On March 10, Congress presented its highest civilian honor to the Women Airforce Service Pilots – WASPs – an elite corps of female pilots who were trained on every plane flown by American pilots during the course of the war and were the first women to fly in service of the U.S. military.
 

The WASPs were integral to the war effort. They not only helped ready male pilots for aerial combat and bombing runs by towing targets for live-fire exercises, but also risked life and limb on a daily basis by test-flying recently repaired aircraft and ferrying them cross-country for departure to overseas combat zones.
 

I had the pleasure of interviewing one of these amazing women, 88-year-old Barbara Squire, who now lives at The Terraces of Los Gatos in Los Gatos, Calif., and was impressed not only with the bravery of her and her fellow flyers but also with her modesty. These were women called to serve their country, without any expectation of reward or honor.
 

That doesn’t mean they weren’t deserving of recognition. Their files were sealed until 1977, and it took until a few days ago for Congress to honor their service with the Congressional Gold Medal.
 

The veterans of World War II and their contemporaries have deservedly come to be described as “the greatest generation” by scholars, pundits and those of us who have benefitted from the sacrifices they made and the significant challenges they overcame in the face of a global threat to freedom.
 

But in the broader discussions of these great Americans, smaller stories are often lost. While we marvel at the bravery of the D-Day invasion of Europe or the unimaginable trials faced by Marines at Iwo Jima, it is important that we remember those who contributed to the cause of freedom but whose faces and names were absent from the headlines and newsreels.

To learn more about the WASPs, read the New York Times story on the Capitol Hill awards ceremony here. Also, check out the Signal Hill story on Barbara Squire here.