She seemed to gravitate toward dolls and dreamed of having the elegant feminine qualities that a woman possessed. The boys poked fun at Jorgensen’s feminine tendencies and even her own sister would chime in now and then.

As a child, Jorgensen felt very different from other little boys and remained secluded and shy. But why was Jorgensen celebrated when other members of the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) community were not?Ĭhristine was born George William Jorgensen, Jr. Interestingly, the article was published in 1952, a time when gay and lesbian WWII veterans were often stripped of their medals and fired from their jobs because of who they loved.

The article celebrated her heroism during the war and embraced her feminine qualities, such as her hair and fashionable clothes. Jorgensen, who served in the US Army during and after World War II, became the first American transgender woman to attain fame for having sex reassignment surgery. What followed was the fascinating story of Christine Jorgensen. One day while flipping through my dad's collection of vintage Life magazines, the headline “Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty” caught my eye. She knew something terrible had happened and rushed off the train to call her mother.Top Image: Photo of Christine Jorgensen taken by Maurice Seymour in January 1954. She was on the London Underground when she received a Facebook message from the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Khromeychuk writes without sentimentality or self-pity. Even the deaths of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of soldiers do not prevent new wars. Grief reveals itself partially, gradually, shatteringly, and other people see only the surface. The pain is immense but hard to confront. The reality is awful but there are glimpses of beauty.

It struck me, reading this tender and courageous book, that the sunrise through a hole in a dugout wall could be an allegory for the experience of living with the death of a soldier. A blood-red sun appeared through piles of earth and her brother’s voice narrated: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? I present you with the sunrise through a hole in a dugout wall.’ Kneeling on the stage in the darkened theatre, she presented to the audience a short video her brother had made on his mobile phone while he was at the front. S ometime after her brother’s death on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine in 2017, Olesya Khromeychuk wrote a play about it.

Sister soldier life after death