Happy Memorial Day!

As my local newspaper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, reminded readers: This is a time for, well, remembering our veterans - including women. The following six articles were published in the Forum Section of the Enquirer. They had an entire section devoted solely to the women warriors that have served and are serving our armed forces over in Iraq and Afghanistan. It brings home a sense of reality to hear the tales of these various women; therefore, I advise you to take ten or fifteen minutes to look it over. They fought for our freedom, after all - so why not listen to their stories?

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, everyone.

Women Soldiers Deserve Our Respect: Editorials

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090523/EDIT01/905240391

Editorials

Mark Curnutte's sobering stories about female veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars should remind us that war is a shared national experience.

As the uniformed ranks broaden, so does the impact of the war on the families of those who come home. As the stories on these pages note, women veterans returning from the wars suffer from all of the traumas, anxieties and readjustment issues that men do - and unfortunately from more.

Sexual assault

The disturbing statistics about female veterans who have been sexually harassed and raped merit immediate attention from military and civilian leaders. In years past when there was debate about sending women into combat zones, fears were expressed about the threats they would face if they fell into the hands of the enemy. But these stories report that women often feel a greater risk of being raped by fellow Americans than of being killed by the enemy. There have been more than 216,000 American women who have seen service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those, 119 have been killed in military actions. Yet 14.5 percent of them have reported being victims of military sexual trauma.

Far too often women who are sexually assaulted in the military hesitate to report the attacks for fear of appearing weak or of not being believed. For an institution that prides itself on discipline, the statistics on sexual assault in the military show a shocking lack of discipline - lack of discipline among those who would commit such acts and lack of discipline in a service that would tolerate or hesitate to act against such crimes.

Growing roles

The roles of women will not be diminished in the military because of these problems. Women now make up 11.3 percent of the active-duty military. The numbers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan go far beyond those who served in previous wars and their numbers and importance to the nation's military mission can only continue to grow.

The American military does not allow women to serve in combat infantry, armor or artillery units. Women do serve in combat aviation, onboard warships and in support roles for ground troops. In wars with no fixed fronts, where enemy insurgents can blend in with the civilian population, anyone serving in the theater may be exposed to combat. Female members of the military in Iraq and Afghanistan are issued weapons and trained to use them.

Typical veterans

Today's stories note that two of the best-known women to have service in Iraq are Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was taken prisoner by the Iraqi military during the 2003 invasion and later rescued by U.S. forces, and Pvt. Lynndie England, an Abu Ghraib Prison guard sentenced to three years in prison for her role in mistreating prisoners. Both of their stories have been hyped far beyond their significance by media and military commentators.

Women such as those you see on these pages today - Angela Strittholt, Jennifer Wells, Iva Griggs and Laura Seaman - are far more typical of our female veterans. Hard-working, honorable and proud, their war experiences have forever changed them. They have war stories now, just as men who have served have come home changed, with stories to tell or stories they hold close. We owe them much for their service, just as we owe it to all have put on the nation's uniform.

Facts about military women in Iraq, Afghanistan

Source: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090522/EDIT03/305220003

Of the 1,910,094 U.S. military personnel deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq since the start of those wars in 2001 and 2003, 216,553 (11.3 percent) were women.

Of the 272,453 U.S military personnel deployed in those two theaters of war at the end of April, 28,100 were women.

Of the 1,396,000 troops on active duty in the U.S. military (full-time duty, not counting reservists or National Guard members), 199,000 are women.

Of the 846,000 reservists and National Guard troops, 150,588 are women.

Of the 4,281 total military deaths in current operations, 119 have been women.

14.5 percent of the female and 0.6 percent of male U.S. military veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq using Veterans Administration services report being victims of military sexual trauma.

The U.S. Department of Defense released in March its 2008 report on sexual assault in the military. There were 2,908 reports (both sexes) of sexual assault, up 8 percent from 2007.

About PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be brought on by any number of traumatic experiences, such as an auto crash, acute illness, childhood abuse, sexual abuse or natural disaster, but is most often associated with war combat.

Thirty percent of people who have lived and worked in a war zone come down with PTSD. Symptoms usually surface within three months of a traumatic event. In the general population, twice as many women as men (10 percent compared to 5 percent) are likely to experience PTSD.

Signs of PTSD include:

Avoiding people, places and events that remind a person of the trauma.

Emotional numbness or detachment, inability to feel.

Flashbacks, bad memories, nightmares.

Overwhelming senses of guilt and shame.

Sleeping problems, being easily startled, problems concentrating.

Irritability and anger about minor events.

Sources: American Psychological Association, Department of Veterans Affairs, Mayo Clinic and U.S. Department of Defense

Tough war experiences returned in her dreams

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090522/EDIT03/305220007

By Mark Curnutte
mcurnutte@enquirer.com

The stress of a handful of near-death experiences from 25 months in Iraq caught up with Angela Strittholt when she returned to the United States in 2007.

She spent Christmas with her father and stepmother in South Carolina.

"I just started to cry. I couldn't stop," she said. "I stared off into space and just cried."

She dreamed she was being sent to Iraq for a third time. She relived her traumatic experiences.

"I became afraid to go to sleep," she said. "I would drink a lot of caffeine and watch TV."

A former regular Army truck driver, the 2002 Fairfield High School graduate used humor to cope with the dangerous work.

Her first stint was February 2004 to February 2005 with the 701st Infantry Division. A bomb went off on a roadside in Baghdad. Insurgents planted improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the carcasses of dead animals.

In the second tour - August 2005 to September 2006 - she went with a unit based at Fort Campbell, Ky. She drove the ammunition truck in a convoy through Baghdad when a bomb exploded under the vehicle in front of her. Another time she had to fire her machine gun when her truck came under sniper fire.

"I never thought about (the threats) over there," said Strittholt, 25, who had the rank of specialist. "You just didn't stop to think. You made jokes and laughed off danger, like, 'Yeah, that would have sucked' (if the ammunition truck had been hit with the bomb). You moved fast. You stayed busy. You made yourself numb."

When the numbness wore off, she went to the Veterans Affairs hospital in Corryville in 2008 to see a psychotherapist. She cut off therapy when her nightmares stopped. Then the nightmares returned.

Her doctor referred Strittholt to the PTSD program at the VA's Fort Thomas center. Her diagnosis: post-traumatic stress disorder.

She completed the 12-week program this spring. It has been a painful but productive process. She had to emotionally unpack her experiences in Iraq by writing an essay. Details poured onto the paper over 20 pages.

Strittholt is a student in the American Sign Language (ASL) program at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College and works at St. Rita School for the Deaf in Evendale.

Strittholt sees the progress she has made toward healing, especially when she visits male Army buddies who have not sought treatment. "I was sure I was going to need more than 12 weeks to deal with everything," she said.

She sleeps better. She is not as angry or as easily irritated. Her mood is more even. Nightmares have stopped. But she remains a work in progress.

"I still check the backseat before I get in my car," Strittholt said. "I lock all my windows and doors. I don't like things happening behind me. In a restaurant, I have to sit with my back to a wall."

Rape by fellow soldier took emotional toll

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090522/EDIT03/305220006

By Mark Curnutte
mcurnutte@enquirer.com

Jennifer Wells went to a fellow soldier's room at her base in Balad, Iraq, to borrow "The Pursuit of Happyness" DVD.

Trading movies is common among U.S. troops because it breaks up the monotony of life on a military base in a hostile land.

The soldier was a friend of someone in her unit, the 758th Maintenance Company.

"I knocked on his door. I said, 'Hey, I'm here to pick up the movie,' " Wells said.

Wells sat down as the soldier rummaged through the discs. He then he bent over and kissed her.

