In response to the Pearl Harbor attack, Dorothy Thom, a Spelman graduate, librarian, and Francophile, enlisted in the Women's Army Corps, seeking adventure and a role in the war effort. She asked the recruiter, 'Will I get to go abroad?' Life in the Army proved to be an adventure filled with unexpected hardships and cultural shocks. Women from diverse backgrounds - secretaries, teachers, and sharecroppers - united to navigate a military divided by race and gender. At boot camp, 'colored girls' were segregated for processing. At Ft. Riley, women's barracks were rustic and coal-heated, contrasting with German POWs' accommodations. In early 1945, Dorothy and 800 African American WACs sailed across the stormy North Atlantic to England, tasked with processing 17 million pieces of GI mail. They found mail stockpiled for years, many pieces illegible. In England and France, the WACs encountered unimagined possibilities, returning to the U.S. as agents of change and building lives beyond their ancestors' dreams.