In November, as Marines won hard-fought victories in the Solomon Islands in the Pacific, Barbara graduated from her indoctrination flights and courses and got her first WAFS assignment. It was to pick up L4 Grasshoppers, small observation and scout planes manufactured by Piper Aircraft in Lockhaven, Pennsylvania, and ferry them to air bases in western Pennsylvania.
But under no circumstances was she or any other woman ferrying pilot to hitch a ride in a bomber or any other military plane back to home base after making a delivery. WAFS were ordered to take either commercial flights or return by train or bus. It was to keep them scandal-free of any charges they fraternized with male pilots. Barbara didn't mind the inconvenience or the crowded ground transportation, but had to admit to herself there were a few "fly boy" hunks she wouldn't have minded fraternizing with.
One army rule that Barbara and her fellow WAFS laughed at was that all women pilots be grounded for the week they were menstruating. They were instructed that it was dangerous for them to fly within three days prior to and three days after the menstrual period. But when the women pilots ignored the rule, it was soon dropped.
Also soon ignored were the WASPS themselves. After a first flush of newspaper publicity about their having formed, government censorship about their duties ferrying planes across the country prohibited them from being reported on. They soon drifted into becoming an almost anonymous part of home front activities such as and the legions of women who wrapped bandages or worked in defense factories.
To Barbara, the winter seemed a long time passing, because she had not even been allowed a leave home at Christmas to see her godson. Only married women or those with children were granted short holiday leaves.
Meanwhile, the battle over Tim Riordan's custody continued, mainly in pretrial hearings Barbara was unable to attend. She didn't think her absence from them helped her argument that she could take care of Tim, a strategy his grandmother kept hammering away at to discredit Barbara as the boy's potential mother.
Barbara had yet to get her first letter from Stephen, although he had promised to write. Contact with her godson was either by telephone or letter. In a reply to one of her letters, Tim wrote, "You've got Captain Collier all wrong. I said he liked classical music and you said, 'probably war music like The Sabre Dance or The 1812 Overture with cannons shooting off.' He's not like that at all. When he was at Glenview, he liked 'romantic music' and soft, pretty music for the violin and piano.