COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: Women
The War's Deadliest Day for U.S. Women
Susan Dominus, Glamour Magazine
May 2005
There was a loud bang and the flash of a fireball and in just minutes
an Iraqi suicide bomb killed three American military women and horribly
wounded 11 more. It happened one year ago this month and was one of the
worst disasters ever to hit U.S. women in uniform. But out of that
dreadful attack came a true band of sisters tied together by
friendship, honor and raw courage.
As the early summer days in Iraq got hotter and hotter, pushing well
past 100 degrees, many of the female marines in Fallujah went on high
alert: American intelligence said that a suicide bomber was planning an
attack that would specifically target military women. But on June 23,
2005, Angelica Jimenez, then a 20-year-old lance corporal from New
Jersey, wasn't thinking about that; she wasn't thinking about the
mortars that sometimes flew overhead or about the other dangers of her
job manning a checkpoint that Iraqis passed through to get into and out
of Fallujah. Instead, she woke up feeling like it would be a good day.
"It was my husband's birthday, and I was going to talk to him on the
phone that night," says Jimenez, a young woman with a quiet confidence
and a soft, gentle voice. Jimenez was usually enveloped in a fog of
exhaustion, thanks to the early dawn wake-up call and long hours at
work, but for once, she wasn't even tired. "It just seemed like
everything was going right."
Jimenez was one of 17 American military women who would be manning
seven checkpoints scattered around Fallujah that day, patting down Iraqi
women and searching them for explosives. For the most part, she was proud to
be there, helping with what she saw as the U.S. mission, bringing
democracy to Iraq. "We were part of the cause. It meant something," she
says.
The job wasn't difficult, but it was risky; the majority of military
women in Iraq worked on base, protected by thick concrete barriers, but
at the checkpoints, troops were exposed to the sporadic violence of the
surrounding city. The most dangerous part was simply getting to work:
Every morning a convoyconsisting of a few armed trucks and
Humvees picked up the women from their barracks in Camp Fallujah for a
20-minute ride down a sniper-lined urban highway. In the evening, a
convoy returned them to the base, because women weren't allowed to
sleep in the same quarters as men. (Most male marines slept at their
checkpoints and didn't travel the perilous route each day.) Jimenez's
fellow marine Lance Corporal Erin Libby, then 21, from Maine, came to
dread the drive. "I used to head out thinking: Is this the day we get
blown up?" she says. "You just knew something was going to happen
eventually. It was logical."
For relief from the tension, the marines reveled in the breaks they
took in the trailers parked near each checkpoint. "Mostly what I did there
was sleep," says Jimenez; others killed time listening to their iPods
or channeling the heroics of Spider-Man on their Game Boys. They'd trade
favorite movie lines or pass around photos from back home. Libby would
crack everyone up by contorting her prom queen-pretty face into an
imitation of a camel, or she'd lead a session of eight-minute abs.
Women make up a small portion of the marines6 percent, compared with
15 percent in the military overallso when female friendships click, they
tend to be fast and strong. Jimenez had grown particularly close to
Holly Charette, a 21-year-old lance corporal from Rhode Island who was
well liked because she also worked in the mail room and would sort
through stacks of correspondence if someone came in desperate for a
letter. A former cheerleader, Charette had a huge collection of
chick-flick DVDs and had memorized Britney Spears' dance moves, which
she'd occasionally show off. "The girl was just smiles, smiles, smiles
all the time," says Jimenez. The two women called each other by their
last namesoften marines don't even know their friends' first namesbut
that didn't stop them from talking about everything: Charette's younger
brothers, the boyfriend she adored, Jimenez's siblings, the husband
she'd married just two weeks before leaving for Iraq. During their
breaks, Charette would read aloud racy passages from a book called
Addicted, and both women would howl with laughter.
