1942//Hoosier//

1

1942
War was never something I thought I would ever have to even consider in my life, and yet here I was in a medical tent at Boot Camp learning how to be a corpsman for the Marines. Growing up I would walk past a graveyard to get to school everyday since I was 6 and there was always a man that was drunk calling out different names while leaning against a grave stone looking broken, my mother would look at me and stare in to my eyes and say "you better not grow up to be as broken as that poor man Ellie."

One day towards the end of winter break when the snow was still falling and my hands were freezing I snuck out of my house at 11:00pm sharp with a notebook and a pen.

There I was, a 6 year old freezing child walking around the busy streets of England unaware of the dangers just casually walking to a graveyard to study a old, broken, man. I was no dumb kid and had grown to learn that if I wanted something then I go for it, though I don't think this is what my parents thought I would do.

I would sit down and write in my note book what he would say every once and awhile and try to piece all of his words together only to come to the conclusion that he participated in WW1 and the people who's names he had been calling out to were the people he had made friends with but sadly passed away.

Sneaking out past my bed time had became a nightly routine for 6 year old me and somewhere along the lines I would be joined by the girl who lived in the house across from the yard of soldiers that had served our country. We grew up to be best friends who would sing, laugh, dance, and cry together and the day that I departed to go to training was no different. We had cried while eating burritos together which somehow turned into the both of us screaming the words to songs we grew up listening to while dancing as best we could.

My name is Elizabeth Golden, I'm 25, and this was not how my life was supposed to go. My parents wanted me to go to college get married and have kids but instead of listening to them I followed my goal in life to be a broadway singer and ended up becoming a stupid dumb naïve little girl who got lost in LA and ended up in nursing school which lead me to join the Marines. I've been here for a good 2 months now and I think its safe to say that I'm not vary welcome. I ignore most of the cat calls and rude insults and carry on with my day thinking about the fact that if I wanna keep living in a apartment then this is all I can do, you would think after done with nursing school they send you straight to a hospital to work at but nope.

"Golden pay attention please!" I heard my instructor plead for the forth time in the past hour, the two of us were currently in the medical tent where you were only allowed in if you were to learn how to be a corpsman, I doing a shit job at that.

"Sorry sir having a hard time focusing today." I said.

"Ya well hope you don't have a hard time focusing when we go into battle." He responded in almost a whisper.

"Okay what do you do when you hear a yell for a corpsman?" He asked.

"I run over to it and check how severe the injury is." I answered.

"And after that?" He asked wanting me to carry on.

"I ask what happened and he explains to me how he got injured while I start to treat his wound."

"How do you treat his wound? Let's say he got shot in the shoulder."

"I would clean the area around it first then I would put a shoulder wrap around it and tell him to keep it there till the shooting is over then he can go to the medical station and get the bullet removed and stitches if the wound is that bad." I state.

"Thank god you at least listened to that part." He said while I rolled my eyes.

Jesus send help