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Thursday, Mar. 29, 1945

H the
TARY

Reporter's Daughter Serves In WAC At Message Center

Pvt. Jean Roberts, daughter of Dave Roberts, roving correspondent for the Enquirer, is one of a group of Wacs in the message center of the Ferrying Division Headquarters, Air Transport Command, in Cincinnati, who daily send thousands of planes on their way to combat fronts.

Working in three eight-hour shifts, the Wacs send some 1,200 teletype messages, totaling about 150,000 words every day, to the nine Ferrying Groups and four Operational Training Units in the United States. By an assembly line procedure based upon a combination of 10 ticker and teletype machines, they send messages almost simultaneously to 13 places at once.

At the end of a rush day, the message center with its tangle of ticker tape is likely to resemble Black Friday of October, 1929, in a New York stock broker's office.

The 80 Wacs working in the organization far outnumber the male soldiers. They run the telephone switchboard at night, decode messages and sort and classify mail. More than 9,500 separate pieces of official, personal and interoffice correspondence go in and out of the center every 24 hours. The work is under the supervision of Capt. Arthur R. Bothe.

Twenty-two-year-old Jean Roberts [[image above]] needed little instruction when she was assigned to a job in the signal section of the center. A graduate of Ohio State University, Columbus, she had worked as a civilian for the Ferrying Division before joining the WAC a year ago. She is learning cryptography in her spare time.

By W/O James V. Lovell--Hqs Ferrying Div.
Saga of Captain Powers
Ferry pilots sing of Captain Powers,
A Class-5 pilot with 10 thousand hours.
He joined up with the Ferrying Division
And ain't been home since the trouble rizzen.

His father used to fly with hands for props
And his mother often jumped from silo tops.
An uncle's hobby was to trap bolt lightnin'
Which was much more fun than readin' and writin'.

Captain Powers
Is a ferry pilot,
Captain Powers
Flies most any plane.
Captain Powers
Drives through any weather
Just to clock the wind and measure ice and rain.

Young Roger Powers was a pilot born
Who practiced flying from night to morn.
He got most fun from riding cyclones
Then gliding home from the astral zones.

He did all this without Curtiss-Wright,
Cause he always sneered at engines in flight.
"That's kind of cheaty," young Roger said.
"I'd much ruther over-hand crawl instead."

(Refrain)
When Roger got drafted in forty-three
The job they gave him was doing K-P.
This awful job soon began to pall
So Roger did a chandelle thru the mess-hall.

At last one day, at zero-zero,
An AWOL bug went and bit our hero.
Roger buzzed the line and hitched a tow
On a B-17 and a B-24.

(Refrain)
Forty hours later, off in Abadan,
The two planes were found all spic and span.
As for Roger Powers, he ain't been seen
Since he took the Liberator and the B-17.

Ferry pilots claim they hear him call
"Roger Powers speaking...Over...That is all."
They hear Captain Powers from Maine to Rome
And know darn well he'll always get 'em home.