Despite the upbeat start to her day, and a safe ride to her checkpoint,
Jimenez could sense that her good mood was wearing off as the hours of
June 23, 2005, ticked by. "It just felt weird," she says. "I couldn't
put my finger on it." Unusually slow days tend to make marines nervous:
In Iraq, when insurgent attacks are in the works, the streets usually
empty out as word gets to civilians to stay clear. Jimenez wasn't the
only one ill at easeSally Saalman, then 21, the corporal in charge of
the female marines at all the checkpoints, was dismayed to see a
sandstorm brewing; it was the kind of weather that gives insurgents
ideal cover for an attack. Unbeknownst to Jimenez, the day that had
begun so well would prove to be the saddest and most terrifying of her
young life.
More than that, the hours to come would mark a historical reckoning
point for female soldiers. For while the Iraqi conflict is much like
any other warfilled with split-second decisions, reckless mistakes and
impromptu displays of heroismthe faces of the combatants have changed.
In a war with no classic front lines, women share the dangers with men,
and these female marines would prove that they, like generations of
male soldiers before them, were ready to fight, risk their lives and even
die trying to protect each other.
By seven o'clock that evening, at another checkpoint three or four
miles away, the sun was still hot and high in the sky. Alisha Harding, then a
23-year-old marine corporal from Utah, wasn't feeling so much disturbed
as she was annoyed. Harding, who'd joined the Corps because she wanted
"to be a hard-ass," believed strongly in the U.S. mission in Iraq. That
day, however, she was frustrated with the way things were being run;
she was angry at the male marines who would be escorting her and the other
women back to base. "They were rushing us," she says.
Ordinarily, at the end of the day, a few men from each checkpoint would
drive their female coworkers to a large U.S. facility known as Civil
Military Operations Center (CMOC), where Iraqis also went to bring
grievances against the American military. Over the course of an hour or
two, the women would trickle in to CMOC until all of themanywhere from
17 to 19 marineshad arrived. Then they'd clamber onto one truck and
head with their security detail back to Camp Fallujah. However, in
recent weeks the convoy had been leaving earlier than usual. On the
evening of June 23, the men seemed to be in a hurry to get back to the
relative comfort of the base, several of the female marines say. (Other
marines say the timetable was compressed to confuse the insurgents.
Public-affairs officials at marine headquarters declined to confirm any
of these details or comment on the circumstances of that day.) Whatever
the reason, on that evening a few of the male marines took the
initiative of driving to each checkpoint to pick up the women and ferry
them to CMOC. When Harding's ride arrived, a higher-ranking marine
said: "You guys shouldn't be going out there right now. It's dangerous."
Her superior had good reason to worry. Fallujah, in Anbar province, is
the hotbed of the insurgency that had been attacking American forces
throughout Iraq since April 2003. Some military call the city "the bomb
factory" because so many suicide bombers were based there, and in the
fall of 2004, two separate attacks on marine trucks in the area killed
a total of 15 men. With the exception of major battles, it is the
highways in Fallujah that pose the greatest day-to-day dangers, military experts
agree. "It's a large, flat country," says military historian Bing West,
"so everyone drives a car&but you don't know which among hundreds of
thousands of drivers has the intention to blow himself and everyone
else up."
By leaving early, Harding knew, the convoy would be on the highway
while it was still daylight, making it a clearer target. Traveling before the
9 P.M. civilian curfew also increased the potential for attacks from
the Iraqi drivers still on the road. Harding shared her superior's
concerns, but neither of them had the authority to change course. Says Harding,
"Nobody knew who to go to, to voice our opinions."
FIFTEEN MILES TO CAMP FALLUJAH
At 7:15 P.M., Saalman was trying furiously to complete a head count of
the 14 women boarding the truck before it left CMOC for Camp Fallujah.
Saalman, a devout Christian from Indiana's horse country with
honey-blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes, loved the Corps. "I bleed
green," she once told a fellow marine. Going through her list, she put
a check next to the name of Navy Petty Officer First Class Regina Clark,
43, from Washington, probably her closest friend thereand the only
nonmarine in the group. A single mother with an 18-year-old son heading
to college, Clark was nearing the end of her second tour in Iraq. She
often provided moral support for Saalman, who says, "I could trust her
with pretty much anything."