Wells quickly pulled away. "I said, 'What are you doing?' "

She tried to stop him by talking. She said she was not interested. She said she was committed to another man. He was 6-foot-5 and weighed 250 pounds -- easily twice her weight.

"He pushed me down on the bed," Wells said. "He pulled my pants down. He put his chest over my mouth, to where I could hardly breathe. It was really gross how he talked to me, like I was his partner, intimate stuff. He did his business. I pulled my pants back up and ran to my room."

Jennifer Wells was not just a victim, but a statistic.

An analysis of the medical records of 125,000 female veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan show one in seven suffered sexual trauma, ranging from harassment to rape.

Like many female troops who experience sexual trauma, Wells did not file a complaint. She worried if she reported the attack she'd be sent home and it would hurt her career.

"I had worked too hard to get where I was," said Wells, now 24. "I didn't want to lose everything."

She was not aware of the military reporting process, which provides confidential mental-health care and a physical forensic exam to rape victims. No one in the unit would have been told, and there would be no investigation. Her file would be saved for one year. Victims of alleged military sexual trauma also can request a full investigation.

"The one thing I did not want was to be seen as is weak," said Wells, who now makes her home in Greater Cincinnati. "It would be my word against his, rape versus consensual sex. I would be labeled a whore with a scarlet letter."

She decided to stuff the experience emotionally. She told herself she was stronger than a rape.

She showered within minutes of the attack. She popped four birth-control pills three mornings in a row to try to kick-start her period.

"Flush my system," she said. "You can't get a pregnancy test over there without everybody knowing."

She did not tell her mother or other family members in Connersville, Ind. She waited months before telling her boyfriend, now her fiancé, who also is in the military. He was enraged, she said, and wanted to confront the man who raped her.

In the days and weeks following her rape, Wells went about her duty. She went to the gym almost daily, rationalizing that if she had been physically stronger she could have fought off her attacker.

At night, the thought that she might have caught a sexually transmitted disease tormented her.

Wells had been in Iraq two months when she was raped. She deployed in July 2006 as part of a unit that specialized in cleaning up nuclear, biological or chemical weapons attacks.

Part of her job was to pull watch at the base. She and another soldier were stationed atop guard towers. One night - about eight months after Wells had been raped - the other guard went to use the latrine. He neglected to close the hatch door behind him in the tower.

While he was gone, there was a disturbance on the ground. Wells took a step back to aim her machine gun and plunged through the open hatch. She hit the ground 41 feet below and lost consciousness.

When she awoke, a bone was sticking out of her right forearm. She suffered head trauma and memory loss and fractured three vertebrae.

Since the fall, Wells has had one operation on her back and two surgeries on her arm. She went through speech and cognitive therapy at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Corryville.

The U.S. Army Reserve offered her an honorable discharge because of her injuries. She declined and is now employed with a small reserve unit, the 15th Psychological Operations Battalion, in Bond Hill. She has reported for mandatory drill weekends and is preparing for another operation on her back. She is taking business classes at Indiana Wesleyan.

"I love the military," Wells said. "I didn't want somebody else to have the power to determine my future."

Wells stayed strong. But the emotional façade was crumbling from the inside.

The physical and emotional traumas collided in December 2007 when she had an exam at the VA. Her pap smear revealed a bacterial STD that could be treated with an antibiotic.

"I broke down, I was a mess," Wells said. "I had managed to control it. I had been able to tell my mom, and even though she broke down and cried like a baby, I could keep it together. When it came full circle (with the positive test results), it really upset me. It made the (post traumatic stress disorder) flare up. I was out of control. I was extremely angry. I had panic attacks where I thought my heart was going to stop.

"I wanted to crawl in a hole and never come out. How do I go on from here? Even though it was something that could be treated, it was awful."

Her physician referred her to the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) program.

"It has changed a lot of things for me," Wells said. "I think I wouldn't be engaged now. I would probably just be depressed."

