Backfire 2. by Angharad Copyright© 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“Look at it this way, darling, the basic training for boys is all about getting muddy and playing with guns, so you’ll miss that being one of the girls.” What Mum thought they did in the army, I have no idea—perhaps knitting blankets for orphaned hedgehogs?

Laura was sitting in her room with a towel wrapped round her head and another round her aching body. She’d just returned from an assault course and was exhausted, not having the strength to climb over the wall, even with the rope thingy with the knots in it.

Yesterday, she fired a gun for the first time—nearly knocked herself out with the recoil. They said she could pay for the damage over the next few months—she shot a hole in the roof of the indoor range. Well no one told her the gun would jump in her hand when she pulled the trigger, even if she looked like something from Dirty Harry, an’ that was just some sort of pea-shooter the instructor said.

He showed them what happened to a pile of bricks when he fired a regulation pistol at them—so it’s no good hiding behind a brick wall, they can shoot you through it. He showed them one of the current rifles the army use, an SA something or other, she could hardly lift it up to shoot it, although it didn’t seem to have as much recoil as some of the handguns. Why anyone would want to play with the noisy, dirty, dangerous things, God alone knows, she certainly didn’t. But if one supposes the enemy have guns, it’s just as well to be able to defend yourself, even girls—not that she planned on getting within a million miles of them.

The two sergeants who ran the assault course told Laura that she needed to improve her upper body strength because until she completed the assault course she couldn’t finish basic and do something more interesting. She suggested being able to run away was far more useful than playing Tarzan in their muddy field—so tomorrow she’d have to do a two mile run before breakfast, in full kit. She decided to keep her suggestions to herself from then on.

She was sharing a room with another girl, though the medical she’d had when they decided they needed her to save the country, was far from pleasant and the doctor who examined her was astonished that her little thingies were so small.

“How long have you been on hormones?”

“About a year.”

“So you planned this some while ago?”

“Planned what, ma’am?”

“Escaping the call up.”

“No, ma’am, I was planning on being a woman.”

“You realise these are useless,” she said letting go on her shrivelled dangly bits. “In fact, I think you need to lose them before they go funny.”

“Funny, ma’am?” She didn’t personally think castration was an item for comedy.

“Cancerous, you’d be better off without them—I’ll refer you.”

“Um,” she gulped, “Can’t you do it?”

“No, it’s a hospital job.” So she went on a waiting list somewhere, and learned a new medical term, orchidectomy—who says the army’s not educational?

A week of running round the field in full kit before her breakfast didn’t do much for her appetite—this place is run by lunatics—though it was easier by the end of the week. Somehow she also managed to get over the wall, nearly broke her ankle landing though. I mean, who in all honesty, goes climbing over two metre high walls. I’m sure it must happen in the desert all the time, ‘Look chaps, Johnny Arab has built another six foot wall to hide behind, better climb over it, what?’ Why not go round it or shoot through it? Gotta be better than breaking your neck falling off the top of it.

Talking of falling, she fell off the beam again, well it gets slippery and that cess pit thing you land in—ugh, she had to wash her hair twice and condition it again—stupid men.

Part of the object of basic training is to observe the recruits to move them on to future units. Laura had already been identified as a possible future linguist and therefore useful to several departments such as signals or intelligence. Despite the jokes of oxymoron, military intelligence is full of clever people and Laura was worried that they’d soon spot her as a bit too thick for them, as would signals—she wasn’t much good on computers beyond the demands of facebook.

The biggest note against her name so far was how girly she was. “Is this just an act?” asked Captain Squirrell.

“If it is, she’s a good actress.”

“You know her history?” asked the captain.

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Lt Smith.

“And?”

“I know anyone who changes their gender has to be a good actor to avoid being discovered and some of them have made very pretty girls. We’ve had a couple who we reckoned were just trying it on, hoping to be discharged, we had one other who I think was a genuine and she’s doing quite well by all accounts. This one—she is very girly, but she might just be genuine.”

“What is she like around men?”

“Usually she’s like a damsel in distress, but she did kiss the assault course sergeant when she got over the wall.”

“Did he know—about her, I mean?”

“I don’t think so, ma’am—need to know basis only.”

“Okay, we have two weeks of basic left, set up a disco invite some of the male recruits over, let’s see what she does when there are men about.”

“Which night?”

“The Friday, most of them will be on leave for a few days after that.”

“Very good, ma’am.”

“Watch her, slightest hint she’s playing at it—she’s over to the men’s camp and god help her.”

Laura was oblivious of all of this and was also beginning to discover she wasn’t as stupid as she at first thought. They were all given basic lessons in maintenance of their armaments, and although she despised guns, she was quite good at taking them apart, cleaning them and putting them back together, even blindfolded. She still couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a shovel, let alone with a gun, but her skill with guns was noted.

She had an interview and the corporal who did it suddenly started talking French. Laura understood and replied. When the corporal started using Spanish, Laura was also able to understand but her response was less spontaneous—however, the corporal was reasonably impressed.

In their first aid lectures, it was considered that only the top ten percent would be streamed towards becoming nurses or medics. Laura didn’t like the idea of dressing wounds and passed out when they showed slides of different wounds, even though relatively few had any blood showing. Laura wasn’t going to be a nurse, that was pretty certain.

