Both at war and stateside, the role of women in the armed forces continues to change and grow. Here are just a few of their stories.
by Janie Blankenship
Women may only make up 15% of today’s active-duty military, but they continue to prove themselves under pressure. Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq first began, service women have changed the way society has traditionally viewed females in war.
Here is a look at some of those outstanding women in uniform.
Navy Psychologist Tackles Grief in War Zone
In 2004 when her twin boy and girl were only 15 months old, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Heidi Squier Kraft was deployed to Iraq as one of a four-person combat stress platoon, assigned to the Marine’s Alpha Surgical Company.
Kraft’s seven-month tour is chronicled in her book Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital. (Incidentally, Kraft’s book is the first written from the perspective of a psychologist in Iraq.) In it Kraft poses the question, “Who’s the shrink for the shrink in the combat zone?”
A clinical psychologist, Kraft was charged with treating Marines suffering from acute combat stress, as well as the doctors and nurses caring for the severely wounded. Often, she had to tell Marines about the deaths of other Marines who died in the hospital in Al Asad.
And more times than not, Kraft sat with dying Marines in the hospital’s expectant room—the room where Marines were placed when nothing more could be done to save them.
It was in that room that Kraft met Cpl. Jason Dunham, who would posthumously receive the Medal of Honor for throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of those around him.
Although the doctors said he wasn’t going to survive, Kraft held the young Marine’s hand and encouraged him to hold on. She noticed that he was responding to her voice and squeezing her hands so she yelled for the doctors. It was a joyous moment for Kraft, as she held his hand all the way to the Medevac.
Dunham made it to National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., where his family could be with him. He later died. Kraft is now friends with Dunham’s family. They asked her to attend the Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House.
“Deb Dunham believes that her son heard her voice when I spoke to him telling him to hold on,” Kraft said. “She’s part of the reason I wrote this book. She told me other mothers need to know there are people like me over there caring for their children.”
While Kraft said she read as much as she could in preparation for her deployment, nothing could have prepared her for the cases she treated daily.
“We had to rely on our instincts because we were the first such group in Iraq,” she said. “We passed on everything we had learned to our replacements.”
Kraft recalled the first Marine to be killed after her unit arrived in Iraq. A staff sergeant carried the dead Marine over his shoulder into the hospital. For six months, he buried that incident inside himself. But as the staff sergeant prepared to go home, the event resurfaced.
“He came to me one day with his arms out in front of him,” Kraft said. “He looked at me and said, ‘I see his blood and his brains all over my uniform.’ I sat with him and later arranged for treatment when he got home.”
Kraft describes her readjustment in coming home as “tough,” noting she felt a very real disconnect. She also admits she “wasn’t well.”
In her book, Kraft writes of coming home and getting back to work in treating people in a “peacetime” environment and how difficult it was.
“I could not fathom the crises that my patients made out of their life events,” she writes. “Only months before, I had held the hand of a 22-year-old hero who gave his life to save two of his men. I had witnessed courage in the face of injury and pain, loyalty in the face of grief. Everyday psychological problems not only paled in comparison, they struck me as frankly absurd.”
Aside from work, Kraft had to readjust to her life as a mom, as her family became her No. 1 priority.
“It was too hard to have my children in the forefront of my mind while I was in Iraq,” Kraft said. “I had to compartmentalize them and I put my photos away. I only called home once a week and set aside time to think about my children.”
Kraft said her twins, who are now five, were so young at the time of her deployment that they weren’t really affected. Her husband and her parents continually showed them photos of their mom. Plus, she had a DVD made of herself reading stories so they could see and hear her while she was away.
After nine years in the Navy, Kraft left active duty in 2005. Today, she is the deputy coordinator for the U.S. Navy Combat Stress Control Program in San Diego.
A couple of years removed from Iraq, Kraft says she will always miss the “absolutely extraordinary sunsets and sunrises” in Iraq. What won’t she miss?
“I do not miss and could live my whole life without having to hold the hand of a dying Marine,” she said.
‘Jewel of the Clinic’
On July 10, 2007, Army Capt. Maria Ines Ortiz became the first Army nurse to die from hostile action during the Iraq War. Serving with the Army’s 28th Combat Support Hospital, 3rd Medical Command in Baghdad’s Green Zone, Ortiz was killed by shrapnel after a heavy mortar attack.
“Having one of the family go down is very, very hard,” Maj. Gen. Gale Pollack, the Army’s acting surgeon general told The Washington Post. “You feel like a piece of your heart is gone.”
Ortiz had been serving in Iraq since September 2006. She previously served for 18 months as chief nurse at the Kirk U.S. Army Health Clinic at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
“If there was such a thing as the jewel of the clinic, she was the jewel,” Renee Smith, who worked with Ortiz at Kirk, told The Washington Post. “Her work wasn’t finished until everybody was cared for.”
Ortiz, 40, was born in New Jersey and grew up in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. New Jersey Gov. John S. Corzine recognized her “patriotism and dedicated service to her fellow soldiers.”
Nurses like Ortiz have been serving and dying in war since the early days of our country. One such nurse was Ellen May Tower of Byron, Mich. Serving on Puerto Rico in 1899, Tower contracted typhoid fever and died.
Tower was the first Army nurse to die on foreign soil. She also was the first woman to receive a military funeral in Michigan. Thousands turned out for the funeral in Byron on Jan. 17, 1899. The village of Tower was named for the nurse when it was founded later the same year.
