[trolley bell ringing]
[playful music]
- I've been making things, I would say my whole life.
I was a Girl Scout and super into doing all of the projects
to get the badges.
I think I got all but four badges, which was crazy.
I still have that sash.
In fact, I've worn it for Halloween a few years ago.
The uniform still fits me.
To this day, I'm still making things.
I'm a papermaker.
[bright music]
The Combat Paper project was born back in 2007.
We would invite the veteran population to come in
and make paper from their uniforms.
This is a way to honor it and give it a second life.
[laughter]
But Combat Paper workshops were mostly male-dominated.
Maybe like one woman a month would show up.
And so I thought, I'd like to work with the women veterans,
letting them tell their stories
and then make it into a book project.
And I knew I wanted it to be a paper doll book
because to a lot of people, a female soldier
is such a foreign idea that I wanted something familiar.
Everybody knows what a paper doll is.
- And then... - This is your ribbon.
It's red, gold-red with two little black stripes,
I believe.
- Pam: All of these women wore the uniforms illustrated
in the book.
- And you played? - Trumpet.
- And we're gonna include that, right?
- Right. - Okay.
- Pam: And all of the women wrote their own stories.
- Okay, do you still have your uniform?
- No, I still have the hat. - Do you?
- Pam: The criteria was that it had to be a story
about a part or parts of your military uniform.
- I've never forgotten what being in a uniform can mean.
During the height of the Vietnam War,
I enlisted in the Army as an 18-year-old
and was assigned as a trumpet player
in the 14th Women's Army Corps Band,
stationed at Fort McClellan, Alabama.
We were required to look our best at all times.
We had to wear red lipstick, nylons,
and the ugliest Army-issued black shoes,
which we were taught to spit-shine.
During 1969 to 1972, there were many returning caskets.
Wearing my dress uniform skirt and jacket,
playing taps for our fallen changed my life.
To see a mother throw herself over the casket
of her fallen son,
and then thank me for playing taps for him
is an honor I will never forget.
[solemn trumpet music]
- The cutting of my uniform for Combat Paper was difficult.
And that uniform is an hallowed object
that we are trained to care for
and trained to keep in perfect, pristine,
good working order.
And indeed, you end up putting it in a machine
and beating it to a pulp.
Literally beat your uniform to a pulp.
During my deployment to Kabul, Afghanistan in 2010,
I often wondered why some women still wore a burka.
The first time I saw a woman in a burka, my heart cried out.
I wanted to stop the vehicle and get out and talk with her
woman to woman.
Yet I was in full battle rattle, kevlar helmet
and bulletproof vest.
And one doesn't just get out of the vehicle
and run up to the locals and start a conversation.
I realized that freedom also means
the right to wear a burka.
If she chose to wear one,
I would die for her right to do so.
Maybe that is what I should tell her,
me in full battle rattle telling her, "I am prepared to die."
How believable would I be?
[water splashing]
- Papermaking began in 105 AD.
The process is super old.
This particular style of papermaking with clothing rag
is the mid 8th century.
And it has its beginnings
of making paper from clothing from the Arab Muslim world.
- This is how you can go from making a few sheets
to a few hundred sheets in a day.
Like what can we do?
Three... - 350.
- Yeah, 350 sheets in a day.
That's pretty good, I think.
- If you look at an old paper mill,
it'd be between 1,000 and 2,000 sheets.
- Yeah, but they had how many more people working for them?
We have two, okay?
I think we're pretty good.
- Wow.
It'll be a decade since I was in the Air Force.
I served for two years and to this day,
I still carry my purse over my left shoulder
to keep my right hand free for a salute.
I owe it all to that military standard-issued black purse
and deep-rooted programming.
Imagine one third of a cereal box on its side,
wrapped in bonded leather with a pewter clasp
and a single fold-over flap.
It marks the beginning of a powerful rite of passage
where you will quickly assimilate into a new culture.
One that you will leave behind one day.
One that won't necessarily leave you.
