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Saturday, November 12, 2005
Not your mother’s war
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — It was past the midnight curfew imposed around the Iraqi capital. The roads were dark and empty, except for U.S. military convoys taking advantage of rolling in the vacuum.
Courtesy Capt. Josie Hobbs
Capt. Josie Hobbs, commander of the 248th Military Intelligence Company, 48th Brigade Combat Team, wades through a murky canal near Yusufiyah, Iraq. Hobbs is the only female company commander in the 48th.
From the gunner’s turret in the trail vehicle, Spc. Gitanja Williams could see the approach into Forward Operating Base Mahmudiyah. Behind her, she could see a suspicious car, out in violation of the curfew. It was heading toward her convoy of supply trucks.
Her heart pounded. Adrenaline pumped.
This ain’t no joke anymore, she thought.
She spoke into her radio: “I see a vehicle approaching.”
Her commanding officers spoke back: “Don’t hesitate. Do what you need to do.”
Williams steadied her hands on the .50-caliber machine gun and fired a series of thundering shots into the night air.
The car heeded the warning, turned around and drove away.
“Whoa, Williams,” her fellow soldiers told her. “You go, girl.”
Since early June, when the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team entered Iraq, Williams has found herself occasionally in the gunner’s seat. On this night, she came face to face with a potential enemy. Yet the Pentagon doesn’t acknowledge that she — and the roughly 400 women serving in the brigade — are in combat roles.
The Army prohibits women from serving in infantry, field artillery and Special Forces units that directly engage the enemy on the ground. The rules limiting women to support roles stemmed from more traditional wars in which there were clear front lines. But in Iraq, the front lines have blurred.
Some 48th Brigade soldiers say the random nature of the insurgency here has rendered the Army policy obsolete. An insurgent’s bomb can fall anywhere. A suicide bomber can crash into a supply convoy or military base checkpoint.
“Yes, I can’t put female soldiers in a tank crew or in an infantry unit,” said Lt. Col. John King, commander of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment. “But where is the magic line here in Iraq where enemies are on the other side? It’s impossible to say, ‘Let’s put females in the rear.’ “
Iraq is different, say the soldiers, because women, no matter what their jobs, are having to shoot back.
Women make up roughly 10 percent of the troops in Iraq, the highest percentage of women in any U.S. war. Most of the women in the 48th Brigade were trained to serve in “non-combat” roles and belong to one of three units: brigade headquarters, the 148th Support Battalion or the 648th Engineer Battalion.
Williams is a tank mechanic with Bravo Company, 148th Support Battalion. But during the many months of training at Fort Stewart, her supervisor submitted her name to qualify on a .50-caliber machine gun.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Staff Sgt. Wanda Allen, a member of Alpha Company of the 48th Brigade Combat Team’s 148th Support Battalion, secures a load of ammunition in preparation for a supply run at Camp Striker, Iraq. Allen, 52, who’s a state prison employee, was the first woman to join her unit 28 years ago. She’s stayed in over the years because of the money: She has three children.
The young woman, originally from Coon Rapids, Minn., didn’t think much about it then. In Kuwait, however, she learned she would be the gunner on a 5-ton truck when the brigade convoyed into Iraq.
The trip lasted three grueling days. The only female gunner in the convoy, she was up in the turret, half her body exposed and shielded only by a few pieces of protective metal; her face covered to block the suffocating dust.
“I had so many emotions running through my head,” recalled Williams, who was working at a Speedway convenience store in Savannah before her deployment. “I thought, ‘OK, I’m going into Iraq for the first time and I’m going in as a gunner.’ “
The war in Iraq is expected to provoke a review of women’s roles in the military.
“Before, all we could do is speculate how women would perform in combat situations,” said Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain who runs the Women in the Military project of the Women’s Research and Education Institute in Washington, D.C. “We now know. At least in defensive type of operations, women can hold their own. And women can protect men.”
For Williams, the Pentagon policy is a bunch of mumbo jumbo for lawmakers in Washington to wrangle over. There would be no debate, she said, if those lawmakers could ride in a convoy with her.
“I don’t look at myself as a woman in combat. I am a soldier on duty.”
• • •
“Alpha 261!”
Staff Sgt. Alfred Lewis yelled out the roll call of vehicles preparing to make a supply run to Mahmudiyah.
“Hooah!” shouted back Staff Sgt. Wanda Allen in the Army lingo for affirmation. Her soft, high-pitched voice punctured the tone set by gruffer male soldiers.
On this night, 11 vehicles would make the trip southward from Camp Striker through the hostile Sunni area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death.