Finally, the day of the disco arrived. So far, Lt Smith hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary from Laura, except she screamed the place down when a spider appeared in her bed as she was getting into it. It was deliberately done by one of the other girls who didn’t particularly like her because she was so girly but who had no idea of her history. Nothing came of the incident except Laura was very careful when she got into bed in future.

On the evening of the dance, the girls all got their glad rags out including Laura, who’d been to such things a couple of times at school but had relatively little experience with boys, except being one—an unusual one, for the first part of her life. One thing she hadn’t noticed was how her figure had improved with the exercise and the hormones, she was becoming lightly toned and compared to one or two of the more heavily built women, she was looking very good and the dress she chose to wear exaggerated her shape even more, with a scooped neck just low enough to give a hint of cleavage, a narrow waist and tight over her growing hips and bum. In high heels, she looked even better, and with some help for her hair from Jan, one of her fellow recruits, she looked as good as she ever had, if not better.

Laura and Jan decided to stick together, watching each other’s backs to avoid date rape drugs or other dicky drinks being slipped to them by predatory men. It’s said that a woman can get laid by just announcing her desire, men have to first find a woman and then convince her it’s what she wants as well—it doesn’t always work.

Jan dragged a reluctant Laura onto the dance floor and within seconds they had men dancing with them. Laura thinking at one point, that without her mother’s assistance, she’d be one of the men. Thinking how good she looked when they left their quarters, she was rather glad her mum had talked her into being a girl, which she was now putting her heart and soul into doing. The boys offered them drinks, but they declined—the night was young.

“Is this body taken?” asked one of the boys putting his hand around Laura’s waist.

“Know why they call it a waist?” she snapped in reply but didn’t remove his hand.

“No, why?”

“’Cos it’s what you’re doing with your time, sunshine.”

“At least let me buy you a drink, then my life won’t have been entirely in vain.”

She laughed at the silliness of his chat up line but found herself accepting a bottle of cola. The barman placed it in front of her and she knew it was a safe one. She had a dread of being given a date rape drug and her original gender being discovered.

The boy, Aaron, told her a silly joke and she laughed far more than it deserved. She didn’t know why. So he asked her to tell him one. She couldn’t remember any. “Go on,” he urged, “everyone knows at least one.”

“I don’t, but I guess finding myself in the army is one huge joke.”

“Why, d’you say that?”

“I’m too girly, I don’t like noise or dirt—and that’s just the drill sergeant.”

Aaron chuckled and she saw how nice his teeth looked, white and regular. In fact she felt captivated by his smile. “Is it me or is it getting warm in here?” he asked her. She looked around for Jan, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“I don’t think it’s that warm,” she replied blushing and avoiding eye contact.

“Let’s just go outside for a few minutes in the fresh air,” he suggested and despite her anxiety that it wasn’t a good thing to do, she allowed him to steer her towards the door. Once outside they had to find a place clear from the smog created by dozens of people smoking outside the door.

“You don’t smoke, do you?”

“Uh no, stupid habit.”

“I agree,” she conceded.

The night wore on and they talked and kissed and kissed and talked. Laura had never flirted like this before and when she finally got back to her room she was buzzing with an energy she’d never had before. Something inside her had changed and she lay in bed trying to understand what it was.

When she got called up, her identity as a girl was a fraud. She saw it as a game she had to play for longer than she’d have liked, but she’d survive. Reflecting back over the past couple of months, she’d changed so much—it was no longer an act—she was beginning to enjoy herself as a girl and she began to see herself as one. She checked herself—this wasn’t in the plan, not the original one. So what had happened to bring her off the rails?

She realised that even if she’d have stayed a boy, being called up would have changed her. Away from home, with different environment and regime, it was bound to have an effect on people. Taking hormones had affected her body as much as the exercise—but as she thought back on the evening and how confident she’d felt in her dress not to mention how comfortable she felt—she decided both the pills and the exercise had been good for her. As a boy her life didn’t seem to be going anywhere fast. Okay, the army would have changed some of that but would she have felt like she did now?

For the first time in her life, Laura felt alive and she loved the feeling. She wasn’t in love or anything, Aaron had been nice, told her all about himself. His dad was or had been a soldier, so he was looking forward to getting into the thick of it. It was what he and other young men were born to do. Laura didn’t think as Laurence, she’d shared Aaron’s ambition, so perhaps she really had been a girl all along and hadn’t realised it.

She knew in the next few days, she’d discover what life had in store for her when she’d get her notice of posting. This had all been basic training, next came more specialist stuff, once the army had decided what it wanted her to do and she doubted it was to run around shooting people. In fact, she was pretty sure they’d try and keep her as far away from guns as they could, because with one in her hands, she was probably more dangerous than the enemy.

During the next week, she’d discover she was going back to the class room as she was to be fast tracked in European languages, but that was after a certain medical procedure was performed. As she went on leave in two weeks time, she would report to a hospital near home—the one her mother worked at—and have two shrivelled ovoid items removed. She’d have two weeks leave to recover before being sent to the Army Language School. Laura was going to be trained as an interpreter, Lt Smith reported back to Captain Squirrell, “She’s a girl all right.”

“Good, they need linguists, so our little butterfly will be training for that. So long as we keep her away from guns, everyone should remain fairly safe.” From the moment her C.O. had signed the forms, Laura’s fate was sealed and had she known about it she’d have smiled. Her mother’s plan had worked with just the caveat she now had a daughter, full stop.