But a war was on. She and her fellow WAFS apprentices were eager to play a part in winning it, together with the also newly-formed WAACS, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, and the Navy's WAVES, the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. The major difference between them, besides their duties on land or sea, was that WAACS and WAVES would be doing noncombat duties both in the United States and overseas, while the WAFS would not be going to any foreign battle zone.
Barbara read about the war daily in the Army's newspaper, Stars and Stripes. The fighting in North Africa against the Germans and Italians was full-scale during the summer of 1942. GIs soon would be going there, while American soldiers and Marines, badly outnumbered on the islands of Guadalcanal and Bataan in the Pacific, were forced to surrender to the Japanese.
Most in the services and on the home front were heartened by Col. Jimmy Doolittle's bombing raid on Tokyo the previous April, and then the US naval victory in the battle of Midway in June.
In Europe, the Royal Air Force was flying 1,000-plane bombing raids over German fortifications in France. In August, the American Army Air Force began sending Boeing B-17 "Flying Fortress" bombers to strike at Nazi railroad yards in Rouen. Joint US-British efforts were expected to follow soon, to gain allied air supremacy over Europe.
Then, too, hopes raised when a relatively obscure army officer, Major General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had served under General Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific, was named commander of American forces in the European Theater of operations.
When Barbara read that "Ike" had been assigned to explore second-front possibilities in England, she vowed, Some day, somehow, some way, I'll be back in London and flying a bomber! Hopefully, into a war zone in Europe. Meanwhile, Barbara not only had to learn to fly all over again the WAFS way. Under the strict supervision of a drill officer, she and her fellow recruits formed in two lines of twelve outside their ground school classroom each day and practiced marching. But by the time Barbara took her turn as a drill sergeant, she called "By the left flank, ho!" as loud and energetically as she had heard a male platoon leader yell at his men.
On Saturday mornings, the WAFS took part in the weekly Saturday morning parade at New Castle with other units of the US Air Transport Command stationed there. Barbara and her fellow WAFS turned out smartly in new gray-green uniform, Army cap, and spit-polished shoes, having dallied only briefly in barracks beforehand to powder their nose and put on lipstick.