LISA MARIE BODENBURG

Lisa Marie Bodenburg grew up in upstate New York, right near Buffalo. In high school, she was an honor roll student and played varsity sports; was a member of the Model United Nations and the National Honor Society; and won multiple academic awards. She is currently a staff sergeant and a 6174, also known as a Huey crew chief or a door gunner.

You’re throwing your life away,” my high school history teacher tells me privately, after class. “You’re throwing away your talent.”

He’s not the first teacher who has said this to me. My coaches are shocked by my decision. Nearly everyone in my life is. My mother, especially. I’ve tried to explain to her—to everyone—my decision to join the Marine Corps.

It’s a privilege to be in this country, not a right. I learned this lesson in an AP American history class, and it soon became my passion, driven by my overwhelming need to earn that privilege every day. It starts with my honor to live in this country and extends to my pledge to fight for those who can’t earn the privilege themselves.

I felt this way before 9/11, but that strengthened my decision. That morning I was in the hall at school, between periods, when a teacher stepped into the doorway of his classroom and said, “Do you know what’s happening?” I didn’t. When I stepped into his classroom, he had the news on. I instantly started crying.

All my mother can think about is college. Neither she nor my father (who died when I was young) went, but my two brothers did, and both got full rides. Which is why I’ve worked so hard in school. My mother doesn’t make a lot of money, so I’ve got to get a scholarship, too, or I have to pay for it myself.

But I’ve made my decision. I’m joining the Marine Corps. I need something to push me, to drive me, and to bring out something in me that gives me joy. Something that isn’t easy. Problem is, I’m seventeen, and my mother won’t sign the paperwork. I’ll have to wait until I’m eighteen.

Until then, I’ll go to college.

  

In 2005, I walk into the recruiter’s office and say, “Sign me up. I want to be a Marine.”

“Okay, great,” the male recruiter says. All the Marines here, I notice, are men. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to be Force Recon.”

The recruiter and the other guys kind of laugh at me.

“Okay,” the recruiter says. “What do you really want to do?”

I don’t understand what’s going on. “I told you. I want to be Force Recon.”

“You can’t do that.”

I get defensive. “Why not?”

They stare at me like I’m oblivious.

“Women aren’t allowed in infantry billets,” the recruiter says.

Women aren’t allowed. I’m so angry I get up and leave.

I go back to college and, after I calm down, I do some research. Then I go back to the recruiter’s office.

“What’s the most combative position I can have?” I ask.

They tell me about this illustrious military occupational specialty (MOS) called a crew chief, or a door gunner. The more they talk, the more I realize it’s as close to combat as I can get. It will literally take an act of Congress to change the fact that women can’t serve in infantry positions. (They can now. That act of Congress finally happened.)

“Can females hold the crew chief position?” I ask.

“Well,” the recruiter says, “we don’t know of any women who do have it, but there’s nothing saying you can’t. If you go in with what we call an open contract, and if you make honor graduate, you’ll get to pick your job.”

“What’s ‘honor graduate’ mean?”

“It means you have to be the best. You have to graduate number one.”

Now I have a goal in front of me.

“Done,” I say. “Sign me up.”

Boot camp is fun. I love it. I have a great time. I’m good at it because I know I’m a leader. The Marines sharpen my skills. Their no-bullshit attitude creates a sense of self-confidence in me. They solidify what I’ll stand for and what I won’t.

I am the honor graduate. Number one. I did it. I accomplished my goal.

I tell the battalion commander I want to be a crew chief.

“There aren’t any slots for you,” she says, “so we’re going to sign you up to be crash fire rescue, which is in the aviation field.”

After boot camp, Marines either go to the School of Infantry or, if they’re not going to be in the infantry, they go to Marine Combat Training (MCT), which teaches the basics of being an infantryman. I’m shipped off to Camp Geiger, in North Carolina.

In boot camp, men and women are segregated. You’re not even allowed to look at each other from three hundred yards away. Now I’m going through MCT with the male Marines. We’re integrated, and women are going up against men every single day.

And this course has an honor graduate as well. A slot.

The master gunnery sergeant asks to speak to me. I go to his office.

“I hear you’re still looking to change your MOS to be a crew chief,” he says.

“Yes, Master Gunnery Sergeant.”

He stares at me. I know what he’s thinking: there’s never been a female crew chief who has deployed.

