Women warriors discuss duty challenges
Rachel_Ganong@TimesRecord.Com04/04/2008
BRUNSWICK ? With 90 percent of U.S. military jobs now open to women, the Iraq war has debuted a significant first in America's armed forces: women in combat.
It's a contribution to battlefield history that author Kirsten Holmstedt highlighted in her award-winning book "Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq" and one that she shared Thursday night during a presentation in Bowdoin College's Thorne Hall.
With her came Marine Gunnery Sgt. Rosie Noel. An Iraq veteran and mother of two, Noel offered a firsthand account that thousands of women are fighting, thrusting themselves in the same combat situations in fighter planes, security tankers, hospitals and on the streets as their male counterparts. However, their sacrifices often fly below the radar of the American pubic.
Holmstedt is hoping to change that. She came to Brunswick on the recommendation of Bowdoin College alumnus Ed Russell. He met Holmstedt three years ago and became intrigued with her stories of servicewomen.
As an Army officer commissioned after his Bowdoin graduation in 1967, Russell saw women who were allowed to serve only as nurses or in administrative posts away from the fighting in Southeast Asia. So when he heard stories of American women in combat, he wanted to help recognize their contributions to the armed forces by helping market Holmstedt's book.
"I got some of the material to-gether, and I sent it to (Barry Mills, Bowdoin College president)," he said, and the college arranged Holmstedt's visit to campus.
"We talk a lot about the common good, but we don't often talk about the common good in the way that Rosie has represented it for herself and our country," Mills said, introducing the talk.
Holmstedt told how she started the book as a creative writing student at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, not far from the Marine Corps' Camp Lejeune.
"I always was curious and wanted to know more about these women," she said, referencing the servicewomen who have completed 185,000 tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002.
"And I wanted to know if 9/11 had happened 20 years ago, would I have enlisted?" she said. "So it was sort of a personal journey for me."
Her journey took her to women like Marine Gunnery Sgt. Rosie Noel, who helped Holmstedt with her presentation on Thursday.
'Hello, I'm bleeding'
Despite the painted toenails and argyle sweater, Noel looked like all Marines when she recounted her return to her unit in Iraq less than 48 hours after shrapnel sliced her cheek during an attack, an incident for which she received a Purple Heart decoration.
"I didn't know I was injured until I felt the wetness of blood on my neck," she said. "Red shows up pretty good on tan," she said, referring to the blood on her khaki camouflage uniform.
When no one could transport her to the medical building, she started walking because she knew she needed help. She walked the corridors looking for help before she passed out.
"I was like, 'Hello, I'm bleeding. Can I get someone to help me?'" she said.
Once medical personal saw past Noel's calm exterior to the extent of her wounds, they sent her to Germany for treatment. From there, she could have gone home to her mother and two sons.
But she returned to Iraq.
"To me, being a mother in combat is no different than being a man who is a father in combat," she said.
Despite her commitment to her job, Noel is candid about being a mother in the military.
"Rosie, start out by saying it's hard," Holmstedt offered when an audience member asked about it.
"Being a parent is challenging, but when you've got to juggle that with going off to get shot at, yeah, it's difficult," Noel said.
And that difficulty is on top of the challenge of being a woman in a branch where only 6 percent of fellow Marines are women.
"Sometimes you have to be more aggressive," she said, noting women must sometimes replace physical intimidation with attitude. "That's the only way you're going to be taken seriously."
The message she carries
Taking servicewomen seriously is one of the reasons Holmstedt is telling their stories through "Band of Sisters" and her second book, "When the Girls Come Marching Home."
"I don't feel that women are as accepted as they could be," she said, especially in the Marine Corps, a branch she labled the "world's biggest men's gun club" that sometimes accepts women only as second-class citizens of the military world.
"We can't support them if we think they are back in Kuwait shuffling paper," she said. "That's what this book is all about: educating not only the civilian community, but also the military community about what their sisters in arms are doing."
The telling of stories like Noel's prompted audience questions and, for some, an increased awareness of the women fighting a war that's just started its sixth year.
"I saw a gentler side to Rosie that I wasn't sure would be there," said Pat Rosengren. She and her daughter Pam Luke, who track the news of the military actions in Iraq, came from North Yarmouth to hear the talk.
Others saw women like Noel carving out paths to be followed. "It was awe-inspiring," Bowdoin College sophomore Catie English said about the talk.
She plans to apply for Naval Officer Candidate School after graduating from Bowdoin. "I really respect the gunnery sergeant because she is willing to break down the barriers in men's thinking about what women in the military can do," she said.
Her classmate, Alex Cornell du Houx, a senior and enlisted Marine reservist who has toggled between Marine duties and Bowdoin classes, has already experienced serving with women in Iraq, although no women were part of his all-infantry division.
"Hearing first-hand the stories that [Holmstedt] highlights in her book gave me a greater appreciation for the job that women do in the Marines," he said.
