by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad
All Rights Reserved. |
National Service had been restored to the United Kingdom some five years ago, it declared that all eighteen to twenty year olds had to enlist in the armed services unless they were in a reserved occupation or studying for one, for two years. Nursing and medicine, veterinary science, defence engineering and one or two others were the get outs, which meant only those most able students or very wealthy ones avoided the call up or draft as the American’s call it.
Sylvia Plant was very concerned for her son Laurence, who was seventeen though looked two or three years younger. The reason he did so was because she’d managed to surreptitiously feed him with hormone blockers for the past four years and therefore he’d not encountered puberty and consequently was smaller than average and without the muscles or bony structure of most of his male contemporaries.
The conscription had begun five years before and every day there were reports of young British men returning from the wars with limbs missing or in body bags and Sylvia was determined it wasn’t going to happen to Laurence. He complained about his lack of development though she kept quiet about the pills she crushed and added to his food or drinks. She worked hard to get them from the hospital, having to give sexual favours to Mr Austin, the head pharmacist.
Sylvia had lost her husband Jim, to the war at its inception. He was an RAF pilot whose helicopter was hit by a ground-launched missile killing him and several of his crew. She was determined not to lose another man to the war and would have killed to protect her son. Instead, she began to work out how she might dodge the draft and the plan of disguising Laurence as a girl was the one that seemed most practicable. Jim was blond and not terribly tall, so by restricting the effects of testosterone in her son, she reckoned she could keep him looking neutral enough to disguise as female. If necessary, she’d give him oestrogens as well. She also thought that if she could demonstrate he was a gender bender, they’d pass him over.
Laurence tried to be a normal boy and teenager, though being smaller than most of his friends he wasn’t always welcome when it came to sports, although he was wiry and very agile, he couldn’t compete against the testosterone-fuelled jocks who simply knocked him down and ran over him at most contact sports. He concentrated on his academic studies but he wasn’t a brain-box. His language abilities were his strongest subjects and he was quite good at French and Italian and middling at Spanish and German. He was rubbish at maths and science. He hoped to get into something like the travel industry but the war had made that very limited: people were scared to travel very far as tourists were frequent targets for terrorists and the fact it could take four hours to board a plane meant only determined travellers or business types bothered to fly anywhere.
Sylvia’s plan was in jeopardy when she realised the UK armed services no longer worried about using openly gay men or women, but she was sure they wouldn’t use transvestites or better still transsexuals and when two boys Laurence knew were killed by a roadside bomb driving their Landrover, she discovered he didn’t want to die the same way.
He was upset for days, and his red eyes showed he’d been crying. They attended both funerals which were military ones, with flagged draped coffins and volleys fired over them before the bugler played the Last Post, where many of the assembled shed tears over the youthful deceased.
“Andy was only out there two weeks, jeez, Mum, he was eight months older than me. I don’t wanna die like that, fighting so some rich bastard can run his Range Rover around his country estate,” Laurence said as they drove home from the funeral.
“You soon won’t have a choice, son, when your name gets to the top of the list they’ll send for you.”
“I won’t go. I’m not going to die like that.”
“Unless you do medicine or something like it, you can’t avoid it,” Sylvia replied.
“I’ll run away first.”
“They’ll catch you.”
“I’ll disguise myself.”
“How?”
“I dunno yet do I? I only just thought of it.”
“If you grew your hair, you might just about get away as a girl.”
“A girl? I hadn’t thought of that–dunno, Mum, not sure I want to try that, I get enough funny looks as it is.”
Sylvia smiled to herself, she’d planted the seeds all she had to do was nurture them and they’d grow. She’d rather have a feminine son or even one who looked like her daughter, than a dead hero. She’d work on him to come to agree with her, she thought she might start giving him low dosage hormones as well–just to help him see the light. She didn’t like deceiving him but these two pointless deaths had in her mind justified her actions so far.
