The Girl In The Trenches

A historical fiction story written for my Creative Writing class. It features a girl named Sam, who pretends to be a man to fight in the army.

I fought back tears as I watched chunks of my long, brown hair fall to the floor. I knew it had to be done, if I wanted to succeed, but that didn’t make it any easier. As much as I wanted to do this, seeing my hair fall to the ground, the last of my femininity being washed away, was a little much. After the scissors closed for the last time, I couldn’t bring myself to look in the mirror. Suddenly I felt an anger rise in me that hadn’t been there before. Why did I have to do this? Why did I have to be a man to fight for my country? My father trained me with a gun from the moment I could walk, and I was probably a better shot than half those boys enlisting. Yet, because I have long, brown curls, I was not allowed to fight. Boys don’t have to hide their identities to go to war, but I do. I couldn’t let my brother go off alone. We have always been together. Gender be damned! Why does being a women excuse me from protecting my own? 

I was born in Chardon, Ohio on September 5, 1896; 18 years before the start of WWI. I grew up on a farm surrounded by several acres of barren land. Having no neighbors around, my only source of companionship was my twin brother, Luke. He was a sensitive soul that spent more time reading than doing any labor on the farm. That meant that I was left doing all the hard work while he was busy studying and dozing off. Not that Luke was lazy by any means, I was just more physically active than him. Luke works his mind more than he works his body. Throughout the years, Luke and I have been inseparable, so when Luke decided to join the army on May, 8 1917, about a month after the US declared war, I had no choice but to tag along. I couldn’t let Luke go off by himself; he wasn’t equipped for war. Battlefields were bloody and unforgiving, or so I had heard. Women talked more frankly about war than the men did, for they were not recruiting any soldiers. There was no room for books and being academically outstanding amongst all the blood and anguish. All you could rely was your own body and physical ability,  which Luke had none. I had to enlist and protect my brother at all cost. I wasn’t just going to let him go off and get killed. So began my journey from a young girl to a young man. 

Hiding my femininity was much easier than I had first anticipated. Luckily for my cause I had always been a bit of a tomboy and flat chested since birth. I starved myself for a couple of weeks to make my body much lankier, like all the awkward boys in my class. I stopped wearing makeup and started wearing boxier clothing, and I burned all the dresses in my closet. My name wasn’t even any problem. I was born Samantha, but everybody has called me Sam since I was five years old. It’s almost like I was born for this. Like God knew what I was going to do, and he planned my body accordingly. I practiced for weeks how to talk and walk and act like a boy, with some help from Luke. All that was left to do was cut my beautiful, long, brown hair. 

When my anger and tears finally dried, I lifted my head and looked in the mirror. I was shocked at what I saw. It wasn’t me that was looking back in the mirror, it was Luke.  We had never looked more identical. The only sign that I was a girl was the slight femininity of my jawline, and the sensitivity twinkling in my eyes that most men hid. When I turned to mother, for she had cut my hair, I asked her how I looked. She just smiled sadly and whispered that I would always look beautiful, no matter what I did. She understood why I was doing this, why I had to do this. I even think she was grateful, for she knew how Luke was, and she knew someone had to protect him. We all had tried to talk to him out of enlisting, but he wouldn’t hear it. He didn’t want to fight out of patriotism or a love for war. Due to the propaganda and the American spirit anyone who didn’t enlist was shunned in their community. “I want you for the U.S. Army” signs adjourned every surface of our town. If Luke didn’t go to war, if he didn’t fight and die for his country, he was less of a person than anyone who did. No young boy really had a choice. They called it a volunteer army, but it was as forced as it could be. 

Getting through my physical was relatively easy, because my dad was a doctor who worked for the military. He did both Luke and I’s examinations and declared us both fit to go. I had tried to convince my dad to lie about Luke, say he had some disease and couldn’t fight, but Luke refused. He was determined to do this. After being picked on for being weak his whole life, war was his chance to prove himself. I didn’t agree, but Luke had never listened to me anyway. He was the smart one. 

Luke and I joined a battalion of three other men, making five of us total. We were sent to the trenches in France, because the US was sending about 10000 troops there a day. The other men in our group were Paul Swain, Edward Lake, and Charles Krause. Paul was a blonde haired, blue eyed football player from the boonies of Nebraska; Eddy was a brown haired, green eyed saxophone player from the streets of New Orleans; and Charles was a sandy haired, gray eyed surfer from the beaches of California. Eddy was my favorite. He just had a blinding smile and this unwavering optimism that really pulled us through on the worst nights. He was always telling stories of his time back in New Orleans, and of Mardi Gras parades and blackouts. My favorite were the stories of his best friends, a trombonist named James. They met while playing on the street and soon joined forces making amazing music. James and Eddy enlisted together, but due to segregation laws, James was sent to an all African-American combat troop. Eddy tried to keep in touch, but letters were hard to come by in the trenches.

