Courage Under Fire

Tommi’s recent return to duty in Iraq prompted a turn of my attention to the recognition given Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and her driver, Spec. Ashley J. Pullen, both receiving honors last Thursday for their performance under fire in an exchange of hostilities with Iraqi resistance troops. Hester “fought her way through an enemy ambush south of Baghdad, killing three insurgents with her M-4 rifle to save fellow soldiers' lives,” and Pullen “laid down fire to suppress insurgents,” exposing herself to heavy fire “in order to provide medical assistance to her critically injured comrades." Both Hester and Pullen, along with six others of that cracker-jack unit, received recognition last week: Pullen received the Bronze Star, and Hester became the first woman since WWII to receive the Silver Star, a medal signifying valor in combat.

What makes the story worth repeating for me is the demonstration these women so competently made of doing their jobs in combat side-by-side with their male counterparts. According to a Washington Post report by Ann Scott Tyson, lives were saved under Hester’s leadership. Her superb performance in guerilla warfare gives sound answer to those who would question the quality of work done by women in combat.

One aspect of Tyson’s report troubles me, however; she first reports the 23-year old Hester as a retail store manager enlisted with the Kentucky National Guard’s 617^th Military Police Unit then goes on to conflate that part-time military status with full-time enlistment, referring to Hester as having “…joined the Army in 2001.” A soldier? Yes. Ready to serve? Yes. Capable, competent, and courageous? Yes, yes, yes … as proven alongside hundreds of thousands other National Guards men and women whose service is currently being appropriated to compensate troop shortfalls for an increasingly demanding war! But there is difference between “joining the (full-time) army” and joining the National Guard, and I’m guessing that those who volunteered for enlistment in the National Guard knew that difference and were counting on us to know it, too.

According to current Pentagon figures, tens of thousands of American women have served to date in Iraq: 36 have been killed and 285 wounded. All told, 1720 U.S. soldiers have died in an operation call “Iraqi Freedom,” and more than 13,000 have been wounded. I’m grateful to Sgt. Hester and those of her unit for the work they did and the lives they saved – I’m glad they made it out alive, but for everyone’s sake I think we need a better answer, and we need it soon!

Republican Representative Walter B. Jones (No. Carolina) exercised another kind of courage last week when he spoke on behalf of a bi-partisan committee to demand greater administrative response to growing public discontent with the situation in Iraq: he called for a commitment to a clearly defined timeline for troop withdrawal. Read more about that effort here. I am grateful to Rep. Jones for being one among his party to do what can be done in bringing this concern into public debate.