As I stepped off the C-130, I was shocked by the intensity of the heat. Hot air rippled up from the tarmac, and the desert wind whipped around my face and over my fatigues. It was 2007, and we had just been flown over the Hindu Kush into the Afghan capital, Kabul. We were there to take part in a U.S. military assistance mission with the Afghanistan National Army. I shifted the heavy gear I was carrying, and as I did, I looked around at the arid landscape. Maybe at that moment I should have been thinking about the honor of my mission, the men and women standing beside me, or the people I loved who were back home. Instead, I found myself wondering, How in the hell did I end up here?
I am not a Marine or Army officer. I wasn’t trained in the ways of counterinsurgency. I’m no ground pounder or Special Forces officer. The Navy had made me a surface warfare officer (SWO), whose job is to lead ships and sailors at sea. I could not have been more out of my element. As I stood there on my first day in Afghanistan, I remember thinking that fate had forgotten me. I thought back to the path I’d taken in life that led me there and hoped I would get through this alive and without posttraumatic stress disorder.
MONTANA TO ANNAPOLIS
The hospital where I was born is the same hospital where my father was born, in the small agricultural town of Yuma, Arizona. Years later, we moved to another small town, this time in Montana. When I was a junior in high school, my parents sat me down and told me that they couldn’t afford to send me to college. Coming from a family with a strong military background, the natural next step was to apply to a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program that would pay my way through school. Instead, my father pushed me to apply to the Naval Academy. I did so, but blindly. What the hell, I thought. It never hurts to try.
One day, months after my application had been submitted, I was pulled out of class by the dean of my high school and brought to the front office. I thought I was in trouble for cutting class, but then I saw my mother standing there. She was crying when she pulled me into her arms and told me I had been accepted to the Naval Academy. I wouldn’t understand why she was crying until ten years later, when she shed those same tears as I boarded a plane that would take me from Montana en route to Afghanistan. She knew there was a distinct possibility that I would be sent into harm’s way. Military moms are special in that they dread every moment of deployment, but still have great admiration for their children serving in the military. Meanwhile, my dad was just happy that my tuition was free!
The night before I flew to Annapolis for Induction Day, I was terrified that I might be making the worst decision of my life. I didn’t know why I was signing up for a military education and giving up everything I knew back home. College was an option. I could have taken out loans and gone to Montana State, picked a safe major with good job prospects, and married a high school sweetheart. That seemed like happily ever after, but something deep down said it wasn’t for me. I would follow a different path into the unknown.
Despite my ignorance, I flourished in the land of winter working blues. During plebe summer, I excelled at time management and waxing floors. Yes, there is an art to stripping, waxing, and shining Bancroft’s decks. My company mates and I faced challenges, academic and physical, as a thirty-five-unit family. I felt myself getting smarter and stronger every day. Of importance, the leadership classes forced me to challenge core assumptions about right and wrong. I actually read Aristotle, Kant, and Rousseau in the process! I felt like the small-town girl who’d made it big.
I thought often about my fear of the unknown and about being away from my family. Some nights I would go running along the seawall hoping to find a little clarity about where my life was headed. By the end of my four years at the Naval Academy, I couldn’t say that I knew where I was going, but I did feel ready for a commission and ready to lead. One other thing I knew was that I wanted to be a pilot. I’m fairly certain I wasn’t the only one of my classmates who was swayed by the speed and excitement of flying planes. On top of that, Hollywood’s version of a pilot was Top Gun’s Maverick or Ice Man, and who wouldn’t want to work with them? Academics were tough for me, however, and I was up against stiff competition for the coveted aviation billets. When service selection night came, I not only discovered that I wasn’t going to be a pilot, I also found out I had been appointed a SWO. “Really?” I asked myself. Not very many people wanted this appointment, least of all me. I was angry and devastated, and I cursed fate for not giving me what I had wanted.
ON BOARD USS TARAWA AND 463 DAYS IN AFGHANISTAN
It was March 2003, and I was twenty-three years old when I arrived on USS Tarawa (LHA 1) in the northern Persian Gulf just days before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. I was lucky enough to have one of the best chiefs in the U.S. Navy, Richard Schwartzman. He taught me to lead by example, put my sailors first, and only accept excellence. I came to appreciate the deck plate leadership—being physically there with my shipmates—that you can only find as a SWO. I was handed responsibility and the power to direct operations at sea from the start. Not bad for a Montana girl who had a tendency to get sea sick! My counterparts in other communities would have to wait years in some cases for such opportunities.
In the fall of 2006, I was fortunate enough to be assigned to the Surface Warfare Officer School in Newport, Rhode Island, as an instructor to young division officers. My job was to teach ship handling and seamanship. After three and a half years at sea, I was on shore duty and loving feeling the earth beneath my feet. I had two whole years of not being deployed ahead of me. Just as quickly as I had begun to think that fate was on my side, things changed. I found out I had been selected for a 463-day deployment to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
My first day working hand-in-hand with Afghans and with the U.S. Army sent me into immediate culture shock. The environment was fast-paced, confusing, and frustrating. At Camp Blackhorse, the commonsense approach of purpose that circulated throughout the command was inspiring and impressive given the presence of four different services—Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Army—as well as civilians and foreign forces. We may have come from different backgrounds and approached goals from different perspectives, but in Afghanistan there was one team, one fight. It made me proud to watch the branches come together, each using its strengths to support the others.
