These military women were already doing it

Female Soldier Recounts Time Under Fire
Jan 28, 2013
Military.com
by Richard Sisk

Army Lt. Col. Kellie McCoy adopts the just-doin’-my-job poker face when asked about her combat time, but she stands out in history along with many other of the 280,000 military women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

McCoy has served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. She knows what it feels like to kill on the battlefield. She earned a Bronze Star with Combat “V” in the process. Maybe most importantly, McCoy knows how to cram 11 paratroopers and their combat gear into a Humvee under fire.

All of that would set her apart from other uniformed women had so many other women not experienced similar situations the past 10 years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. McCoy is part of the generation of women that convinced U.S. military leaders to make women eligible for combat roles for the first time in U.S. military history.

A West Point graduate who completed airborne school as a cadet, McCoy led 11 male paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division into combat in Iraq in 2003. The St. Louis native was a captain at the time.

Soon after a firefight off Highway 10 near Fallujah, she spoke to a reporter and gave full credit to her men for overcoming the ambush. McCoy explained how she led her men to concentrate fire in specific directions.
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1st Woman to Lead in Combat 'Thrilled' With Change
Jan 25, 2013
Associated Press
by Michael Biesecker

RALEIGH, N.C. - Former U.S. Army Capt. Linda L. Bray says her male superiors were incredulous upon hearing she had ably led a platoon of military police officers through a firefight during the 1989 invasion of Panama.

Instead of being lauded for her actions, the first woman in U.S. history to lead male troops in combat said higher-ranking officers accused her of embellishing accounts of what happened when her platoon bested an elite unit of the Panamanian Defense Force. After her story became public, Congress fiercely debated whether she and other women had any business being on the battlefield.

The Pentagon's longstanding prohibition against women serving in ground combat ended Thursday, when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that most combat roles jobs will now be open to female soldiers and Marines. Panetta said women are integral to the military's success and will be required to meet the same physical standards as their male colleagues.
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Silver Star Recipient A Reluctant Hero
NPR
by RACHEL MARTIN

February 22, 2011

The idea of being a hero doesn't really sit well with Leigh Ann Hester, so having an action figure modeled after her is, in a word, surreal. The doll, decked out in Army fatigues, an M4 rifle and small Oakley sunglasses, is supposed to be a tribute to Hester, a sergeant in the Army National Guard who received the Silver Star in 2005 for valor during a firefight in Iraq. "The action figure doesn't really look a whole lot like me," she says. "The box is better."

Hester has had a hard time seeing herself in any of the hero stuff that has been made of her — and there has been a lot: paintings, posters, even a wax figure on permanent exhibit at the Army Women's Museum in Fort Lee, Va.

When Hester enlisted with the National Guard in the spring of 2001, she had been selling shoes at the local Shoe Pavilion near her home in Nashville, Tenn. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, happened right before she left for basic training. She remembers the drill sergeants telling her and the other recruits that they would be the ones to go to war. And that's exactly what happened. In July 2004, Hester was ordered to Iraq.
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Woman Gains Silver Star -- And Removal From Combat
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 1, 2008

KHOST, Afghanistan -- Pfc. Monica Brown cracked open the door of her Humvee outside a remote village in eastern Afghanistan to the soft pop of bullets shot by Taliban fighters. But instead of taking cover, the 18-year-old medic grabbed her bag and ran through gunfire toward fellow soldiers in a crippled and burning vehicle.

Vice President Cheney pinned Brown, of Lake Jackson, Tex., with a Silver Star in March for repeatedly risking her life on April 25, 2007, to shield and treat her wounded comrades, displaying bravery and grit. She is the second woman since World War II to receive the nation's third-highest combat medal.
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