All Things Nice » Band of Brothers

02: Forgery

Approaching the recruitment office, Posey wasn't surprised to see how many young men were both entering and leaving. Something bitter whirled around in her stomach; she envied them how easy it would be to make it into the army and through basic training. She was having to pull an incredibly intricate, and incredibly illegal, stunt to even get herself registered. A stunt, as well, that banked heavily on a tidal wave of luck that she knew she didn't ordinarily possess.

All she could do was keep her fingers crossed.

She pushed through the double doors and kept her chin up, hoping to feign a few extra inches of height. She wasn't short - not for a woman, anyway - but she would by no means be considered tall. 'Tall for a woman' would have to do, so long as it meant she could pass as 'short for a man'.

A man with a particularly small queue sat behind a desk on the far left of the small admin office, seeming to be pleading with the man at the front of his line. He had his eyebrows furrowed, his hands outstretched, and his lips moved rapidly with words Posey couldn't hear. She joined his queue; if anyone was going to let her through with very few questions it looked like it was going to be him.

Whilst she waited in line, Posey took care to scan the room and watch the protocol carefully. She attempted to appear disinterested as she kept her eyes trained on a conversation taking place at the next desk over between the recruitment officer and the man at the front of the line. The only questions she was able to lipread were name, age, and which branch of the military he wanted to sign up for before her attention was drawn away to the man in front of her being called forwards.

As she stared at the back of the man's dark head of hair she ran over the answers to each of the questions in her head. Name, age, which branch of the military. The first two were simple enough, and she had the fake ID to show for it, but why hadn't she thought to decide which branch of the military she wanted to join? It was such a colossal detail - the absolute last thing she needed was to be part of a company that was sent to the Pacific. She was British - the war in the Pacific wasn't even her war! Not, of course, that she had any intentions of actually fighting in any wars. She just needed to be part of a combat unit that would be sent to England before they were sent to the frontlines. She needed to be bound for the war in Europe.

"Next!" called the recruitment officer.

Posey jolted in place as she watched the man who had once stood before her slip through a door behind the desk. Still, she forced a toothless smile onto her face, thinning out her lips in a bid to appear more masculine, and lifted her chin. Think tall, think brusque, think aggressive, she repeated to herself as a mantra. These were all the traits she could think of to associate with masculinity.

"Name?" the man asked, not bothering to look up. His nametag read 'Jennings' and, by the looks of all of the colours lined up on his chest, he'd experienced a whole lot of combat. She'd seen similar on her father's old military uniforms before he'd packed them up and taken them with him, his life's pride and joy. She hoped she'd never have the same sewn into whatever jacket the military ended up giving her.

"Um, Joseph, sir." She cursed herself for the hesitation and also the wobbliness of the accent. Mrs. Daniels had coached her for at least an hour the previous evening on how to execute the perfect Boston accent, but with her nerves it had emerged as half-American and half-British. She forced a cough to cover it and tried again. "Joseph Wells." At least she'd get to keep her last name. And then, with any luck, she'd get to England and be Posey again. She hadn't been Posey since she'd left.

Jennings nodded and repeated the name under his breath as he jotted it down. When he was done he looked up at her for the first time. His thick black eyebrows crashed down over his hooded eyes but he didn't comment on her unconventional appearance; short hair and baggy men's clothes could do a lot, but she knew she still had the full lips and rosy cheeks of a young woman. Instead, all he said was, "Age?" There was a wariness to his tone.