Being a woman in Afghanistan was an unusual experience. It was strange having Afghan men openly gawk at me. I wore a full uniform at all times, my hair was uncovered, and my face was visible. These men had never seen a woman who wasn’t traditionally dressed and therefore covered. It took months for me to stop feeling like I was on display every time I left the camp. Afghan women have no voice in society, and in some cases they’re nothing more than second-class citizens traded like chattel. One of the Afghan majors I advised was Major Nador. One day at the garrison, he said to me, “You are not a woman; you are a soldier, and that is how we look at you.” I argued with him that I was a woman and that I was as capable as he and his soldiers. He laughed and said, “No, you are not a woman, again, you are American, different, and a soldier to us.” I never could understand this rationale, but it was my job to work with these men for the purpose of progress, and so that is what I did. Most were uneducated and unwilling to think differently from the way they had been raised. It inspired me even more to perform well and show them that women are meaningful members of society. I hoped that with time they would come to treat their wives and daughters differently.
During my Afghanistan deployment, I was an adviser to a small group of women called family support officers in the Afghan National Army. Most of the women were nurses and midwives; one had even been a practicing doctor before the Taliban forced her to seek refuge in neighboring Pakistan. There were only six women in a garrison of more than 6,000 soldiers. I have never met a group of stronger women. Forced to endure hardship and social restraints, they did what they could with minimal resources to educate Afghans on staying healthy and avoiding communicable diseases. As part of their job, these women visited families of slain Afghan soldiers and did what little they could to help ease the pain of having lost loved ones. I found myself admiring their compassion and genuine care of the Afghan soldiers with whom they worked. It was fascinating to watch them operate with little to no medical resources.
The atrocities and abuses women endure in Afghanistan are heart wrenching and continue today. I observed many incidents firsthand and heard of many more from my colleagues. A family support officer told me the story of her youngest sister, Najeeba, who had been accused of being unfaithful to her fiancé under Taliban’s rule. The truth of the story was that the fiancé didn’t want to marry Najeeba, but his family insisted on the match. He therefore accused her of infidelity, and as a result, she was stoned to death on a dirt road in front of the people of her village. I will also never forget the woman from Kabul who had acid thrown on her face for pursuing an education against her family’s wishes. This was a common practice of the Taliban.
During a routine convoy operation some seven months into my deployment, soldiers from my camp came across a horrendous multivehicle accident. Four cars filled with Afghan civilians were involved in a collision, leaving at least three dead and three more in critical condition. All were immediately rushed to my camp, where they could receive trauma care. Because of the cultural restraints on women in Afghanistan, I was assigned the female victim. If a man other than a husband or direct blood relative were to see her without the burka, she would be disgraced and her family would be dishonored. She frantically screamed and resisted the male medics but calmed down when I arrived. My presence would preserve her honor.
With an interpreter, I took her to a private area and was able to convince her that she needed to be examined. Her white burka was covered in blood, and the medics needed to know if it was her own or from another victim. With the interpreter doing his job from behind a screen, she took off her burka and let me examine the extent of her injuries. Inside this makeshift infirmary, I was giving aid while communicating to the unseen interpreter. She was so scared, yet we had a connection, woman-to-woman, and I believe that provided her some relief.
She had minor cuts and bruises but while examining her, I noticed a bulge around her belly as well as some bleeding down her leg. She was pregnant! I now realized her condition was much more serious than originally thought. We rushed her to a nearby French medical facility. I accompanied her because I did not want her to be frightened and alone with strange men. I assisted a female physician with a sonogram, and we were able to tell her that she and her child would be fine. I was with the woman from the time she came to the camp to the time she was told she would be all right. Consequently, a strong bond was established. I felt strange and sad when I left her in the care of the female French medics, and I wondered what would happen to her and her family. More than anything, I felt I was fully participating in the operation, as a soldier and as a woman.
Although I had cursed fate the day I learned I’d been deployed to Afghanistan, it would come to be the greatest experience and adventure of my life. It caused me to grow as an individual and allowed me to defend my country in a way most naval officers would never experience. My time in Afghanistan made me realize what it was that I would do next in my life. In essence, it was the adventure that defined who I was. On the day I spent with the pregnant Afghan woman, in Afghanistan’s nastiest terrain, I realized I wanted to be a trauma nurse. I am now pursuing a career in nursing.
Does everything happen for a reason? I think so. My appointment to the Naval Academy, the designation as a SWO, and the individual augmentation to Afghanistan were milestones pivotal to my success and achievement as a leader, sailor, soldier, and citizen. I continue to be humble and proud in the service of my country. Going ahead, I know fate will have a plan for me whether I like it or not. With the confidence in myself as a woman and a leader, developed at the Academy and beyond, I know I can do anything.