Charette was there. So were Harding and Jimenezalthough, as usual,
they didn't converse or even make eye contact. "We weren't crazy about each
other," Harding admits. She and a friend of Jimenez"s had gotten into a
shoving match a few months back when the friend had defied Harding's
orders. Like all marines, says Harding, "we had a lot of attitude."
Saalman continued down her list. She saw Diane Cardile, then 23, an
easygoing private first class from Pennsylvania, and her two roommates
at Camp Fallujah: Lance Corporal Laura Bringas, then 21, a woman from
Arizona with a big, mischievous laugh, and Ramona Valdez, 20, an
outspoken and well- respected corporal from the Bronx via the Dominican
Republic.
Friends Lynn Beasley, then 20, and Christina Humphrey, 22 at the time,
both lance corporals, were on the truck as well. Beasley, a punk-rock
fan from Illinois with a high-energy personality, was sometimes called
"Rock Star." Humphrey, from California, had earned the nickname
"Hippie" for her spiritual take on the world, which didn't diminish her
reputation for toughness: A few months earlier, she and Libby, who was
also on the truck, had been working the CMOC checkpoint when snipers
started taking potshots at the marines. Humphrey advanced without cover
and fired, possibly taking out one of the insurgents. Her bravery
earned her a medal for valor. Continuing down her list, Saalman checked off
Corporal Teresa Fernandez, then 21, a small-arms technician from New
Jersey, and Kodie Misiura, then 19, a quiet blond lance corporal from
California who'd been considering going to college but instead decided
to join the marines. Finally there was Oyoana Allende, then 21, a lance
corporal from Illinois. She loved to salsa dance; once overweight,
she'd lost 55 pounds just so she could become a marine.
Saalman put down her pen. Fourteen women now sat along two benches in
the truck, known as a seven-ton, which was scheduled to pick up three
more women at a checkpoint on the way back to base. The women faced out
rather than toward each other, so they could look over the Kevlar-lined
panels that ended just below eye level and scan for insurgents. Their
convoy consisted of a Humvee filled with male marines in the lead,
followed by the women's truck, then a second truck carrying male
marines, and behind that two or three Humvees (the marines'
recollections differ) with more men. As the seven-ton shifted into
gear, the exhausted women were already thinking about the dinner they'd have
at Camp Fallujah about 15 miles away; they had no way of knowing how
much their lives would change in the next five minutes.
"THEY'RE All DEAD"
The convoy had been rolling down the highway for only a few minutes
when Harding heard a fast exchange between her truck's driver and the
gunner; it was something like "Are you going to shoot it or what?" An Iraqi car
had pulled up alongside them. The marines in the lead Humvee had seen
the car approaching and waved it off to the side of the road, but the
car came barreling back toward the convoy.
Harding barely had time to process the driver's words when she heard
the sound she'd feared since the moment she arrived in Iraq: the menacing
hiss of a bomb about to go off. Then a deafening boom, the sound of
four or five artillery shells likely laced with napalm exploding as the car
rammed into the side of the truck. A fireball, its flames curling and
curving, hurtled toward Harding. Then time came crashing to a near
halt.
Immediately the truck caught fire. Libby, who was sitting a few places
away from Harding, saw her seat mate, Saalman, go flying through the
air, directly into the flames. Saalman looked up and saw her own boots
high over her head as she catapulted. I'm next, thought Libby. This is
really happening. I'm going to die. Harding tasted acrid smoke clogging
her throat. Jimenez, who'd been thrown to the floor of the truck, felt
a deathly flash of cold. Then she, too, like nearly everyone on the
truck, was flung out onto the hard, gravelly ground as the force of the blast
pushed the truck over onto its side.
From the second truck in the convoy, Marine Sergeant Kent Padmore
heard a screeching of tires and an explosion, then his own vehicle braked to
a stop so quickly that all dozen or so men in it went tumbling to the
floor. When Padmore sat up, he saw the women's truck in flames about
250 yards away. A flight medic back in Miami, Padmore, then 38, had been
good friends with Saalman, Clark and Humphrey. Immediately he jumped
from his truck and ran toward the burning seven-ton, barely aware of
the bullets zinging past him; the insurgents had staged an ambush to
coincide with the car bomb.