“I don’t care that you were an honor graduate at Parris Island,” he says. “You’re at my school now. If you want that job, you have to graduate honor graduate out of my school.”

In the platoon, we do land navigation. We do long humps carrying weapons and hundred-pound packs, learning how to survive off the land. I learn to shoot a .50 caliber and a 240. We eat MREs. We don’t shower for weeks.

I love it. I absolutely love it—no matter what they throw at me, no matter how many times they say I’m a brand-new nugget who doesn’t know her head from her ass. You’re here to learn, they keep telling us. You’re here to fight for this country. You signed up in a time of war. You did this willingly, so you better get your head on straight and learn to do it right because the Marine next to you is counting on you to save his life.

As graduation approaches, I’m neck and neck with another guy for the honor graduate spot. It comes down to the final test—a gun test on the 240 heavy machine gun.

I score number one.

Graduate as honor graduate. They finally change my MOS to crew chief.

But I still have four more schools to go through before I can actually hit the fleet.

Next stop: the Naval Aircrew Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida, where I’ll learn to become a crew chief. Half of the course is extremely strenuous PT qualifications.

I’m the only female.

I learn about the fixed wing and rotary aircrafts. There are a lot of attack helicopters, but the Huey is the one I want. Its primary mission is combat.

I finish the course and graduate as the honor graduate—again. Now I get to choose.

The gunnery sergeant walks down the line and asks each graduate his choice.

“Hueys,” I tell him. That will put me in the fight.

He shakes his head. “No, I’m going to put you on 46s.”

I’m a nobody lance corporal, and he’s a gunnery sergeant who’s also a Huey crew chief. The reason he doesn’t want me on the Hueys is probably because it’s a good ole boys club.

I speak up. “Respectfully, Gunnery Sergeant, I was told that if I graduate honor graduate, I get to pick. And I pick Hueys.”

“Why do you want Hueys?”

I tell him. He stares at me for what seems like hours. My heart is racing, blood pounding in my ears.

“You can dig your own grave,” he says.

Next stop: SERE school. Survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. They blindfold us and put us on a bus where the windows are blacked out. They drop us off at some undisclosed location in California, where we learn resistance methods if we’re ever captured.

I get beat up a little bit as I learn how to survive. But still, I’m loving it. Same with the next school, CNATT—the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training. I love the challenges. I love proving people wrong. And I love proving myself wrong, too—there are plenty of days when I hang my head and think, Man, I can’t do this. But then I wake up the next day and push myself more and more.

I’m honor graduate at both schools.

My last school is all about flying. It’s studying how to be crew chief and then passing not only written examinations but practical examinations, like going down into the flight line shop, checking out the right tools, setting up your aircraft properly, and being able to say the correct things on the flight.

This is where you’ll find out whether or not they’ll let you fly.

At every school, the men have made it clear that they don’t want a female graduate in the door gunner position. At each school, they make it harder and harder for me to succeed. The pressure is constant. I turn it into fuel for my fire. Oh, you don’t want me here? You don’t think I can do it? Well, guess what? I’m going to do it and I’m going to do it better than everyone else. CMT school is even more intense. All day, every day, I’m being told by my male instructors and by other men who are there to supposedly help me and lead me that I don’t belong here. They tell me I can’t be a door gunner. That I’m not going to make it.

It’s the first time I don’t like being in the Marine Corps.

I spend a lot of nights scared. There are a lot of tears and plenty of days when I have zero motivation. On those days, the only thing I know how to do is take the next step. When the alarm goes off, I get out of bed. Next step, I put my boots on. Next step, I walk to class. It’s all about that next step—these small, everyday victories. It’s all a mental game.

And I am not going to quit.

One instructor makes me believe I’ve flunked out. Then the scores are posted.

I’m the honor graduate.

I’ve made it.

Now it’s time to go to the fleet. There, no one cares if you were the honor graduate or the bottom of the barrel. None of that matters. You start again from zero. It’s time to put all your training into action.

And you better deliver.

I show up to my first squadron, HMLA-367 Scarface, in California. I’m the only female. As I check in, the guys on the squadron glare at me like, “Wait a minute, you can’t be here. This is a good ole boys club. Absolutely not. She ain’t ever gonna fly on my aircraft. She ain’t ever gonna work on my aircraft. She’s just a walking mattress. She’s not good for anything.”

