Visiting London in 1939, Canadian-born Joan Hotz, enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary of the Royal Air Force. She was 17, she says, "a goofy sort of teenager, too tall, not madly bright. I hated schoolwork, and was selfish."

Assigned as a code and cipher clerk at a Spitfire station outside of London, she grew up quickly.

"The oldest pilot there was 23," she says. "They were very sweet. They would go shooting off in their Spits in the morning and be back at lunchtime. But there would only be half of them. When you"re 17, that's hard to figure out."

Especially when one of them is your husband. Hotz married a bomber pilot who one day didn't return. "They just say, 'We"re terribly sorry, but he is lost." So there you are far from home. Nobody is going to hold your hand. You"re expected to get off your butt and do something."

Transferred to Washington, she married an American pilot. They settled in Western Maryland where Hotz never forgot the war's lesson: "You had to step up," she says. "You were expected to, and so you did."