There's no way, he thought as he ran. They're all dead. He stoppedit
was useless to continue. But then he pushed forward. Keep going, he
told himself. He thought of how Clark couldn't wait to go backpacking with
her son when she got back to the U.S., about tough-as-nails Humphrey,
and about Saalman, the music-loving beauty. It can't be, he said to
himself, and kept running as fast as he could.
Just as Padmore reached the scene, he saw Saalman staggering toward
him, her charred, flayed hands held up before her, her eyes vacant in a
blackened face. She'd lost her rifle during the explosion. "Sally, pull
yourself together," he said. "You are not going to die. I promise: You
are not going to die. But we need some leadership." He watched her
expression change instantly from shock to rage. "Somebody give me a
fucking weapon!" she screamed. "I need a fucking weapon!" The
adrenaline pumping through her body obviously masked her pain. Padmore handed her
his own M16 and headed off to find other wounded marines, with the
sound of Saalman firing her gun toward the insurgents ringing in his ears.
Harding, meanwhile, had rolled off the truck with only minor burns to
her hand but quickly realized she, too, didn't have her weapon. With
machine-gun fire all around her, she ran behind the flaming seven-ton
to take cover, and there she came upon Cardile and Bringas. Both had badly
burned hands, and their faces were blackened from the fire. Dazed,
their throats raw from inhalation burns, they followed Harding to the shelter
of a junkyard wall where other female marines were gathering.
Libby, who'd been knocked unconscious in the blast, awoke about 10 feet
from the truck with her face planted in the earth. She looked up to
see, inches from her nose, the unconscious body of Clark. "Come on, girl,
you've got to get up," she yelled to Clark, then again, louder, "Girl,
we've got to get up now." Clark didn't respond. Finally, Libby,
suffering from a broken collarbone and a dislocated neck, shoved her
hands under Clark's shoulders and began dragging her toward shelter.
She got about eight feet before a male marine ran up and pulled her away,
screaming at her to join the other female marines for her own safety.
Looking behind her, her heart pounding, Libby trotted toward the wall,
a horrible thought haunting each step: Was she leaving behind a fellow
marine to die?
About eight minutes after the attack, there were five or six female
marines huddled behind the junkyard wall. Harding, after guiding
Bringas and Cardile to shelter, now started to venture out again to retrieve a
body lying a few feet from the truckand hesitated as she heard the
bullets flying all around her. Then her training kicked in: Leave no
one behind. It's something a marine is taught until she knows it the way
she knows her home address, her best friend's phone number or the Lord's
Prayer. She ran toward the body. It was a woman, but the burns and
impact wounds had marred her features beyond recognition. Harding
looked at the name tag on the uniform pocket. Charette. The ex-cheerleader.
"Charette!" she called. Nothing. "Charette! Charette!" The young
woman's body was lifeless. Harding's throat clenched into a tight knot, and she
kneeled there, motionless, for close to 10 seconds.
Harding knew she had to move on to see if there was anyone she could
save. That was when she spotted Jimenez hobbling along the roadside,
exposed and in danger.
Tossed to the ground by the explosion, Jimenez had lain unconscious for
a good five minutes. When she came to, she'd been confused and scared.
Now blood was pouring from a gash above her eye so heavily that she
could barely see, and the skin was hanging off one hand like parts of a
dangling, fleshy glove. Somehow, she'd made out the shape of a lone
marine standing a few yards away. She moved forward even though her
right leg shouldn't have been able to support her: A piece of shrapnel
had ripped away about half of her inner thigh, and she was rapidly
losing blood. Praying, cursing, everything but crying, Jimenez headed
for the marine as if her life depended on it, which it did.
As she got closer, Jimenez realized the marine was Hardingsomeone she
never thought she'd be glad to see. With her uninjured hand, she
grabbed Harding's. Whatever tension had existed between them had vaporized with
the blast.
