Marie Ana Aurelia Drăgescu was a Romanian military aviator during World War II. She was the last surviving member of the White Squadron, a team of female aviators who flew medical aircraft during World War II. Romania was the only country in the world to allow women to pilot medical missions during the war.
Biography
Born 7 September 1912 in Craiova, Romania. Her mother was an "independent woman" and music teacher, and her father, a military man, had become a colonel after World War I. She recounted that her introduction to flying came at an early age.
"When the first world war started, I came to Bucharest with the whole family... I remember, I was 4 years old and I was with my mother on the street when I first heard the air alarm sirens. The German planes bombed Bucharest, with my mother in a basement, we would take shelter, but I was anxious to see the planes."
At age 23, Drăgescu received her pilot's license in 1935. She said later, "I obtained the seventh female patent in Romania." With the threat of conflict growing in Europe in 1938, Drăgescu was invited to join a new, all-female, aviation team which would become known as the White Squadron. The other four women to join with her were Virginia Thomas, Nadia Russo, Marina Știrbei, and Irina Burnaia. Over the course of the war, the "White Squad" saved the lives of more than 1,500 soldiers injured on the front lines.
Wartime flying
The White Squadron was equipped with three small planes, painted white, with the red cross sign on the fuselage and on the wings. Once Romania was entered the war against the Soviet Union in June 1941, the squadron started flying wounded soldiers from the front lines to Bucharest for medical care. Drăgescu recounted later, "We were flying in the sky with the planes to the front line. And if we didn't have aerodromes near the place where we had to pick up the wounded, we had orders to land anywhere... " The white planes were hunted by the enemy, but not in the sky because they flew a maximum of 50 metersabove the ground, and the pursuing pilots were afraid to fly so low. But that didn't stop them from targeting the planes once they were on the ground. After the first month, the squadron's aircraft were repainted in camouflage colors. Once on the ground, the young pilots, dressed in white overalls, startled some wounded soldiers as if they were hallucinating. One, on seeing Drăgescu, "started shouting at the orderly that was watching him: "John, an angel!" The poor man thought he had already died and was waiting to see Heaven... " Drăgescu flew in the siege of Odessa, the Crimean campaign, and the Battle of Stalingrad, and, after the other pilots' resignations and illnesses, she remained the only female Romanian pilot on the front.
Final years
After the war, Drăgescu worked for several years as flight instructor at flight schools in Chitila and Ghimbav. She was allowed to fly until 1955, when her license was taken away. Later on she worked at the Ana Ipătescu C.F.R. clinic in Bucharest, until she retired in 1967. During the country's communist era, the history of Romanian aviation and the contributions of Drăgescu and the other women of the White Squadron were ignored. Following the Romanian Revolution of 1989, their story received a more appropriate recognition. Mariana Drăgescu was age 100 when she died in Bucharest on 24 March 2013.