‘You Just Have to Suck it Up’
When Maureen Pennington joined the Navy in peacetime 1986, she never imagined she’d be treating combat-wounded troops.
That all changed 20 years later when Cmdr. Pennington became the first nurse to lead a surgical company in combat. From February to September 2006, Pennington commanded Surgical Company C, Combat Logistics Battalion 5, 1st Marine Logistics Group, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq.
More specifically, Pennington was in charge of trauma centers at Fallujah and al-Taqaddum, where she saw “terrible things” like limbs blown off, sniper wounds and burns caused by improvised explosive devices.
“I saw so many young Marines dying, their buddies gathered around saying their last goodbyes,” Pennington told Parade Magazine. “I get emotional now, but I couldn’t do that with the wounded. Your job is to give them strength. You can’t fall apart. You just have to suck it up. Then you go home and cry alone.”
For meritorious service, Pennington received a Bronze Star in April 2007. It was awarded to her, in part, for achieving a 98% survival rate for her patients.
But for those serving under Pennington, it was all the seemingly little things she did that mattered most. She established a special waiting area where Marines could stay close to their wounded comrades. She also was known to wash the blood from vehicles used to transport the wounded so that their buddies would not have to be reminded of the attack.
“The more intense it got with combat casualties coming through the door, the calmer Maureen became,” Lt. (j.g.) Joelle Annondano told Time. “But she also was like a mom to all of us. She was not afraid to give someone a hug when they needed it.”
Today, Pennington works at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego.
A First for Georgia Guard
In November, Brig. Gen. Maria Britt became the first female general of the Georgia Army National Guard. On Dec. 1, she took command of the 273-year-old Georgia Guard.
“We’re not here to promote a female to general,” Maj. Gen. Terry Nesbitt, Georgia’s adjutant general, said during the promotion ceremony. “We’re here to promote a fine soldier who has earned the rank.”
Raised in Gloversville, a town in upstate New York, Britt had a conversation with her father, a history teacher, who encouraged her to join the military. Her brother also took that advice and is a Navy doctor.
Britt listened to her dad and attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Her class was just the fourth to allow women to attend. She also holds master’s degrees from the U.S. Army War College and the Joint Military College in strategic intelligence and strategic studies.
After the ceremony, Britt said that being a woman and a working mother of three has prepared her for her command and given her a style of leadership that emphasizes good listening and teambuilding.
“I don’t thrive on confrontation or ego,” Britt told the Savannah Morning News. “But I don’t feel intimidated, and I stand my ground when I feel I’m right.”
‘We Almost Died Together’
Another milestone for female military members involves “man’s best friend.”
Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jamie Dana and her bomb-sniffing dog, Rex, had been working together for three years when a roadside bomb exploded under the Humvee in which they were riding on June 25, 2005, in Iraq.
Despite collapsed lungs, organ damage and internal bleeding, Dana was concerned only for Rex, whom others said had died in the explosion.
But weeks later, while recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, she got the news that Rex had survived.
“They told me he was coming down the hall,” Dana told NBC News. “So I whistled at him, and he came running into my room. He jumped on the bed with me and got tangled up in my IV line.”
Rex was to be taken to a military dog training facility, but Dana had other plans. She started the process of adoption, but found it literally takes an act of Congress to allow a military working dog to retire early.
“We went to Iraq together. We almost died together. I mean, how do you top that?” she asked.
On Dec. 30, 2005, President George Bush signed the 2006 Defense Authorization Act, which included a section allowing military working dogs to retire early and be adopted by their handlers following traumatic events.
After her successful adoption of Rex, Dana holds no regrets about her military service. “I wanted to be a part of it,” she said, “and I would go back to Iraq in a heartbeat if I could.”
No doubt, women will continue forging new roles while serving proudly in the military.
E-mail jblankenship@vfw.org
SIDEBAR: Female Silver Star Recipients
Since World War I, eight women have been awarded the Silver Star. They are:
World War I: Linnie Leckrone, Jane Rignel, Irene Robar (All were Army nurses.)
World War II*: Mary Louise Roberts Wilson, Elaine Roe, Rita Virginia Rourke, Ellen Ainsworth
Iraq War: Leigh Ann Hester (She was an MP with the Kentucky National Guard.)
*All were earned at Anzio, Italy, in 1944.
**She is the first woman to receive the honor for actual combat.
SIDEBAR: Women Deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan*
Iraq
Total: 92
Hostile: 56 (62%)
Non-Hostile: 36 (38%)
By Cause for Hostile Deaths
IED: 28 (50%)
Indirect Fire (Mortar/Rocket): 12 (21%)
Suicide Bomber: 6 (11%)
Helicopter Shoot-Down: 6 (11%)
Direct Fire (RPG/Rifle): 4 (7%)
By Type of Unit for Hostile Deaths
Miscellaneous Support: 42
Military Police: 12
Aviation (Combat): 1
Explosive Ordnance Disposal: 1
Afghanistan
Total: 13
Non-Hostile: 10 (77%)
Hostile: 3 (23%)
Hostile deaths in Afghanistan were caused by IEDs and a suicide bomber. They were members of
support, civil affairs and engineer battalions.
In comparison, female hostile deaths totaled the following in previous wars:
Persian Gulf (1991): 6
Vietnam: 1
WWII: 16
(All were Army nurses.)
*As of Jan. 25, 2008.
|