Six months later, Laurence was at another funeral this time of someone who’d been in his class, another flag-draped coffin and he got really upset when they got home. “They’re not going to do that to me,” he sobbed on her shoulder, “don’t let them send me out there, Mum.”
“You’ll have to help me, son.”
“Anything, Mum, I don’t wanna die like that.”
“It’s not going to be very easy and you’re not going to like it.”
“I don’t care what we do.”
“I’ve got an idea, son.”
“What?”
“Dry your eyes, I’m going to phone the doctor.”
“What for?”
“You’re going to see him and tell him you want to be a girl.”
He looked at her in disbelief. “I’m what? You’re joking.”
“No I’m not, can you think of a better one and you said yourself you’d happily disguise yourself as a girl to escape them. Why not do it openly, they won’t want to call up someone who’d rather wear dresses than fatigues.”
“They’d see it as a stunt to avoid call up.”
“Not if you told them you’d been buying hormones online already.”
“But I haven’t, have I?”
“Um,” she blushed, “I thought of this a year or so ago and have been buying them as you.”
“What? You want me to take hormones? Next they’ll cut my balls off.”
“Would you prefer to have them blown off?”
“No.” He got up and went out into the garden where he paced up and down for an hour before he came back in. “You really think this could work?”
“Can you think of a better idea?”
“No–wouldn’t I be buying girly stuff as well? They’ll look at my records.”
“Not necessarily, transsexuals are more interested in acquiring a female type body than worry about changing clothes, it’s transvestites who like to wear women’s clothes, but I’ve got some stuff upstairs I think would fit you–we’re more or less the same size.”
“What if they do blood tests and things, find out I haven’t been taking pills.”
“Here, start now.” She handed him a strip of contraceptive pills. He swallowed hard then took one. She patted him on the shoulder, “Good man,” she said.
“Yeah sure,” he replied feeling anything but manly.
She coached him on his disguise as a transsexual and at home, he began wearing clothing that varied from jeans which were almost unisex to skirts and dresses. Over the next month, they established his new identity as Laura and when he went to see the doctor and confessed he’d been taking hormones because inside he knew he was really a girl, his GP played hell with him but agreed to refer him to a gender clinic.
On the war front, the casualties continued to mount as did the propaganda, senior politicians regularly appeared on the telly saying how important it was to protect the oil supplies and everywhere they were heckled by mothers who’d lost sons or husbands in their cause.
In school people began to see changes in Laurence, his face began to look girlish and he was growing his hair, he was also growing his chest and his nipples itched like mad as they began to develop. Because of his lack of a male puberty, his body seemed to seize on the opportunity to have a female one and he grew more girlish by the month. He decided when he went back after the summer holidays he was going back as a girl and began to tell the school, who weren’t exactly happy but agreed to it.
So plans were made, and for his eighteenth birthday, he was going to come out to all his class. They’d organised a party at the local village hall and she’d chosen her outfit, had practiced her makeup, gestures, and everything else to be as feminine as possible. Sylvia felt a sadness as she lost her son, but a happiness that she might at least be able to retain a daughter.
The party was a success and nearly everyone supported her. The girls had spotted it much earlier than the boys and welcomed her to their group. The boys were bemused, why would anyone want to give up male status? One even asked if it was just a draft dodge. Sylvia shot that down and showed some photos of Laura as a young child in dresses. So they could claim she’d always known she was in the wrong body. It was a lie, there were a few photos of her in a dress at a fancy dress party, the rest were pictures of her cousin, Janet, who looked very alike at that age.
Laura had just taken her A-levels in Italian, French, German and Spanish. She expected to get good grades in French and Italian and she hoped moderate passes in German and Spanish. She got the envelope containing her results at the same time her call up papers arrived.
“What do we do now, Mum?” she asked Sylvia, “I have to report to the recruitment centre at Catterick.”
