Deborah Sampson covered her chest with a tight piece of cloth, adopted a man's name and enlisted in the Continental Army's elite light infantry in 1782. For 17 months, she marched through the Hudson River Valley, participated in dangerous reconnaissance missions and fought brutal hand-to-hand combat before a Philadelphia doctor discovered her secret in 1783. Her battlefield service earned her an honorable discharge. Then she fought a decades-long battle for the military pension she had earned.