Guard on the Frontline: National Guard Women in Iraq

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Guard on the Frontline: National Guard Women in Iraq

By MSG Bob Haskell

August 1, 2006


YOU have to take your hat off to Leigh Ann Hester. You have to give a large measure of respect to Lorie Jewell. You have to pause when you hear that nine of the 365 Army National Guard Soldiers who have died during Operation Iraqi Freedom are women.

They all help us to understand how this country’s 21st-century war against terrorism has rewritten many of the rules that most Americans associate with armed conflict at the same time that it has enabled the entire Army National Guard to demonstrate its mettle.

This war against a faceless foe has crossed just about every line that this country has ever drawn when it comes to women in combat. Granted, women are still prohibited from serving in the infantry, artillery and armor. That, however, has not prevented them from venturing into harm’s way as military police officers and journalists, or from making the supreme sacrifice during this war in which every community and every stretch of road in Iraq is the battlefield.

Hester, from the Kentucky Army Guard’s 617th Military Police Company, was awarded a Silver Star for her part in breaking up the ambush of a coalition convoy in March 2005. She was 23 when she became the first female Soldier to receive the award since World War II — and the first to receive it for taking offensive action against an enemy. Her picture is on the cover of the 2005-2006 Army Green Book, the annual almanac published by the Association of the United States Army.

Jewell, a civilian daily newspaper reporter and member of the Florida Army Guard’s 107th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, was 41 when she earned a Combat Action Badge. She was named the Defense Department’s best military print journalist for 2005 during her deployment.

Both Hester and Jewell help demonstrate how the National Guard is more heavily engaged in combat than at any time since World War II.

By Army standards, the degree of Guard participation has been significant, even though the total does not approach the number of Guard Soldiers who fought in Europe and in the Pacific more than six decades ago.

As of May 31, 143,471 Guard Soldiers had served during OIF, with 35,669 still on duty in-theater, according to the Army Guard’s Readiness Center.

In late 2004 and 2005, nine brigades, half of the combat brigades serving in Iraq, belonged to the Army Guard.

The 42nd Infantry Division from New York became the first Guard division to deploy to a combat zone since the Korean War when its headquarters shipped out for a year in Iraq in October 2004.

The 42nd commanded Task Force Liberty, which included Guard infantry brigades from Idaho and Tennessee and two active Army brigades from the 3rd Inf. Div. The New York division replaced the 1st Armored Div. and preceded the 101st Airborne Div. in securing the north-central sector of Iraq.

In all, 4,000 42nd Inf. Div. personnel — from headquarters companies, military intelligence and military police battalions, the 42nd Aviation Bde., and armor, signal, field artillery and combat-support elements — deployed.

It has been a remarkable success story, said LTG H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau. The Guard has been there since OIF was launched in March 2003, when 3,729 Soldiers from three Army Guard brigades — the 53rd from Florida, the 76th from Indiana, and the 41st from Oregon — participated in OIF-1.

But the Guard has paid a heavy price while proving that it can hold its own with its active-Army counterpart. Through June 5, 365 Army Guard Soldiers had become Iraqi Freedom casualties since March 31, 2003. August and September 2005 have been the two costliest months. Twenty-three Guard Soldiers died last August. Twenty-four perished in September.

SPC Michelle Witmer, a military police Soldier from Wisconsin, became the first Army Guard woman to be killed in combat when she died in Baghdad on April 9, 2004. The Army Guard has since listed eight more OIF female fatalities.

Female Soldiers who have been there and come back reflect the same range of emotions as many men do — frustration, satisfaction and melancholy — about serving in a combat zone.

“I volunteered to go without my Florida National Guard unit after learning about the command, its mission and its urgent need for a military journalist,” said Jewell, who, as far as she knew, was the only National Guard Soldier serving with the Multi-National Security Transition Command–Iraq.

“The opportunity to show through words and photographs what U.S. and coalition forces were doing to help rebuild Iraq’s military and police forces was something I couldn’t pass up,” she said. “Fortunately, my overall experience was more positive than negative. I don’t regret going over there for one minute. Never in my life have I felt like I was contributing to something greater than myself than I did in Iraq.”

And, yes, she has had to deal with her own post-deployment emotions.

“One of the hardest things about going over as an individual is coming home alone, leaving friends and colleagues behind,” said Jewell, after returning to her civilian job at the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune. “I have a hard time watching the news. It only makes me worry about my comrades. Life seems more leisurely now and, sometimes, I feel a little bit guilty that I’m at home and they aren’t. But I know it won’t be that way forever.”

Jewell’s reflections are based on her experiences over an entire year. Hester’s acclaim is grounded in a single incident — the insurgents’ attack against a convoy of 30 tractor-trailer trucks on March 20, 2005. She was one of eight Kentucky Guard Soldiers who charged to the rescue in three vehicles to break up the attack and kill or capture the attackers.

Her Silver Star citation indicates Hester directed the gunner in her vehicle to focus fire on a dozen insurgents in a trench and orchard as she dismounted and threw grenades into the trench. She then killed three insurgents with her M-4 rifle.

Two other members of her unit earned the Silver Star that day. Three received the Bronze Star with “V” devices, and two got Army Commendation Medals with “V” devices.

Her gender may have been the reason that Hester garnered more attention than most Silver Star recipients receive, but she has no problem keeping the episode in perspective.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with being a female,” she said during her award ceremony. “It’s about the duties I performed that day as a Soldier.”


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