“Wear your best dress and makeup, but not too high heels, you might have some standing and walking to do,” Sylvia replied grateful that bodily Laura looked much more female than male with spreading hips and growing breasts, only her small penis and testicles looked anomalous, and you’d have to look hard to see them under tight panties. Also they’d changed her name some months before but the government seemed oblivious to it.
She’d got three good passes in French, Italian and Spanish but her German grammar let her down. However, it would depend upon what happened with her call up as to whether she applied to university, even though the local one had provisionally accepted her.
On the day of her appointment with HM armed services, she dressed smart casual and taking a wheeled suitcase with her, all containing only female clothing, a letter from her gender clinic and her GP, her pills and her registration documents of a change of name.
“Excuse me, Miss, it’s men only at this office.”
She faced the corporal on the desk, “Well this where you told me to come.”
He looked back and she handed him her letter of notice of National Service. “This says, Mr Laurence Plant, is this a joke?”
“That used to be my name, now it’s Laura.”
“Are you taking the piss, Miss?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Corporal.”
“This is you then?”
“That was me, or what they thought was me, I knew different.”
“You’ve changed sex?”
“In transition.”
“What to avoid doing your duty?”
“Heavens no, but I’d have to do it as a woman if that’s alright with you?”
“Wait here.” He went off and returned with a sergeant.
“You’re changing sex?” asked the sergeant appraising her like he would a bit of totty down the pub.
“No, I’ve always been female, I’m just changing my body to comply with it.” She showed him the letters from the clinic and her GP. He looked at them told her to wait and went off to return with a doctor who asked her to accompany him to an examination room. When she asked for a chaperone he nearly exploded but eventually found a nurse. His examination concluded that she was now more female than male.
“So what happens now?” she asked hoping he’d say, ‘Nothing, bugger off.’
He didn’t. “You’ll be delighted to discover we accept transgender people into the army, though obviously, you’d be better with the women’s section. I’ve arranged for a letter to be organised for you to take with you. We’ll give you directions at reception.”
“Right oh,” she said trying not to let her disgust show.
“Oh, Laura, if this was a long term ploy to avoid conscription it won’t work, we have women soldiers too, some which didn’t necessarily start that way.”
“Does that mean you’ll do my surgery for me–down below?” She smiled sweetly at him.
“We won’t but we might be able to expedite it if you meet the criteria.” It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, though her breasts were large enough now to make going back to boydom difficult as would her spreading bum. The surgery bit was bluff and he’d called her on it. Perhaps she’d be better keeping her mouth shut from now on.
At reception she was given a letter and instructions plus a travel warrant to go to the female recruitment centre, some ten miles away. She managed to grab a cab that was dropping off a new recruit and it took her to the railway station. An hour later she arrived at Tarnwood camp and queued with a group of young women while they waited to be processed.
As soon as she handed over the letter she’d been given the young woman clerk at the desk nodded and told her to wait. Five minutes later she was being taken through to an office to see a woman lieutenant. She was looking at other documents as well as something on her computer screen.
“So you want to dodge the draft, do you?”
“No, I’m prepared to do my duty same as everyone else, but as a woman.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that you look the part and have done your homework better than most who try it on.”
“I’m not trying anything on, ma’am, except possibly a uniform later.”
“You’d probably be correct in that matter, okay, we’ll take you but one step out of line and we’ll send you back to the boys, and looking like you do, I suggest you’d lead an interesting life. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly, ma’am.”
“Do you have any skills?”
“I’m eighteen, ma’am, though I can sew a bit and cook a little.”
“You’re good at languages, too, I see.”
“Better at them than most things.”
“Can you speak much French or Italian?”
“A bit.”
“Okay, I’ll put you down for interview with Intelligence after you finish basic training. I hope you’re fit, otherwise, those lovely legs are going to feel very tired in a week or two’s time. Dismissed.”
With that Laura left the office and wandered back to reception to find out what happened next.
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.