Wells is determined to turn her negative experiences into positives for other women - military or not - who've been sexually assaulted.

"I would want (women) to know you can only benefit from something like this," she said of her psychotherapy. "You don't realize how much you push people away when you are hurting so bad. It actually makes you stronger in the end if you are willing to say 'I am vulnerable, I need help.'

"Then you are able to help people on the other side."

Program at area VA center helps with stress disorders

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090522/EDIT03/305220005

By Mark Curnutte
mcurnutte@enquirer.com

FORT THOMAS - The success of a treatment program at the Veterans Affairs center here for military veterans battling anxiety has made it a national model.

In 2007, not long after a residential program opened for women with post-traumatic stress disorder, program director Kate Chard was called to Washington to meet with then-VA director Jim Nicholson.

He was impressed by the Cincinnati VA's program for troops with post-traumatic stress disorder at its Fort Thomas Center. It boasted a 70 percent success rate with patients suffering from PTSD.

Through most of 2008, Chard, director of the PTSD and Anxiety Disorders Clinic here, traveled the country, teaching therapy methods to other mental health-care professionals.

Chard and her team of therapists use what she calls "cognitive processing therapy," in which patients learn to accept natural emotions such as sadness and grief while recognizing such emotions as guilt are manufactured.

The number of women participating in both the residential, individual and group PTSD program has increased as more women experience violence during their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

"A person is more likely to have PTSD from an act of interpersonal violence - rape or child abuse - than other types of trauma," Chard said. "By default, as woman experience more combat the rates of PTSD from combat will go up."

The VA anticipates that up to 40 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have experienced or will face PTSD.

The therapy helps patients move past what Chard refers to as "stuck points," emotional and mental places where fictional emotions interfere with fact. For example, many military veterans are crippled emotionally by guilt that they lived when a buddy might have died.

"The goals of the program are to decrease distress and help the veteran create healthier living patterns," Chard said.

For Female Soldiers, The Last Battle is Within

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090522/EDIT03/305220004/
For+female+soldiers++last+battle+is+within

They are just a fistful of the 200,000 female troops thrust into battle – intentionally or not – in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Angela Strittholt, Jennifer Wells, Iva Griggs and Laura Seaman are among those female troops who have come home with problems once reserved for fighting men.

They arrive with physical injuries such as paralysis, lost limbs and bad backs. They develop mental health issues, as seemingly benign as sleeplessness and as potentially debilitating as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which the Department of Veterans Affairs reports that up to 40 percent of veterans – regardless of sex – have or develop during their lives.

In many cases, they fought in wars with no battle lines and a sense of not knowing who the enemy is.

Spc. Strittholt, in two year-long tours of duty in Iraq as a truck driver, shot at snipers and twice had bombs hit her convoy – once under the Humvee directly in front of her as she hauled an ammunition trailer. Now home, she struggles with anger and has bad dreams she will be sent to Iraq a third time.

A fellow soldier raped Army Reserve Spc. Wells in Iraq. Back from the war, she now struggles to trust people.

Lt. Col. Griggs, an Army Reserve nurse working in Baghdad, carried a handgun with her into the shower because she feared she would be raped by one of the Iraqi or Turkish civilian contractors on her base. Fifteen months later and far from the sounds of war, she is over-sensitive to loud noises and wakes without fail at 3 a.m. unable to go back to sleep.

Spc. Seaman processed detainees at Baghdad’s infamous Abu Ghraib Prison and defended it when insurgents attacked. Today, she is too busy raising her three children, working and caring for her husband’s combat-related disorder to deal with lingering psychological wounds – what her husband says is his wife’s own case of PTSD.

The emotional baggage these women bring home is no surprise.

“Women have historically played an important role in the military, and their duties increasingly expose them to dangerous situations,” said Kate Chard, director of the PTSD Division at the Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Fort Thomas. “With this willingness to serve comes the risk that they will also develop mental heath disorders similar to men in the military.”

