Even when young, I was an explorer with itchy feet. In those days they called it "running away," yet I wasn't running away but rather running toward something.
My first flight occurred on my tricycle shortly before Dad's retirement from the Army and a month before my fourth birthday. For some reason I got it into my head that Mom was the enemy and safety could be found at Fort Lewis in Madigan (WA), where Dad was stationed. To this day the family still wonders how I managed to trike from our home to the front gate of Fort Lewis without coming to harm.
Upon arrival I presented myself to the MPs and demanded that they produce my pop, LtCol Boese. There was much relief at my safe return, yet I was punished. We'll skip those details. That first adventure was but a taste of what my parents would put up with from me. It wasn't a flight of fancy, but my first conscience awareness that I would join the Army.
I always had a bag packed in readiness for the next escape to destinations mostly unknown. I was a little past five years of age when early on a mild summer morning I took bag in hand and decided to "visit" Texas. We were living in Superior, Nebraska at the time.
My journey took me past the our neighborhood's post office, where I stopped dead in my tracks. Before me in a shiny bright brass stand was a recruiting poster. Not just any poster — it was a Women's Army Corps recruiting poster. It didn't matter that I couldn't read yet. When patrons started visiting I asked what it said and my young mind heard "WAX" instead of "WAC." I knew what that WAC poster represented: the flag, the uniform, and the salute all screamed Army to me.
This was the first time I had ever seen a woman in uniform. I was transfixed. I sat on the post office steps and studied every inch of that poster as the realization grew to fruition that this, this lady soldier, is what I would someday be. No matter that I didn't know what this grown lady did or what it might take to become a WAC. The face I saw in that poster was my own in the future.
Even after my brother and sister were sent to drag me home, I could not get that image out of my head. I was obsessed with becoming a WAX. Due to a speech impediment, it was a couple of years before my family realized that I was saying "WAX" instead of "WAC." I used the wrong pronunciation, but the family knew about which I spoke.
The frustrating part of knowing what you want to be is the thirst for more knowledge when little is available. My Dad told me what little he knew, but it wasn't enough. My mother discouraged talking about it because her goal for me was college, so she wasn't going to encourage any silly whim. My sister and brother, although both were several years older and supposedly knew more, knew less than nothing. They saw me as a babbling idiot. Teachers would either look at me with blank expressions or quietly advise that little girls didn't join the Army.
But I knew better. Once I learned how to read, I'd haunt the library looking to find out more, but there was nothing written.