Leaning on her comrade, Jimenez staggered to one of the backup trucks.
Soon Harding and the other less-wounded marinesincluding Libby and
Humphreybegan loading the more severely hurt women onto the remaining
seven-ton truck. The injuries were horrifying: "We were all looking at
each other, thinking, shit, I look like thator worse," recalls
Cardile. Huge swaths of the skin on her and her friends' faces had been
eviscerated. Bringas says her left hand "looked like a hotdog that had
been left in the microwave too long." Parts of Allende's skin had
melted away, and her flak jacket was drenched with blood. Cardile's burns left
her so sensitive that "the air that hit my face when the truck started
to move almost killed me."
Soon all the women were on the truck with three exceptions: Valdez,
Clark and Charette. Charette was in one of the two Humvees; a recovery
team of marines picked up Valdez and Clark. Finally, the seven-ton
packed with 11 women and a handful of male marines raced toward Charlie
Surgical, the medical unit at Camp Fallujah. Only en route did Jimenez
get a full look at her wounds. "I had a huge hole in my leg, like
something out of Saving Private Ryan," she says. To Padmore, who was
treating injured marines, the wound looked like a flower: bits and
pieces of skin opened and layered around the injury. Harding, who'd
been
intent on remaining calm, realized she could look deep into the sinews
of Jimenez's leg, down to the bone. She cradled Jimenez in her arms
while Padmore applied the tourniquet that would stanch the heavy
bleeding (and, doctors would later say, save her life). Padmore was
moved by Harding's strength. "She disregarded her pain to give support
to a critically wounded marine," he says. "Had it not been for her,
Jimenez might have given up. With your femoral artery severed the way
hers was, you could die. But it helps to have someone telling you to
hang on; we'll make it through this together."
There wasn't much noise on the truckthere was no crying and little
talking. At one point Saalman, the same woman who'd been screaming
bloody murder for a weapon just minutes earlier, broke the silence by
singing "America the Beautiful," then "Amazing Grace." For some women
it was a needed balm; for others it was excruciating, mere words that
meant nothing in the face of what they'd just seen.
Jimenez, barely conscious, remembered that it was her husband's special
day. "You have to call him and tell him I say happy birthday," she said
to Harding. Calling out for a pen, Harding replied, "All right, all
right, I'll do it," and wrote the number of Jimenez's husband on the
palm of her hand. When the truck arrived at Camp Fallujah, it flew
straight to Charlie Surgical, where a team of surgeons, their faces
blanching as the women piled off the truck, awaited. "I didn't know if
I was going to make it. I was so scared," Jimenez says.
As doctors prepared to take Jimenez to surgery, Harding explained that
she'd have to wait outside. No! thought Jimenez. "I could see in her
eyes she wanted to stay with me," says Harding, who wanted just as
badly to remain by her side. But she had no choice. Harding watched Jimenez
being wheeled off and wondered whether she'd ever see her fellow marine
again.
CLOSING THE WOUNDS
Burns are notoriously vicious wounds, slow to heal as well as
excruciatingly painful, so much so that in the case of second- and
third-degree injuries, even the maximum amount of morphine considered
safe is of little help it may dull the torture, but the pain is always
there, all-consuming, searing. To make matters worse, the treatment
itself is brutal: Burn patients must undergo a painful shower to
cleanse the wounds, then get scrubbed down in a process called debridement,
which peels away dead layers of skin and is so agonizing that it must
be performed under general anesthesia. Even being wrapped in sterile
bandages is almost more contact than a burn patient can bear. Because
the treatment is repeated every few days, patients know what's coming
and learn to dread it.
