Olga Greenlaw, Heroine of the Flying Tigers

I discovered Olga Greenlaw purely by accident, and those are the kinds of accidents I enjoy. Olga Greenlaw was married to the executive officer of the famed World War II Flying Tigers. The Flying Tigers? They also were known as the AVG or American Volunteer Group, a group of about 300 American airmen who provided China with an air force to fight the Japense as they invaded China. The story of the Flying Tigers can be found in many books and on many places on the Internet.
And, believe it or not, you can learn a lot about Olga Greenlaw on the web.
Continuing about her here, she was a beautiful woman who served as statistician and writer of the Flying Tigers' Daily Diary for the year they were in China. She chanced to be there because her husband, Harvey Greenlaw, knew the Flying Tigers' commander, Gen. Claire Chennault, and became his excutive officer.
I've read Chennault's book and his wife's (the Chinese one) book and then quite a few web articles about the Flying Tigers. All are interesting, but what you read is somewhat what you expect.
Olga Greenlaw, on the other hand, is totally unexpected because she is so beautiful and charming. She's like a beautiful rose in a cactus patch.
I ran across her name in something I read, and then looked it up on the marvelous web. There I found a lot about her as well as some photos that, again, show her to have been a very lovely lady. I also learned she'd written a book, "Lady and the Tigers" and that it was published in 1943.
I have since gotten the book and read it, and of the many books on the Flying Tigers, hers is one of the best. You get a good idea about the men who flew and maintained their planes. She got to know Chennault, and you learn from her that he was a great cribbage player. You meet Chaing Kai Chek (sp) and his beautiful wife, and you get a sense of how influential Madame Chaing Kai Check was. You also get a sense from Olga Greenlaw's book of what it was like to be in China during the war as the Japanese kept advanced so brutally.
You meet this woman who develops affection for many of the fliers--only to see the fliers killed one by one. And, oh, the loss she feels at their dying is sad.
One recurring theme in war stories comes up in hers, that of actually seeing those who have been killed in war. She describes seeing and talking to two pilots--after they were killed. She also recalls at another point something that happened that she related to the exact moment that another pilot was killed.
You can find that same idea, of seeing soldiers who have been killed coming back to be seen by a live comrade, in "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Those Devils in Baggy Pants." Now there is this third book, The Lady and the Tigers where it happens.
Most recently, incidentally, I saw a television program about an American GI re-visiting the battle field at Khe Sanh (sp) in South Vietnam. It had been a bloody battle field. Anyway, this GI claims to have seen a squad of soldiers or Marines somewhere through the mist, fully armed and dressed as they would have been during the battle. He said he saw them up a hill or on a ridge line.
Just curious.
You will also see, by the way, comments or suggestions on line and in some other books that Olga Greenlaw might have been more than just friends with some of the pilots. Those behind the hand snickers and winks. Yet, all you get from her book for sure is how much she cared for so many of them, and if in fact there was any more to her relationship than that, so be it. She still comes across as a wonderful human being whose presence meant a lot to the Flying Tigers.
She and her husband had a stormy marriage from what I've read. They were divorced in the mid 1960s, and Olga is said to have died in 1983.
I contacted one of the Flying Tigers still alive who knew Olga and told him I thought I would have liked to have known her. He said I would have because Olga would have made sure I liked her. I like that thought because Olga sounds like such a wonderful person.