Since opening in January 2007, the division has treated 126 women in its residential program. Another 33 female veterans, reservists and National Guard members are in the outpatient psychotherapy clinic.

The PTSD program at Fort Thomas was the third of 16 established across the country to treat female troops. The therapeutic methods developed there are now copied as a national model.

The treatment centers were established because women increasingly find themselves in harm’s way, although they are prohibited from direct ground combat with infantry, armor and artillery units.

Of the 4,281 deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan through April, 119 have been women. More than 600 have been wounded in combat and non-combat situations.

The Afghanistan and Iraq invasions mark the first wars in which women have been exposed to new military roles opened to them by the Clinton administration immediately after the Gulf War. On Oct. 1, 1994, women became eligible for jobs in combat aviation, aboard combat ships and in ground combat support.

These new wars are without traditional battle lines, fought guerrilla-style in both rural and urban settings.

Women make up 11.3 percent of the nearly 2 million U.S. active duty and National Guard troops and reservists sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The more than 216,000 women who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan dwarf the 7,500 who served in Vietnam and the 40,000 deployed during the War.

In fact, the two soldiers most identified with the Iraq invasion are women.

Pfc. Jessica Lynch was taken prisoner by the Iraqi military during the 2003 invasion and later rescued by U.S. forces.

Pvt. Lynndie England was sentenced to three years in military prison after her 2005 conviction in connection with torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison, including her role in a series of photographed atrocities.

Every U.S. woman serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is issued a weapon. They are drivers, mechanics, engineers, office workers, doctors and nurses, checkpoint guards and military police, performing culturally sensitive body searches of suspected female insurgents.

But female troops face different challenges than their male colleagues.

Aware of their minority status in a traditionally male domain such as the Middle East and Central Asia, women are less likely to seek help for any type of military trauma.

The reason, according to a 2007 U.S. Department of Defense Mental Health Task Force report, is because they “their need to show the emotional strength expected” of soldiers.

“The ideal in the military is to blend in like a robot, except when you excel, like being a PT (physical training) machine,” Strittholt said.

“You don’t want to show weakness because if you do you are looked at like a piece of crap. And when you are in the minority (as women), you feel you have to prove yourself a little bit more.”

Physical wounds aren’t the only ones female troops bring home.As many as one in seven women (15 percent) seek treatment for military sexual trauma, which includes everything from harassment to rape. Up to 70 percent of women being treated for PTSD are there because of sexual trauma.

Wells’ PTSD and sexual assault became intertwined in December 2007 when she learned she had contracted a sexually transmitted disease after being raped.

“I did everything,” she said. “I bought a gun. I had an attic in my apartment, which connected to the other apartment, and I nailed it shut. I added bolts to my door. I slept in the living room and watched the door.”

Once back in the U.S., women experience a more difficult transition than men to family life, psychologists say.

In Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, where there are no regular Army bases, the majority of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are reservists and National Guard. They leave combat areas and return directly to their families, without benefit of a cooling-off period at a stateside base.

Once home, in families with children, more is expected of a returning female veteran than a man, experts say.

“It’s a big problem for younger females, who left a young child at home, or single mothers who had to leave children with grandparents or an estranged spouse,” said Karen Cutright, a social worker and manager of the Cincinnati VA’s comprehensive care program for veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, which has treated 4,000 veterans, more than 400 of them women.

Word among female troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is they are more likely to be raped by fellow soldiers than killed by the enemy. One statistic – the 9-to-1 ratio of men to women in the military – works against women’s safety, Wells said.

“To be a semi-attractive female (in the military), it’s like being a cigarette to a nicotine addict,” said the 24-year-old Connersville, Ind., native now living and working in Greater Cincinnati.

The barrage of unwanted physical attention forced Wells – within weeks of her arrival – to eat meals in her room instead of the mess hall.

