have known they were destined for each other when the war separated them for four years, but Nancy had no romantic strings attached to her while she was in the WAFS. As one who enjoyed the company of men, she dated throughout her service career and enjoyed the mixed-company social life that went with being stationed at a large Army Air Forces base and moving around the country as a ferry pilot. However, there was someone special for awhile. She met Charlie Miller in 1944 when he was stationed with the Air Transport Command in Wilmington. “I liked Charlie a lot—he used to call me ‘Baby Doll’—but he wanted to get serious. I was serious about flying airplanes and Charlie was getting serious about me. And he was a Catholic.” The Catholicism bothered Nancy. That the Protestant South was ingrained in her was not surprising—certainly not in 1944. When Nancy was growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, the South was still cut off from the rest of the country, insular, immersed in its own way of life and fiercely proud of it. For a young woman raised in that atmosphere—even with a progressive mother and indulgent father—to consider marrying a Catholic was a leap she had trouble reconciling. But Charlie was oh so attractive—and he was quite persistent. He was in love and he was there, whereas Paul was in England from 1943 through 1945. Nancy and Charlie saw a lot of each other in the summer and fall of 1944. “One time I flew a P-51 to Florida and he was ferrying a B-26. We flew along together, then I dropped off my P-51 and flew on with him to Miami where the B-26 was going. We RONed—separate hotel rooms. Everything was on the up-and-up. No hanky-panky. Charlie was very moral. [Nancy neglects to say it, but so was she.] The next day we went to the horse races and then we took an airliner back to base. “He came over to Aberdeen, Maryland, one time to pick me up after I de- 76 • Chapter 9 livered a beat-up P-38 to the target-practice area there. Charlie knew the guys in the Aberdeen control tower and told them to call him in Wilmington when I landed, that he’d come over and get me. He also came to see me when I was stationed in Evansville. He knew how unhappy I was there. “But I wasn’t ready to let any man get between me and those airplanes. “When my mother and sister were at Columbia [University] that summer of 1944, since I was stationed out on Long Island, I used to come up to the city on weekends on the train to stay with them,” Nancy remembered. “We went to plays, and to the opera. Charlie had a friend in New York. He knew I was there visiting Muddy and Amy so he came up to New York, too. He got his friend to take Amy out and the four of us double dated and went to some of the New York nightclubs. Then the next day we were going up the Hudson to visit some kinfolks and we took Charlie with us. We also went down to Wall Street and he showed me where his New York Life headquarters were.” Charlie had been an insurance salesman in his civilian days. “Our mother really liked Charlie,” Amy recalled. “The fact that he was Catholic didn’t bother her. But it bothered Nancy. Muddy thought Nancy was crazy.”1 “I think the family was very happy with Charlie,” said Nancy’s niece Liz Simpson. “From what I’ve heard, everybody loved Charlie. He was gregarious and fun and seemed the perfect match for Aunt Nancy. There was something charismatic in their two strong personalities. Of all the men she dated during her wartime service, his name was the only one ever mentioned.”2 When Nancy and Charlie both were in Wilmington, they occasionally would sneak off in the afternoons and go to the horse races in nearby Dover. But their relationship was a companionable one, though Charlie obviously considered Nancy wife material and would have liked for it to have gone further. “Charlie had looked around. He told me he always went with nice girls. He was pretty...

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