We deploy together in nine months.

  

In 2008, we fly into the Al-Taqaddum Air Base in Iraq.

The training to get here was the most intensive thing I’ve ever experienced. Over those nine months, I learned how to be a mechanic. Learned how to test the aircraft and how to make adjustments to the controls, the fuel, how much gets dumped into the engine to make sure we’re within limits. Putting weight on the blades, changing the pitch of the blades, making sure it’s smooth. Making sure the engines run properly. How to pull a transmission, replace an engine, fix an engine and fuel cells.

On top of that, as a crew chief I studied all our weapons and the proper calls I have to make when flying. I had to know weapon tactics. The fundamentals of aerial gunnery. What happens to the round while it’s inside the weapon and what happens when you shoot it from a moving platform. Terminal ballistics and aerial ballistics—I had to learn it all.

The studying never ends. It’s incredible, the vast amount of knowledge required in order to simply do our jobs.

And, of course, there was target practice. We flew over the ocean, and I shot at multiple targets with the Huey’s minigun. The weapon fires three thousand rounds a minute. It’s fairly easy and smooth—a thing of beauty. But if it jams, then oh, God, it’s the devil. But still, I love it. It’s my favorite weapon.

Now I’m in Iraq. No more practice. I’m about to do it for real.

Our job is to fly around supporting convoys and the ground guys, giving them an escort into or out of a situation. The country is very flat and brown; it never changes color, ever. You can fly for hundreds of miles and it all looks the same.

Most of our missions involve saving the lives of Iraqi civilians—and even our enemies. If an enemy is injured in battle and lays down his weapon, it’s our duty to help him, and we do.

During my second tour of Iraq, I switch to another squadron: the Vipers. A small group of us go out and meet another squadron—the Gunfighters—in Al Asad, where we dismantle their aircraft, load them on a transport plane, fly everything to Kandahar, and then rebuild the birds.

The terrain in Afghanistan is different from Iraq. Here there are mountains and a river and patches of green. There are small towns and ones that have what seems like millions of homes and millions of people crammed into a space the size of a football field.

When I return to Afghanistan again, in 2009, for my third deployment, my sergeant major wants me to be a part of the Lioness Program.

“We need female Marines with the ground units,” he explains.

“I thought women aren’t allowed on the ground side.”

“They aren’t, technically. But we need them there, to do all the grunt stuff, because of the culture. Our male soldiers aren’t allowed to search, let alone touch, Afghani women.”

My CO won’t allow it. “Absolutely not,” he tells the sergeant major. “She’s a crew chief. If she leaves, it will take an entire crew out of operation. We don’t have enough people, and we’re flying every single day.”

Not only that, but there are now limits on the number of hours we can fly per day.

Our flight surgeon is downing us all the time. She’s constantly checking on us because we’re going over the allowable hours every single day. We have daily, weekly, and monthly regulations, and we’re superseding all of them. We’re trying our hardest to do everything by the book, but it’s impossible.

Besides, what am I supposed to tell the guy downrange who’s in danger of getting his head blown off? Sorry, man, I can’t come save you because the book says I have to sleep. I get the rules, they make sense. If we don’t rest and do the right things, then we’re going to crash out of the sky and die. But the war doesn’t care about our sleep schedule or the fact that we only have so many crew members and pilots. If we’re at the end of our shift and the alarm goes off and the new crew isn’t there yet—or even if they are and haven’t set up their bird—we have to go even if we’ve worked a sixteen-hour day.

The flight surgeons have a solution: they give us uppers and downers.

And we take them, because we need the help. We have to stay awake in the aircraft or behind the weapon. When we get back from a mission, our adrenaline is through the roof. We clean up our bird and talk to the ground guys and maintainers, then realize we’ve got to be back to work in six hours—so we take a downer so we can hopefully get some sleep.

Somewhere in this haze, I turn twenty-two.

On the morning of October 26, 2009, the last day our squadron is flying together, I’m running the desk when I get word that two Marine helicopters—a Huey and a Cobra—have collided, and four Marines I’ve come to know very, very well—four great men—are dead.

It’s an extremely tough deployment. But the relationships, the brotherhood, the closeness, the fun and joy we manage to find in the shittiest situations—these are the things I’ll never forget. I’ll hang on to them, and the memories of these four heroes who died that day, for the rest of my life.