“I’m in the second vehicle tonight,” said Allen, a state prison employee. “They always wait to get the third or fourth vehicle.” Soldiers are well versed in the tactics that insurgents use to attack a fast-moving convoy.
The deadliest day for women in Iraq came last June, when three Marines were killed by a suicide bomber. Officially, those women, like Allen, had support jobs.
Allen, 52, routinely ventures out onto the highways of Iraq carrying supplies from one military base to another. She was the first woman to join the 148th Support Battalion’s Alpha Company 28 years ago. She could have retired by now, but every time she was ready to do it, she thought of the financial needs of her three daughters.
Younger soldiers look up to Allen as a surrogate mom. She provides solace in a place where nurturing words can be hard to come by. But when it’s time to report for duty, she leaves that part of herself behind.
Like the most disciplined combat soldiers, she avoids thinking about anything serious except the mission at hand. “You gotta keep a clear mind,” she said. “Otherwise, you sit here and think about all the what-ifs and what could be — and who’s going to take care of your children?”
She made that mistake once before a three-hour run up to Camp Anaconda, north of Baghdad. She talked to a soldier who had been attacked on that road, and in the dining hall, she ran into a soldier from an infantry regiment that lost eight soldiers in July. She returned to her tent thinking about the possibility of her three girls being left motherless.
On the mission that night, Allen’s truck took shrapnel from an improvised explosive device. She also came under small-arms fire. She has a bullet hole in the driver’s side windshield to prove it.
Sometimes, Allen carries lumber, equipment or light sets on her truck. Other times, she delivers a “Class V” load — ammunition.
“We have to try and camouflage it best we can,” she said. “The ammo definitely puts us more at risk.”
• • •
Though not always in uniform, women have served in all of America’s wars, often facing hostile conditions.
During World War II, 400,000 women served in the armed forces; 120,000 served in Korea. About 7,000 women went to Vietnam, mostly as nurses, and 41,000 did their duty in the Persian Gulf War.
In the early 1990s, Congress rescinded combat exemption laws for women in the armed forces. But the Army and Marine Corps retained their policies of barring women from combat roles.
That’s why Sgt. Mike Laury was stunned when he learned at Fort Stewart in January that Spc. Trena Caldwell would be joining his infantry unit.
“My reaction was ‘Wow!’ ” Laury said. “Then I found out she was coming to my section. I said, ‘Oh my God.’ “
The Army’s policy of excluding women from combat units is sometimes bent to fit its needs. Maj. Buck Bennett, an officer in the 121st Infantry Regiment’s 2nd Battalion, said his unit was short of staffing in clerical posts. Caldwell was assigned to a desk job.
She joined a battalion of 690 men who fit every stereotype of the hardened infantryman — and were damn proud of it. Their language was vulgar, their behavior crude. They had never worried about having women in their presence.
“My guys are good guys, but sometimes their testosterone flows,” Laury said.
Those first few days with the infantry regiment seem like a joke now to Caldwell, 29, a single mother and day care teacher in Atlanta. Back then, no one was laughing.
“They’d say, ‘She’s a female. She can’t do this or do that,’ ” she said. “That bothered me.
“I may not be pulling the trigger, but I have to make sure all our soldiers get their ammo, food supply and whatever else they need,” she said, neatly adjusting her gold-rimmed glasses.
When her 4-year-old son Nastasen studies history one day, she wants him to know: His mother helped fight the war in Iraq.
• • •
Sgt. Amy Knight’s 3-year-old son Isaac uses a calendar to mark the number of days until Mommy comes home on leave.
Knight, 23, is a single mother from Carbondale, Ill., who struggled with her deployment notice. She didn’t want to go to Iraq. She might have found a reprieve with 1st Sgt. Sara Nimmo of Alpha Company, 133rd Signal Battalion, the only woman in that powerful position in the 48th Brigade.
Nimmo, 36, has a son of her own, 7-year-old Garrett.
“As a female first sergeant, as a mom, your emotions play with you,” said Nimmo. She tried hard not to add Knight to her company when it was mobilized. But she needed an expert cable runner.
“I called her a week before we left and said, ‘I have to take you with me,’ ” Nimmo said. “It was the hardest call I had to make. I hurt for her, but I have to separate my job from the woman in me.”
Nimmo and Knight spent days in communications trucks parked outside a burned-out chicken factory at Forward Operating Base Mahmudiyah, where they were required to wear full body armor at all times. The base is located in an area that has proved particularly hostile for U.S. troops.
