Hello! My apologies for missing a week; one of the things that have to be planned for when working with others is family emergencies and illness. My guest inker was able to complete this one, and I will finish the last two in the series.

In this Monday installment, Joe, Juni and Jorge travel to Johnstown, Pennsylvania to meet Staff-Sergeant June Ransom, and her family. Sergeant Ransom was the “psycho Drill Sergeant” who terrorized Joe and Jorge when they were in Basic Training together and Fort Leonard Wood, so many years ago, and she has “broke” them. So thorough was the job that even now, years later, in civilian settings, and with Joe promoted to Sergeant himself, it is still instinctive to drop on command.

But Ransom has her matronly side, as well. She and her husband were older when they had Lilah, because June Ransom wanted to put her career first for awhile. When Lilah came along, the skills she learned working with young soldiers helped see her through those first years. The results… well, they speak for themselves.

A bit of an anachronism is present: Lilah says that “GI Joe touched Barbie so now they’re all in SHARP class”. Sharp stands for “Sexual Harassment Awareness and Rape Prevention”. The program to tackle and try to eliminate these problems in the Army is more recent, after 2010. This story is taking place around the 2006-2007 time frame, and at the time it was known as “POSH”, or “Prevention Of Sexual Harassment”.  As POSH fades from memory, replaced by SHARP, I used the title of the more recent program since it would be more well known.