The night of the attack, Jimenez was flown from Iraq to Germany, where,
having been totally anesthetized, she spent a few days in blissful
unconsciousness. She was then moved again, to San Antonio, where the
Brooke Army Medical Center has a world-class burn unit. Wrapped like a
mummy in bandages around her head, leg and arm, she could at least take
consolation in the fact that she wasn't alone in San Antonio. On the
other side of the curtains surrounding her bed lay Cardile, Bringas and
Allende. The women were suffering from second- and third-degree burns:
Bringas would wake up horrified some days with bits of her skin stuck
to the pillow, and Cardile's face, particularly around her mouth, was
constantly oozing.
Jimenez, Cardile and Bringas had always been able to make one another
laugh back in Iraq. But no one was laughing in the room those first few
weeks; when they heard each other, it was mostly the sound of crying
from the agony of their treatments. "If Cardile was screaming, I felt
her pain because I knew exactly what she was going through," says
Jimenez. At the same time, each woman was isolated in a bubble of her
own suffering. "It was hard," says Cardile. "You couldn't take care of
yourself, never mind take care of somebody else." All they could do was
call out to each other: "Are you hurting? I'm hurting too."
In one way, Jimenez was lucky: Her husband had flown to San Antonio to
be with her as soon as he heard she'd been injured. As a marine, he was
aware of what her life in Iraq had been like and could even imagine the
attack; he never left her side, helping her to the bathroom and washing
her hair. Even so, says Jimenez, "he didn't know what I was feeling,
and that bothered me a lot. I would get mad. He'd be like, oh, you're going
to be OK, and I felt like, I am not going to be fucking OK. Cardile and
Bringas, they knew how I felt. Just having someone understand what
you're going through, it's comforting."
What Jimenez didn't know for almost a week was the fate of the rest of
her fellow marines. She figured out that three other women had ended up
in San Antonio Beasley, Saalman and Fernandez but she wondered about
the rest, especially Charette. About a week after Jimenez arrived at
the medical center, she got a visit from Fernandez, who had burns on more
than 13 percent of her body. Fernandez had been particularly tight with
Charette, so after a few minutes of chatting, Jimenez broached the
question she really wanted to ask.
"Hey, where's Charette?" she said. Fernandez looked down at her hard,
and then glanced away. "I can't talk about it," she replied. Fernandez
was aware that the military doctors sometimes withheld bad news until
patients were on the road to recovery, but she wanted Jimenez to know
the truth. She gave a hint: She shook her head.
Fernandez's message came across loud and clear. "I started
hyperventilating and saying, 'Oh God, oh God, oh God,'" says Jimenez.
"I felt so bad that I had survived and she hadn't." There wasn't much
comfort Fernandez could offer. "I understand," she said simply. "It
hurt me, too."
After a while, Fernandez got up to leave. Her husband was waiting for
her in the hall. Overwhelmed by what she'd just seen of Jimenez's
injuries as well as by what she'd had to say, she passed out in his
arms.
All in all, six marines died on June 23, 2005, in Fallujah. Three of
them were men: Lance Corporal Veashna Muy, 20, the seven-ton's gunner;
Chad Powell, a 22-year-old corporal riding in the truck; and Corporal
Carlos Pineda, 23, who'd been in one of the security Humvees. Pineda
was shot while giving cover to Harding as she and other marines hoisted
Jimenez into the truck. Harding heard him gasp as the bullet made
contact.
Three women died that day, making it one of the three costliest
incidents for American military women in a single attack. (In World War
II, a Japanese kamikaze pilot killed six army nurses onboard a hospital
boat; in 1991, three women from a National Guard unit died when a SCUD
missile hit their barracks in Bahrain.)
One of the fatalities was Clark, the 43-year-old single mom whom Libby
had tried to pull away from the truck. Another was Charette, the
21-year-old ex-cheerleader, who, it turns out, had still been alive,
but barely, when Harding came upon her. As a male marine took Charette in
his arms, she'd hoarsely whispered, "Help me," before going limp. She
died later that evening at Charlie Surgical. Valdez, the outspoken
corporal from the Bronx, was killed immediately when the suicide bomber
hit the seven-ton.
