by MillietheWarrior » 01/29/2012 12:28 AM
“…Five minutes away from throwing myself off a bridge, Lizzie, I really am.”
Elizabeth, or Lizzie, as she was called, turned to see a tall, willowy soldier striding through the tent flap, a scowl on his face that could clear a room. It took her another moment to recognize said face and realize that it didn’t belong to a man, but to a woman. “Geeze, Sam,” she replied airily, checking something off on her clipboard. “You get any more manly, and you’re going to have to start shaving.”
“Ha, ha,” Sam replied dryly, though couldn’t deny it was probably true.
In 1941, the United States had officially gone to war. Sam had been no more than seventeen years old, just barely out of high school (if you could count fist fighting her way through the grades ‘school’) and had immediately jumped at the chance to volunteer and fight for her country.
Well, maybe ‘fight’ was a bit of an overstatement.
She’d been labeled a ‘nurse,’ shoved into a dress, and thrown into a haphazard battlefield nursing school. Whereupon completing, she had immediately rebelled, literally burned her dress, and begged, borrowed or stole a uniform that consisted of regular army fatigues, no dress involved.
With heavy boots, shapeless clothing, and hair so short it could almost be called ‘shorn,’ Sam was probably the least nurse-iest nurse in the entire army.
Almost a two years later, Sam found herself in Europe, working alongside her fellow nurses and aiding the British army in the fight against the Germans. She’d been stationed in England, and in France, and, along with her friend, Elizabeth, was now back in England, in Aldbourne, moving supplies in and out of the makeshift base.
Sam had only one friend in the nursing corps, and that was Elizabeth Nixon, who, like herself, had volunteered to serve their country in 1941. They’d trained together, lived together, and had become the best of friends; Lizzie easily put up with Sam’s ‘quirks’ and her apparent ‘oddness.’ It was the only reason Sam put up with Lizzie, despite the fact that she was a woman.
I love adventurous tales like that. That uplifting feeling that comes from seeing unknown lands and the knowledge that you came across—nothing can replace it! It opens a path from which self-confidence, experience, and important friendships—from the sharing of life or death situations—are born! But hearing it just isn’t the same. I want to create my own magnificent story!
A great adventure! +Imp. Documents+ +Menagerie+ +Wishlist+ +Journal+