thank you, babs, for a wonderful introduction to your memoir! engrossing at the start, and i agree with whale that your work is polished to a sheen. if your aim is to publish your work, you're definitely ready! if you're already a published writer, i'm not surprised a whiff. please consider me an enthusiastic fan!

During one of the first NPR broadcasts of “All Things Considered,” one of the announcers compared the decade of the 1950s to the second million years after the formation of the world.

"An announcer..." sounds better.

During one of the first NPR broadcasts of “All Things Considered,” one of the announcers compared the decade of the 1950s to the second million years after the formation of the world. She characterized both periods as having “a lot of rain and very little biological activity.”  I agree.  I graduated from high school at the beginning of that decade of docility, innocence, and rain.

I'm not entirely sure how this paragraph relates to the rest of the story except to set up the fact that it takes place in the 50s. If so, that could be done easily without the paragraph.

Small town girls like myself, raised in a sheltering family, were unschooled in any kind of physiological detail. 

"...physiological way." is better.

For all I knew, human beings were solid through and through, like warm baked potatoes covered with skin.

The analogy just doesn't seem believable to me. For one, I've never heard of it before, and for another, if you use a potato as an analogy an uncooked one would work better given that the skin is much tougher to break.

With my public education completed, I still had no idea how the human body worked, except for a fear of pregnancy gained in the locker room of the girl’s gym where such things were occasionally discussed in whispers.

This sentence seems unlikely given that she had to have gone through the menstrual cycle for a few years. Even if it was a late puberty, she would still have to know about that particular body function.

I didn’t know how either pregnancy or its prevention were accomplished.  Being shy, thin, and six feet tall were all against my exploration of such matters. 

How exactly does being thin tie in with this? I can instantly see how being shy and tall do, but not the thinness.

I had one private accomplishment.  My parents ran the only bar in town, and my knowledge of strange words was more than adequate, since my bedroom was immediately above the bar.  I sorted out and listed by parts of speech the words that could be identified, but some of them seemed to cross all grammatical barriers, and most of them were not listed in the dictionary.  I alphabetized and memorized the list, never knowing when I might be able to popularize myself by slipping some appropriate word or phrase into a conversation, if I could figure out how.

This entire section is conflictive with the rest of your story concerning how she doesn't know how the human body works or what the various words are for. Bars tend to be breeding grounds not only for profanity (language), but probably uninhibited discussions about certain events and functions. I honestly can't see how she would be able to memorize and categorize the words and their variations without knowing at least the rudimentary meanings of them.

I graduated from high school with high grades and some academic honors, and went home to brood about my next step in life.  I knew that after high school a girl should leave home, get a job, and make her way in the world until she fell in love, got married, and lived happily ever after.  My mother was a proponent of this scenario, confident that all this would come to me in time, just as it had to her.

This is very believable given the time period of the story.

But what job was available to me in a small town with no industry but farming in an area full of such small towns?

Somewhat repetitive and I'm not entirely sure exactly what message you're trying to convey here. The wording makes it hard to deduce.

A few weeks after graduation, still mulling over my fate, I was reading one of my mother’s magazines and saw a large advertisement extolling the virtues of Women in the Air Force.  “Yes, a perfect solution,” I thought.  “They’ll feed me and teach me a skill and in four years they’ll give me the GI Bill and I can go to college.”  One problem remained.  I was only 17 years and 3 months old, and the required age was 18.  However, I was a high school graduate and certainly big enough to pass for 18, so I poked around in the family archives until I found my birth certificate.  It was handwritten in faint ink, and I had no trouble arranging my birth a year earlier than the actual fact.  I borrowed the car, drove 16 miles to the nearest recruiting station and signed myself into the Air Force for four years.  The investigations and letters were all completed in a few weeks, and by the middle of July I was on my way to Harrisburg for my physical examination.  It was then that my education really began.

While the lying about the age bit is a stretch, it is still possible. However, the GI Bill at this current time was limited only to servicemen who had already been in the service during wartime; women were not considered until the later version of the GI Bill in 1966 when it allowed for servicepeople who also served during peacetime.

Edit: I was original wrong in that it does, indeed, include women, but the language refers to servicemen. Apologies.

I sat in the waiting room with seven other girls, all of them smoking except me.

"of them" is not needed, take it out.

"I thought so,” she said.  “They seldom get virgins in the Army.”

I don't find this very believable.

I decided that whatever it was, I had it, and it must be pretty good, because none of those Army girls had it.  I also decided it must be somehow related to dandruff.

While I don't entirely believe it, it is still funny to think someone would make that connection.

Two weeks later, blood-typed, examined and tested, Mother put me on the train, and promised to write as soon as she got home. 

Comma needed here. "...examined, and tested, Mother..."