“We all made a choice to come into the military,” Nimmo said. “If a woman wants to make a choice to go out on patrols, that’s her choice. They are as capable of breaking down doors — mentally and physically — as the guys.”
The abilities of women to fulfill infantry jobs is an issue that divides those who think that all Army jobs should be open to female soldiers and those who don’t. Sgt. Laury, of the 121st Infantry Regiment, admitted he would get in trouble for saying so, but he thinks the image of a woman screaming when she sees a mouse is often true.
“A guy would just want to kill it. That’s what we need in the infantry.”
• • •
The women of the 48th Brigade are themselves divided on the matter.
Staff Sgt. Sofia Davis, 43, has made a career in the Army. She was in the regular Army for 11 years before signing up with the Guard a decade ago. She trained to deploy to Iraq as a medic in a support battalion, not an uncommon job for military women.
But when the brigade arrived, Davis was dispatched to the all-male 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment, which needed combat medics.
“At first I was dreading it. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be the only woman among so many men. They looked at you as though you weren’t wearing any clothes.”
Although Davis regularly goes out on missions, she doesn’t necessarily believe that she should be doing so.
“I’m being realistic,” she said. “I am not strong. I cannot carry heavy weaponry and run. We should be allowed in the military, but our roles should be limited.”
Opponents of women in combat also argue that the presence of women in combat units can lead to fraternization, sexual harassment and assault and could undermine morale.
Others believe that women should be protected and not be separated from their children, and that combat roles could potentially mean women would be called up if the draft is reinstated.
Spc. Salimary Mojica, 31, a medic in Charlie Company, 148th Support Battalion, explained why she thinks women function well in more traditional roles: “My job calls for a little more compassion. And being a female, we tend to wear our feelings on our sleeves.”
She is a single mother who lives with her two young daughters in Savannah. She believes she is suited for her job and has no aspirations to join an infantry unit. But she would not hesitate if called to action.
“If I have to go on a tank, then I would do so, because I was the one who signed the dotted line.”
• • •
Capt. Josie Hobbs waded past papyrus reeds, deep into the murky water of a canal running parallel to a road where soldiers had spotted a bomb. The water, chest high, gushed into her cargo pockets, loaded with candy for Iraqi children and personal items including tampons and sanitary pads.
She knew her commanding officers would not understand her reluctance to get soaking wet during “that time of the month,” in the same way infantry guys don’t see the need for bathroom breaks because they can just urinate into an empty bottle.
For Hobbs, there was no other way to get to nearby houses in Yusufiyah to question residents about the bomb. She held her M-16 rifle high over her head as she navigated the water in her body armor and helmet.
It could have been a scene out of Vietnam, where soldiers trudged through jungles and rivers in search of the enemy. Except in Vietnam, there were no women on the front lines.
Hobbs, a full-time Guard officer from Rex, knew she and her comrades could come under fire at any time. “We were all locked and loaded,” she recalled. It didn’t matter whether you were man or woman.
“We were all in harm’s way. … In this country, there are no separations. None.”
After that trip, Hobbs, 40, the first woman company commander in the 48th Brigade, found solace in the comfort of her pink-adorned tent. On her satin fuchsia quilt sits a collection of teddy bears; her favorite is a blue one that her husband, Maj. Robert Hobbs — who returned from a tour in Iraq last fall — bought her at Fort Stewart.
Sometimes, she said, it can be tough here for a woman.
“I knew the pressure was on me to perform,” Hobbs said. “And that people were looking at me to fail.
“When I was first given command, I had people ask me, ‘How did you get that job?’ I say to them, ‘That’s a good question. Why don’t you ask the general why he didn’t pick you?’ “
For Hobbs, a career in the military has not been unlike one she might have pursued in the corporate world.
“You always have to be a couple of steps ahead of the game. You want to be seen as one of the boys without losing your identity in the process. I think a lot of women feel that way — whether it’s Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey or me.”
“Her guys,” as she refers to the 70 soldiers in her company, are the heart and soul of intelligence for the 48th Brigade. They keep watch atop surrounding hills and listen in on cellphone conversations that might be suspicious.
At the brigade’s detainee interrogation center, they sit behind closed doors in small rooms and question people suspected of detonating improvised explosive devices, carrying illegal weapons or even beheading hostages.
Hobbs, who had surgery earlier this year to have a fibroid removed, missed months of crucial training and could easily have asked not to be deployed to Iraq. She chose to go.
“I wanted to be here for my guys,” she said, clutching her blue bear. “This is where the rubber meets the road.”