From the moment she arrived at the San Antonio military hospital,
Bringas had started asking about Valdez. "I could have sworn I saw her
back in Fallujah," she says. Bringas had been at the hospital a month
and had undergone two skin-graft surgeries on her hands before a
chaplain finally broke the news to her. Cardile, who was in the
bathroom at the time, heard a scream. That was all she needed to realize that
Bringas had been told.
As for Saalman, she knew the day of the attack that her dear friend
Clark had died. Saalman and Padmore had been waiting outside Charlie
Surgical when Padmore asked, "Where's Regi?" Saalman's hand flew up to
her face, and tears came to her eyes. "Oh my God, Regi," she said. They
looked at each other without saying another word. They knew that if
Clark wasn't at the surgical tent, they'd lost her.
Weeks after the ambush, every female marine who'd been on the truck was
awarded a Purple Heart, an honor that also confers financial benefits.
(Many of the women have also received promotions.) Some of the marines
at the San Antonio burn unit didn't feel ready for the ceremony. Their
wounds emotional and physical were too fresh. "I really didn't want
the Purple Heart," says Jimenez, who has since come to value the honor.
"It was going to remind me for the rest of my life of how terrible that
day was."
To the astonishment of some of the women, Douglas O'Dell Jr., the
two-star general who bestowed their Purple Hearts, wept during the
ceremony, at which several male marines also received medals. "I looked
at him with sympathy or pity I'm pretty sure our incident was
emotional for everybody," says Jimenez. "But at the same time, I thought, you've
gotta stay strong for us. And why should it be memorable because we're
women? I don't want special privileges because I'm a woman."
It turns out that Jimenez misinterpreted O'Dell's sentiments: He was
moved, he says, not by special sympathy for the women, but because he
saw standing before him an unprecedented display of equality of the
sexes. That day in Fallujah had been a "crystallizing moment," he says.
Military leaders had always believed women marines would conduct
themselves just as bravely as the men under deadly attack, he explains,
but they'd never before had an opportunity quite like this one to prove
themselves. "It's the difference between believing in a miracle," he
says, "and then seeing one."
BACK IN ACTION
The machinery of the military pauses only so long to allow for grief,
and eventually its gears started moving the women back into service.
Still emotionally battered by what they'd just gone through, Saalman,
Beasley and Fernandez were released from the hospital on an outpatient
basis within a week of the attack and eventually sent off to various
bases around the world. Harding, Humphrey and Misiura stayed in Iraq
for a few more months, and Libby went home to Niceville, Florida, where she
had surgery on her dislocated neck. Fernandez joined her husband at a
military station in North Carolina, leaving Jimenez, Bringas, Cardile
and Allende behind in the San Antonio burn unit.
In the long year to come, the women who'd suffered the worst burns
displayed a kind of courage that occurs in hospital wards, not on
battlefields. When they went for physical therapy, "I never saw them
break down," says Major Lynn Burns, an occupational therapist. "I've
seen big, strapping guys bawl their eyes out undergoing the same kinds
of treatment. These women just kept it together." She wasn't surprised.
"Being a marine is tough," she says, "but being a woman marine, you
have to be even tougher."
Sergeant Shane Elder, a medic and occupational-therapy assistant who
worked most closely with the women, says that what impressed him was
how they unfailingly supported one another. At one point, he noticed that
Bringas was having a particularly tough time. Grieving for Valdez and
frustrated by a medical setback caused by an infection of her wounds,
she would sometimes be reluctant to socialize when Cardile and Allende
visited her room. "What do you want to do?" Cardile would ask.
"Nothing," Bringas would reply. Cardile refused to take no for an
answershe'd put on a movie or try to make Bringas laugh. "Just because
she didn't want visitors doesn't mean she wasn't going to get them,"
says Elder. "Those women were not going to leave her alone to be angry.
You know, it's great to visit someone who's all fun. But to stay when
someone isn't talking to you as you sit there in awkward silencetry
that one time." Cardile's sister, Nicole, points out that Bringas
returned the favor: Whenever Cardile was feeling down, Bringas would
come by, and they'd talk and talk about the things they couldn't
discuss with anyone else.
