THE MASQUERADE OF A GIRL SOLDIER

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 57, 4 September 1937, Page 27

THE MASQUERADE OF A GIRL SOLDIER

A crisp word of command from their officer and the company of soldiers, marched down from their camp for an all-too-rare bathing parade, fell out on the river bank, says a writer in the "Daily Express."

The soldiers began undressing. Soon the most eager were swiftly stepping away each from his little pile of garments and diving into the water. But there were a few laggards.

One of them was the most handsome young fellow in the company—Private Robert Sampson, according to the muster rbll he had signed. But Private Robert Sampson now seemed curiously shy- of joining in these water revels with his fellow warriors.

None suspected it, but he had been dreading this moment from the time he had first been warned for parade.

He glanced around. There were rjot many now who were not at least partiajly undressed. Then, high up on, the river bank among some foliage, he spotted a cascading rivulet.

Swiftly undressing, he plunged into the cascade, had his bath, and rejoined his comrades without his secret having been detected.

The secret was that he was no man at all—but a girl. The real name of Private Sampson was Deborah, and she was yet but 20 when this incident took place.

She was born and brought up in a Puritan; community in Massachusetts, United States, and at 18 got the job of school teacher in a small village.

But the work, a#d more especially the outlook, bored her. /She called in. A: village tailor, swore him to secrecy, and got him to make a suit to her measurements.

One night she put it;on and went off across the fields to a neighbouring village where a recruting sergeant had set up his headquarters. These were the eighteenth century days when American and French troops, were at gfips w;th the British..,

"I want to 'list," she told the ser* geant, eyeing him steadily. "JSfame^Timothy Thayer."

And as. Timothy Thayer the dis?

guised girl took the hounty and signed the muster-roll.

But twelve hour? later- there was no sign of the recruit. Instead, at her schoolroom desk once again sat prim Deborah Sampson* Something had drawn her back/ and she now was rather worried at the thought of her secret being discovered.

It was, T^xed by a picket searching for the deserting Timothy, jhe at length confessed to the masquerade.

She refunded the bounty money and thus escaped any punishment at the hands of the Army authorities.

But she decided to enlist again. This time she signed the muster-roll as Robert Shurleff Sampson—her brother's middle names.

Private Sampson, decked out in military finery, became the most handsome soldier of "his" company. He marched and joked and drank with the best, too.

Medical inspections were a worry; but by adroitly avoiding these and nevergoing sick she managed to evade discovery.

She came within an ace of it, t\o\v.r ever, when she was wounded by a musket ball in the'-'thigh- Her im?. suspecting comrades carried her into the French camp; but pnee more she evaded fee doctors and discovery, One ■"tqry has it feat she actually removed. the bullet herself wife a penknife and a needle. •

At any rate, she gpi well again and went marching and fighting once mpre, Then she fell ill wife fever, and It was. now that discovery came., The. dQQtor who made it told her general, and fee result was that Debprah? received an honourable discharge from fee service,

She kept he? male attire,, however, and went pack to Massachusetts as, a farna worker, Then she met, a fayrner, one, Beniamiii Gannett, and. it was when she found ?he had falien W love wife him. feat she revealed herself to his astonished, gaze one day dressed in her proper garb of a girt They v/exe married- And then Mrs. Gannett petitioned for and was granted, a pension as. an invalid soldier,