Trench warfare was brutal. We spent days ducked down in our little ditches. No one dared to come out of the trenches and into enemy territory. We called the land between our trenches and the German’s “No Man’s Land”. Several would try to run across only to end up shot down by machine gun fire in seconds. It was relatively easy hiding my gender in the barracks. I usually just stayed with Luke and pretended to be a very quiet, shy young man. I blamed my lack of facial hair on my age and told them that I was fifteen. So, basically, I was an eighteen year old female pretending to be a fifteen year old boy. There was a method to my madness though. Many kids had lied about their age in order to enlist, and younger boys were much more feminine than older ones. The only problem came about once a month. Luckily for me, the army used tampons as a way to plug bullet wounds, so I always had access to a huge supply of them.

As I had predicted, I was one of the best shots in our troop, along with Eddy. That’s why Eddy and I were chosen to be machine gunners. Eddy and I worked together around the clock, shooting anyone who wandered into No Man’s Land. Our biggest problem wasn’t foot soldiers, though, what we mainly had to worry about was enemy planes. More importantly, what they were carrying. WWI was the introduction of Mustard Gas, and that stuff would mess you up if even a drop touched your skin. Eddy and I had to constantly wear gas masks, of which I was kind of grateful. I didn’t have to drop my voice quite as low as normal when I wore the gas masks, because it masked my pitch.  It also helped because it masked Eddy’s face, which I found myself staring at more and more. I couldn’t let my hormones get in the way of my mission though. I had to protect Luke at all costs.

After about four months spent in the trenches came the worst day of my life, the day I will never forget. It started off like any other, I woke up and made me and Eddy some watered down coffee, and some crappy packaged french toast. We then strapped on our gear and headed towards the machine guns. As we were walking I heard our general giving orders to the other soldiers, Luke included. Turns out they had picked a group of men to try and go around the trenches and attack the Germans from the side. It was an incredibly dangerous mission, but could succeed if everyone was brave enough. We all knew that was utter bullshit, but we kept it to ourselves. We were trained to follow orders no matter how ridiculous. He began to read the names of the twelve men who were going, and my heart sank as I heard Luke’s named called, but not mine. Suddenly I understand what the mission really was, a suicide mission. The generals knew not many were going to make it back alive, so they choose their most expendable soldiers. This chilled me to the core. Here was my brother, my flesh and blood, who was my everything, being treated like he didn’t matter. They didn’t care that he was the smartest person I had ever known, or had held my hand as I got my first tooth pulled. They didn’t care that Luke and I had come out of the womb together, or that I had taught him how to ride a bike. All they cared was that he wasn’t that great with a gun, or that he wasn’t super strong. To them he was no use. He would just be another of the 9 million dead.

I sat around all day and waited for Luke to come back. He had to come back. God wouldn’t have created me for this mission, only to take my brother from me, would he? I could do nothing but sit there utterly motionless. Eddy tried many times to console me, telling me drunken stories of his time visiting relatives in New York, but I couldn’t keep my mind on his words. Finally, I heard the shouts of the men congratulating the ones who had made it back from the mission. I held my breath as I watched them walk one by one into the barracks. Finally, the last soldier walked in, carrying something over his shoulder. I watched with tears in my eyes as he walked towards me and put the lump in my arms. It was Luke and he didn’t look so good. He was shot just below the temple and in the chest, right by his heart. I knew right then and there that Luke was going to die, and that this soldier had risked his life to bring him back to me so I could say goodbye. Through waterlogged eyes and a chocked up voice, I told Luke how much I loved him, and that he was the best brother anyone could have ever asked for. Luke couldn’t talk with the bullet in his jaw, but he did try to smile and pat me on the hand. It did little to comfort me, because I could see the pain in his eyes. With one final gargled breath, Luke choked a “Sammy” and closed his eyes for the last time. I screamed and cried and held on to his body with all my might. Luke could not be gone, yet he was. 

That night I told Eddy the truth about my gender, and that I loved him. He just hugged me close and let me cry. As we were getting ready for our gunner shift, I didn’t put on my gas mask. Without my brother, what was the point?