FORTY MILES TO THE south, Hap Arnold Field was a blaze of light. The airmen tumbled out of their quarters and dayrooms at the screech of the alert siren, and behind them their wives and children stretched and yawned and worried. An alert! The older kids fussed and complained and their mothers shut them up. No, there wasn’t any alert scheduled for tonight; no, they didn’t know where Daddy was going; no, the kids couldn’t get up yet—it was the middle of the night.
And as soon as they had the kids back in bed, most of the mothers struggled into their own airwac uniforms and headed for the briefing area to hear.
They caught the words from a distance—not quite correctly. “Riot!” gasped an aircraftswoman first-class, mother of three. “The wipes! I told Charlie they’d get out of hand and—Alys,
