The Soldier of Stars [1] - Band of Brothers

1 | operation virago

She sat alone on the train. It was quiet, except for some chatter every so often, but Hazel didn't mind. She relished silence sometimes.

When the train pulled into the train station, Hazel slowly stood from her spot and grabbed her luggage, before slowly walking down the isle. There were many others on the train as well but they were going down to Florida most likely on their summer vacations.

Hazel had never had a summer vacation where she came from. You had to work in the summers to make sure you had a house by the end of it.

She got strange looks from some of the women on the train, since mostly everybody knew of the fact that Fort Bragg was a place where soldiers trained, that were men and most definitely not women. But Hazel just avoided their eyes and quietly moved off the train. She stepped onto the wooden station, her heart pounding rather harshly inside her rib cage, as her cheeks warmed quickly even though no one was around.

When she got the initial letter, she had been surprised. She didn't expect to get picked out of the group of WAC members she had been in barracks with.

She didn't know much else.

Were there going to be other women here?

Or would she be the only one?

Hazel didn't have a clue.

She didn't really know anything as she approached the Fort. She was to train with the rest of the other 250 women, and get the basic training she needed. They were going to be trained just as tough as the men from other branches, they were to be treated no different. Then after the women's initial training, they would head off to their stations, with the branches and groups they were initially assigned to. Hazel knew she was training to become a paratrooper, that is what was stated in the letter she had gotten.

But she knew nothing else.

She was hoping that whoever was in charge of the Fort when they got there, would at least give her some information.

Her brown hair was curled slightly by the women in her barrack back at the WAC but now it was turning into a rather frizzy mess. Hazel had long ago wiped off the makeup the women tried to put on her face. Hazel was never big on makeup nor was she big on curling her hair.

Growing up, she was more focused on making sure she got food in her stomach, not whether her hair was curled. Even though it wasn't the sorta thing to step out with not-done hair, Hazel just didn't have the money or time as a teenager.

She was always working multiple jobs so her mother, Lena Parker, a woman of Polish decent with a fun-loving way to her, never had to work late into the night for money. Hazel had always admired the strength her mother had even in dark times. Hazel wish she had found that strength.

Hazel's babcia, or her grandmother, Maja Moszkowski, had come over to the United States, from Poland, as a 23 year old woman, with ambitions of leaving her controlled country to find a new life. When she went through Ellis Island on her way to New York, her last name had been changed to Maloney, the story was that it sounded more American. So her babcia went on with her new life in America, and found her dziadek or grandfather Antoni Partkya, whose last name had been changed to Parker, as it was more Americanized, and they fell in love and had her mother.

They were both Polish immigrants, and her dziadek had some semblance of Jewish upbringing, but once he met Maja, he decidedly became Catholic and that's how they're children were raised and how they were to raise they're children after that.

Hazel had Polish and Jewish roots to her, but the Jewish side wasn't relevant to her family anymore. After news broke that Jewish people were being persecuted because of their religion, she remembered hearing her dziadek one day praying to God that he was sorry he didn't stay with his childhood religion, that he was sorry for everything that was happening to his people. Hazel had felt her heart break, seeing her dziadek that way.