[water dripping] [dryer humming]
- I'm drying in a, it's a restraint dryer.
And this way, the paper's gonna dry perfectly flat
in 12 to 24 hours, depending on how thick the paper is.
Asking somebody to tell a story
through a part of their clothing,
it's like a really gentle entry into allowing somebody
to talk about whatever they want to talk about.
It was really emotional for some of the women.
- I served in the Navy
and preferred the male working uniform over our utilities.
The female uniform fit my body like a glove.
And therefore I would receive unwarranted
and definitely unwanted attention.
Attempting to pick larger-sized pants
made no real difference.
So I wore the men's issue,
blue Dickie pants and shirt in the style
I felt my strongest.
I believed that as long as I dressed loosely,
keeping my assets covered, all will be well.
My attack taught me something different.
I loved being in the Navy.
I served on the U.S.S. Germantown
for a good five years.
I've traveled the world.
So my experience is such a hard one
because of my sexual assault.
It was a friend,
someone who I actually met right after bootcamp.
And we ended up meeting up at the same ship
and then being violated in that way
is really hard to explain 'cause a lot of people,
they try to put that "Oh, you know,
"the way that a woman dresses
is the type of attention that she'll get."
Excuse me.
And it's completely opposite.
[gentle string music]
- Onto the next word, which is villages.
- Pam: Villages, yeah.
The typesetting was a way to engage the women
in the project and to really help them to connect
to their stories, their words.
- Jo: Certain religious.
- Pam: That all has to be done by hand,
so how the stories turned out on the page
is pretty much up to the women's discretion.
[hammering]
- This was a big thing, to be a part of this project.
I set my own type.
In fact, I'm the champion.
I did my entire page the quickest.
So I'm pretty proud of that.
I thought about all the times that I was wearing my uniform
and something pivotal in my life happened.
Then for me, the story of 9/11
was the most life-changing moment.
Right out of high school in June of 2000,
I joined the Army National Guard, you know,
one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer kind of deal.
I joined because I wanted a challenge.
Something no one thought I would or could do.
I was working at a restaurant in southern Virginia
when the first plane hit the World Trade Center.
"That sucks," I thought, as I heard the news.
I continued going about my morning,
pouring coffee and taking breakfast orders.
When the plane hit the Pentagon,
I knew things were about to change dramatically.
I contacted my unit in Virginia Beach
and was told to get there immediately.
I rushed home, took off my waitress uniform,
and put on my Army uniform.
I rolled up my sleeves and attached my MP brassard.
After I put on my beret, I looked in the mirror.
I saw a woman who was prepared to defend her country.
September 11th, 2001
was the day I stopped being a 19-year-old kid,
and the day I became a soldier.
[gentle string music]
- Pam: We printed over 6,000 screen prints.
By hand, one at a time.
We went with mostly one-color ink
and we decided to color in the details on it
'cause there were certain things that were important
to these women, like their ribbons,
and those we really had to show in color.
And I did that with just some archival pens.
I just sat on my couch and colored for months.
Collating the pages, I have 21 screen-printed illustrations
on handmade paper
and then 20 printed stories with hand-set type.
I'm not a veteran,
but yet I've learned a lot in working with this project.
For me, this was a really successful collaboration.
- If we, the men and women
who serve in the United States military
with boots on the ground in combat zones,
if we don't tell our stories,
the real truth and the whole truth will never be known.
And that's why I'm involved in this project.
- I have a three-year-old daughter
and I know I'm very proud of my military service.
And the whole Paper Dolls thing,
it was like, I get a chance to show my daughter that, look,
this is what women can do.
- When I seen the finished product,
and I was, "Oh, my gosh."
And like, "I'm a paper doll,"
like, who could ever, you know like, this is cool.
I'm a paper doll.
- After working on this book,
I really feel like a gap was bridged.
Hopefully the people that read it
will just put aside any preconceived ideas
about women in the military.
And we're just, we're all in this together.
That was, for me, I value that the most.
[gentle trumpet music]