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Archiver > QUEBEC-RESEARCH > 2003-09 > 1064874601
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Subject: [Q-R] Excerpt of History
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 18:30:01 EDT
...." A girl from Plympton. Massachusetts, named Deborah Sampson became an
expert at avoiding Revolutionary was medics. She enlisted as an infantryman in
the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment of Militia under the name of Robert Shurtleff
and got along fine until she was severely wounded in the head by a saber
wielding Tory during the fight at Tarrytown, New York, while her unit was marching
to West Point. Preferring the disfigurement of a scar to the attention of a
corpsman, she fought on with her now admiring comrades, who were beginning to
consider her quite a fellow in spite of her hairless face. Her captain, George
Webb, definitely accepted her as one of the boys.
Then poor Deborah got hit again, this time in the thigh by a Tory
bushwhacker's musket ball. Once again she managed to duck the Doctors, the
thigh wound would have exposed her for sure, thereby preserving her masquerade and
probably her own life as well. She treated the injury herself until it
mended. She served at Fort Ticonderoga, and eventually ended up as an orderly for a
General Patterson in Philadelphia. There she came down with some epidemic bug
of the day, possibly typhus, and for the third time found herself a fugitive
from medical aid. This time she became helplessly feverish and was discovered
and saved by a civilian doctor who actually tried to protect her secret.
Eventually, however, everybody learned about her and George Washington gave her an
honorable discharge."..................
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