Soldier Girls Read Online Free PDF

she had made the marathon drive—ten hours in a car with Donovan and Noah. Thrown by the unfamiliar surroundings of the busy military base, Michelle’s mother appeared uncomfortable, wilting in her baggy shorts and T-shirt. She complained about the humidity, which was her way of voicing that she felt off-center, but Michelle was so happy to see her that she didn’t care.
    Noah arrived wearing black Doc Martens, black jeans, and a T-shirt that said DR. FUSION’S FUNK BAND. Michelle’s mother snapped a photograph of the pair of them standing together—Michelle in her crisp dress greens, Noah in his grunge attire. The difference in their clothes spoke of how far Michelle had traveled from her old self in only two and a half months. She had called Noah every single week, but when she first saw him in person, she could not stop giving him hugs. Donovan wore a sleeveless orange shirt with gaping armholes that let him sweat unimpeded through the blazing day. He had been the first of their generation to put on a uniform: Michelle had been five or six years old when he had joined the navy. She had missed him terribly when he left. He had sent back dashing pictures of himself in his dress blues, but after he was discharged Donovan had come home aimless, lacking a clear future, and then came the losing battle with meth. Michelle knew it had to be hard for Donovan to set foot on an active duty post and loved that he had come to celebrate her accomplishment.
    The following day, Michelle had to report to Aberdeen Proving Ground, on Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, for the second half of her training. She was going to spend the next thirteen weeks at Aberdeen, studying to become a weapons mechanic. Noah had volunteered to drive her there. On August 17, 2001, they loaded Michelle’s belongings into his rental car: her civilian identity folded up inside her backpack (Roxy hoodie, Paris Blues jeans, Noah’s old pink T-shirt, flip-flops), and her military self packed into a dark green duffel bag (two pairs ofshining black boots, black wool socks, BDUs, PT clothes, white athletic socks, sneakers, underwear, sports bras). Nobody else she knew from Fort Jackson was coming with her to Aberdeen, and Michelle said good-bye to all of the people she had just grown close to. Then she said good-bye to her mother and her brother. She and Noah headed north on I-95.
    Nine hours away, Aberdeen Proving Ground was where the army and the marine corps trained their weapons mechanics. Michelle had elected to become a small-weapons mechanic—a 45B, in military shorthand, which everybody pronounced as “forty-five Bravo”—because it seemed better than becoming a truck driver or a truck mechanic, which were the only other job specialties open to her at the armory in Evansville. She would spend the next thirteen weeks learning how to take apart and put back together every small weapon used by the army. Noah dropped Michelle, her backpack, and her duffel bag off at the building that housed the post’s command. He teared up as they said good-bye, and hating to see the pain she was causing him, Michelle cut their farewell short. She ducked inside the building, then caught sight of Noah through a window; as he drove off, she saw him execute a sad salute in her direction.
    When Michelle checked in at the post’s command, a drill sergeant introduced her to a short, heavyset white girl wearing black glasses. He told the girl to show Michelle to the barracks. The other young woman had already completed most of her time at Aberdeen. She explained to Michelle that the female barracks were under construction, and for the time being women were being housed in a restricted hallway in an otherwise all-male barracks. There were not very many women there. At Fort Jackson, Michelle had belonged to a company that had included roughly equal numbers of men and women, but at Aberdeen there were about one hundred soldiers in Alpha