In Chicago we were joined by three more girls, all going to Lackland Air Force Base.  After exchanging names and hometowns we had no further conversation, but still huddled together like chickens on a stormy night, with our bond separating us from the other passengers.  I resumed my letter

home, describing the countryside and the girls I was with for lack of other

subject matter.

Sure, they may all be shy and scared, but I honestly doubt that they wouldn't be talking for the entire night. It just seems too canned.

We didn’t huddle so much, and the more outgoing girls were making friends, seat hopping, laughing and talking.  The train pulled into the station and we gathered up suitcases, sweaters, bags and leftover meal tickets and pushed out onto the platform.

Comma needed in these two sentences. "...hopping, laughing, and talking." "...sweaters, bags, and leftover..."

There, arms akimbo, was a short muscular woman in the summer uniform of the WAF.

You may want to explain what the WAF is aside from your brief sentence earlier, it only existed for a few years so is probably not well known to those who didn't live in the era.

 “Answer when your name is called,” she said, and producing a list from somewhere about her person, she proceeded to rap out our last names in alphabetical order.

"on her person" is a much better way of saying it.

I envied Zebrinski her immediate friendship with the lady in uniform, with whom she sat and talked quietly in the seat just ahead of me. 

This is unlikely to happen if the uniformed woman is already trained, especially when you later on talk about Zebrinski being in the Army. N.C.O.s would not chat up the recruits, they'd dress them down.

Perhaps, I thought, if I had answered “present” or something instead of  “here” like a sheep, I might also have asserted my individuality.

The military doesn't really like individuality so the last bit of the sentence is really conflictive.

Eventually the bus jolted onto the base, and the uniformed woman stood up as the bus stopped outside a square building.

You already use "bus" once, so no need to again. Change it to "it" in the second usage, "...stood up as it stopped outside..."

All the time we ate, we were being watched by at least fifty pairs of male eyes, late diners in the huge, shadowy hall.

From what I've seen, there is a set time for meals and that people don't just wonder in if they've missed their time (unless you're a high ranking C.O.).

The morning arrived, bright and hot, with a canned bugle call from nowhere and everywhere.

If they're being woken up for bugle call, it's normally BEFORE the sun is even up, let alone high enough to be bright.

“Line up by height over there on the road.

Quotations marks needed at the end of this sentence.

We were berated for not keeping in step, not keeping “dressed” right, not staying in line, and not knowing which foot was which, but we were all too hungry by that time to care.

I doubt this would be true; if you had a senior N.C.O. yelling in your ear about how well you performed, food would be the last thing on your mind.

We halted in consternation, while she delivered a lesson on road guards, the second person on the left and right flanks, who were to stand at parade rest in the middle of the road while the rest of the “flight” crossed, to see that no vehicle came and flattened us all.

The wording of this sentence needs to be reworked extensively, not entirely sure what is supposed to be the main focus and what is a secondary additive.

We learned to march, to make our bunks, to care for our selves and our uniforms, to stand inspection, to answer “yes, Ma’am” to any question addressed to us, and to salute anything wearing brass in the prescribed manner, and not as though we were looking for Indians.

This makes no sense to me, looking for Indians?

The story is interesting, it does grab my attention, especially considering it is about a time in the military that women were just starting to become a part of openly. There are some contradictions concerning the proper behavior of the characters and the time period, however. The writing is mostly well done, and the flow goes well, but some of the situations just don't seem entirely believable.

How I know this (and I'm not trying to sound egotistical, I apologize if I am coming across that way) is because I have a degree in history, focusing mainly on the years between 1900 & 1950, encompassing the causes and ramafications of the two World Wars (including the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, aka the GI Bill).

The way the language of the bill reads is that only a veteran of the a wartime engagement can seek utilization of the GI Bill.  While you, yourself, were a GI in the USAF at the time of the Korean War, the character in your story doesn't specify exactly what time in the 1950s she joins up, so if it's after July 27 of 1953, she wouldn't be applicable to recieve such benefits.

As for the WAF, it was originally organized in 1948 when the Women's Armed Services Integration Act was signed into law by President Truman.  However, the specific sub organization called WAF was integrated into the rest of the USAF structure in 1976.  I am not saying that Women are not ALLOWED to serve in the Air Force after 1976, just that they became fully integrated within the regular structure during that year.  I believe Col. Trimeloni was the last Dir. of the WAF during this time.

 I would just like to say that this is an amazing piece. It is well polished. It was delightful and I could hardly stop reading.Your description was engrossing without being wordy. I like how you have captured the life of your character in this.

The opening paragraph seemed really unrelated to the rest of the narrative. I dont think you need the whole paragraph to make the point that it is set in the 1950s. If you are going to use it, try adding a line of transition between the first and second paragraphs so that it is not just hanging information.

Overall the pacing was great, but it did feel like you began to rush through the story towards the end.

 Thanks for the great piece!!