As the women grew healthier, they encountered another test: facing the
public with their scarred and battered faces. "We have to carry these
scars for the rest of our lives," says Jimenez. "You want to feel good
about yourself, and if you've got some big scar on your face, it's
traumatic."
On one of their first outings from the hospital, she and Cardile
treated themselves to a meal at a San Antonio diner. At a nearby table sat a
mother with her kids, who pointed and stared. Before the marines even
had time to notice, Cardile's sister Nicole jumped up. "You can ask
what happened," she told the family. "These girls got blown up in Iraq." The
mother started apologizing. "I'm not mad," Nicole said. "We see you
pointing just ask."
"That was that," recalls Cardile. "We had a good time for the rest of
the day. We drank beer, and we laughed and hung out." The incident made
them feel strong, and Cardile resolved to do the same the next time she
was put on the spot. Rather than allowing herself to wallow in shame,
she would feel pride.
Almost a year after they said their good-byes outside Charlie Surgical,
Jimenez and Harding finally saw each other again. They were reunited
when Glamour invited them, along with Saalman, to San Antonio to visit
the three women still remaining for treatment and physical therapy:
Allende, Bringas and Cardile. "That girl saved my life," Jimenez said
softly when Harding joined her at a bar in the hotel they'd made their
headquarters. Their eyes locked and they smiledthere had been no time
to exchange e-mail addresses after the attack, and they hadn't been in
touch since that terrible day. In fact, few of the 11 survivors had
contacted each other since they'd left the hospital. "I think we were
afraid of what we'd find," says Libby.
Seeing how well Jimenez was doingher face was mostly healed, and
although her leg often hurts, she can easily walkwas a huge relief to
Harding, who'd been having nightmares since the attack. She'd been
thinking about all the women on the truck. Sometimes she saw Charette's
little brother in her dreams; other times a phantom explosion woke her
up with a start. "It's one thing to hear through the grapevine that
they're doing fine," she says, "but it's another to see it with your
own eyes."
What happened in Fallujah that day was a disaster for the women, but in
some ways it was also a small, tragic triumph. The female marines
proved not only that they could endure the worst, but that they could continue
to serve. A week after the attack, Harding asked to be put back on the
checkpoint. (Her request was denied.)
Harding who believes the insurgents knew which truck in the convoy
would be carrying womenworried that the suicide bombing might destroy the
morale of other women in the Corps, but she needn't have. On the
evening of June 23, as word of the disaster spread, a freckle-faced young
female marine stationed in Ramadi, a city near Fallujah, had approached
Colonel Robert Chase, who was helping run crisis control at the command center,
to say she urgently needed to talk to him. He told her the timing
wasn't good, but she insisted. Reluctantly, Chase stepped outside his office
to et with herand in the hallway, he encountered about 10 more female
marines. "Sir, we know we've had women killed," said the marine who'd
first approached him. "We have to replace themwe want to go." Chase
was stunned. "I'll be candid, it was one of the most emotional and profound
moments for me," he says. "I don't often work with women as an infantry
officer, but at that moment, there were no women therethere were just
marines." (Some of those women did get the checkpoint dutyand the
military, says Harding, added more security vehicles to the women's
daily convoy.)
On an individual level, the attack provided a victory, too, but of the
saddest kind. Jimenezwho would give anything to turn back time, to
have the convoy leave two hours later or for Charette to have been sitting
two inches from where she wassays her life has a richness she couldn't
have appreciated before. "It's sad to say, but this brings things
together. You realize the importance of love, support, friendship." Her
relationship with Bringas and Cardile is deeper, her understanding of
her husband's devotion more profound. "This broke me for sure," she
says. "But I'm stronger for having been broken and coming back."
When Jimenez went to see her family in New Jersey, local reporters
rushed to interview her. Many asked what she thought about women in
combat. Jimenez considered the question almost an insult. "I put it in
quick words," she says. "I told them, 'I'm a female, but I'm also a
marine.'" And to her, that said it all.
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of
articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed
publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen
material relevant to the work of