CAMP LEJEUNE, NORTH CAROLINA — Marine Pfc. Maria Daume’s life story reads as if she came straight from the pages of a superhero comic.
Born in a Siberian prison. Orphaned at age 2. Adopted by Americans at age 4 and raised in New York.
And now, she’s just done what many naysayers believed a woman would never do: She’s the first female Marine to join the infantry through the traditional entry-level training process, a process made available to women just a half-year earlier.
“I like to prove people wrong,” Daume told VOA in her first interview since completing her training at the Marine Corps School of Infantry at Camp Lejuene, North Carolina. “No matter what your belief is, you can’t argue that I didn’t do it, because I did.”
