by Sgt Ross Mason
(Republished from the April 1944 issue of Wings – Log of the RCAF)
MONTREAL — Pity poor S Stein of Hamilton who graduated recently from 1 Wireless School, Montreal, as a radio telephone operator. Airman Stein uses the right kind of soap in his shower; brushes his teeth with the proper dentifrices; is right on the bit with his Emily Post; and launders his underthings in Lux. But he wasn’t allowed to associate with his classmates after lessons.
AC2 Stein couldn’t drill with them. He couldn’t play games with them. His quarters were separated from theirs. He couldn’t hang his washing on the same line. He couldn’t tell them the latest jokes. He wasn’t included in their intimate conversations.
It wasn’t his fault. By one of those odd quirks of fate, he found himself the only acey deucey in an entire class of comely WDs, and use his plight is probably unique he now finds himself on this month’s front cover, as photographed by Sgt Albert Mousseau. That wasn’t so bad, but his classmates were so comely that he had difficulty concentrating on his studies. Original plans called
for a companion for him in his dilema, but the other acey deucey didn’t turn up.
And so for those long weeks, AC2 S. Stein felt as Tarzan did when he found himself in the Valley of the Amazons. No one ever discovered what the “S” stood for but he answered to such names as “Stella,” “Suzie,” and “Susabelle,” rather than be a bottleneck. .
“When I found out what had happened, I felt like remustering on the spot,” he confessed with deep blushes on graduation day. “But I wasn’t treated badly. The girls felt sorry for me, and I was just Stella to all of them. It was embarrassing, though, when I went on clothing parade, and was offered the $15 all my classmates got. But I turned it down. And I began to enjoy it when offers started to roll in from other guys dying to trade places with me.”
How did the girls feel about it? They called him the “Sheikh of No. 1 Wireless School,” and “The Man of the Hour”.
“Suzie was our mascot,” one of them said affectionately. “He was lucky. He didn’t have any drill, or PT, or duty flights. After all, how could he?”