  

My five-year contract is coming to an end. I return home and fly across the country, attending funerals. I’m ready to reenlist, but first I have to get surgery on my knee. My work is very, very, very hard on the body, and my knee is really damaged. I’ve been putting off the surgery for a long time.

I’m also having some sort of heart issue. I’m told my heart has suffered some damage from inhaling too much toxic smoke from the burn pits in Iraq. The doctors put me on what’s called a temporary up-chit so that I can deploy again—and I definitely want to deploy.

I’m at the top of my game. I’m now a staff sergeant. I picked up all my qualifications, I’m good at what I do, and I’ve proven myself to all the guys. I’m ready to go to WTI—weapons and tactics instructor, the highest level you can acquire as a crew chief. I have my package in for MECEP—the Marine Corps Enlisted Commissioning Education Program. It will pay for me to go to a four-year college and become an officer—and a pilot.

Health issues aside, I couldn’t be happier.

Then, as I’m going through physical therapy post knee surgery, everything is ripped out from under me.

I’m told I’m never going to run again. Because of that and the damage to my heart, I’m also told I’m never going to fly again.

For eleven months, I fight their decision. My CO joins my fight. During that time, I’m stuck running the desk, so I’m not flying anymore. I work as a mechanic, fixing helicopters when they break, and I launch them when they have to perform a mission. I’m watching my nuggets go and fly, knowing that there’s a strong chance I will never fly again myself.

Six weeks before the end of my contract, my CO walks me over to medical and pulls aside the battalion commander, a woman. My CO and I discuss all the reasons why I should fly again. Why I can fly.

“She will never fly again,” the battalion commander tells us.

It’s October of 2010. I leave the Marine Corps in January of 2011.

My life turns upside down.

  

I head off to Southern California and end up bartending. I meet someone, a fellow Marine, and we start dating seriously. I stay in Southern California while he deploys. When he gets back, we move to central California, stay there for a year and a half, and then we move to Annapolis, where he’s going to be an instructor at the Naval Academy.

I become a volunteer boxing coach at the academy—as a civilian. I got into boxing in California so I could stay in shape without running.

For some reason, I get it into my head that maybe I can still run. Ten minutes into it, I collapse. The pain is so bad I have to call someone to come pick me up because I can’t walk.

In 2013, I split with my boyfriend. I stay in Annapolis and get my college degree. When I graduate, I use my Marine Corps security clearance and land a six-figure job with the National Security Agency, working as a facility security officer and contract specialty officer.

I hate it. There’s no way I can do this for twenty years.

I leave the NSA and become a personal trainer. I’ve always trained Marines, and I have a passion for fitness. I work for a Gold’s Gym for about a year. Then, as I’m preparing to go off and run my own business, I get a phone call from a Marine Corps recruiter. His job is to call all prior service Marines and try to get us back on duty, either active or reserves.

“You’re getting a fresh start with your medical record,” he tells me.

I’m stunned. Speechless.

“There’s no record of anything, good or bad,” he says. “I’m telling you this because if you can pass all the physical requirements, you can come back to the Marine Corps.”

As he tells me about life in the reserves, I’m thinking about my civilian life. I have a home. I bought a boat. I have a new career and money in the bank. But I’m still miserable. Something’s missing.

“Just try it,” he says. “If you don’t like it, you can quit.”

I check out the reserve unit and sign a nonobligating contract.

I pass all my tests.

I rehabilitate myself physically, and even though it’s very, very painful, I’m able to complete the three-mile run that’s part of my PFT—the Marine Corps physical fitness test.

I get my flight status back.

The feeling is incredible.

I burst into tears.

I’ve made it. After all this time, I’ve made it back.

During the drive to my first reserve drill weekend, the gunnery sergeant of the shop calls to make sure I know where I’m going. At the end of the conversation, he says, “Welcome back to the gun club. Your reputation precedes you.”

His tone is clear: my reputation is a good one.

Around this time, I start getting Facebook messages from women who don’t know me. They reach out and tell me that they’ve heard so much about me, and they want to know if I can give them any advice on how to be a crew chief. They thank me for paving the way for them.

Hearing their heartfelt words makes all the bullshit I went through fucking worth it.

And I would do it all over again in a heartbeat, because I love the Marine Corps. I love leading Marines. There is nothing greater, no greater feeling, no greater responsibility or achievement.