“You have these men who leave their families and their lifestyles, and let’s face it a lot of people today are promiscuous,” she said. “Women were like that, too."

Reports of sexual assault continue to rise in the military, jumping about 24 percent – to 2,400 – in 2006 compared to 2005, according to the Department of Defense. One reason, said Lt. Col. Nate Galbreath, was the Pentagon’s 2005 creation of a restricted reporting option that does not involve a criminal investigation and affords victims some anonymity. The victim can access medical and psychological care and get counseling with an advocate. A victim has one year to request a full investigation.

“We had 1,800 people come forward (who otherwise wouldn’t),” said Galbreath, deputy director of the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.

An additional wound to military women is the idea that a brother-in-arms would attack them.

“To think that one of your fellow soldiers, or somebody the U.S. government is paying (a foreign contractor) could hurt you while you are over there serving your country, it makes me angry,” said Griggs, 53, who was warned of the danger but not harmed during her 365-day deployment in Baghdad. “I took my weapon with me everywhere, and I would have used it if I had to.”

The propositions also were non-stop.

“(Fellow U.S. soldiers) saw the blonde hair,” said Strittholt, who took other precautions to ensure her safety. “They knocked on the door in the middle of the night. They tried to force their way in. I told them to ‘F--- off. Get the f--- out.’"

The transition to civilian life is challenging for mothers. They are susceptible to what psychologist Chard refers to as the 100-50-100-125 rule.

“Women go over (to war) at 100 percent,” she said. “They come home 50 percent, not 100 percent. And their husbands and children want 125 percent of them. The expectation for women is that they should come home to their families and pick up where they left off; (12 or) 15 months developmentally is a lot when you are away from a child.”

Anger is common.

“They’re not used to their kids,” Chard said. “Children are not precise like the military.”

Then, there is a societal message.

“It’s a little more permissive for men to check out temporarily from their families than it is for women,” she said.

Seaman, 30, was divorced with a young son at home in Maine with her parents when she went overseas in October 2004. She served 10 months at Abu Ghraib prison, where she met her husband, Jonathan Seaman of Newtown, a combat medic. He receives military disability pay because of back and facial injuries sustained during two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

Laura Seaman works as a cashier at a fast-food restaurant. Her children, ages 7, 3 and 1, are constant demands on her time. She is also her husband’s confidant in his battle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It’s a struggle, but we get by,” she said.

Laura Seaman talks some to her husband about her war experiences. Mostly, though, she listens. “I guess I’ve held a lot of stuff in,” she said.

Family and friends are in Maine. Although she gets along well with her husband’s family, Seaman said she has no one beside her husband to confide in.

Jonathan Seaman tries to get her to talk more. “She’s handling it (her stress) the best she can,” he said. “She remembers the day of getting attacked. That will stay with her for a lifetime.”

When her base was attacked, Laura Seaman was stationed at a door. She was told to shoot to kill any person wearing yellow; some detainees – who were dressed in yellow – had escaped.

She was alone from dinner to 2:30 a.m., except when someone brought her water. She wondered what would become of her son, in Maine with her parents, if she were killed.

She said there is no time for her to see a therapist because her husband goes to group therapy.

Laura Seaman cried without interruption when recounting her military experience. “It was the first time I opened up to anyone beside my husband,” she said.

Maj. Terri Ohlinger, 42, a nurse who worked with the 256th Combat Support Hospital based out of Sharonville in Mosul and Al Sad, Iraq, had a more typical homecoming experience. She had to re-acclimate to her family after more than a year away.

The middle child of her three children, a daughter, now 15, had taken over as the mother figure in Ohlinger’s absence.

“My husband and I had long talks about me not treating the family like they were my subordinates,” she said. “It was a difficult transition for me. I think with mom being the mom and coming in and saying ‘Do this’ and ‘Do that’ all the time, you expect it to be done. It was a shocker for the kids.”

A friend saw it in Ohlinger when she returned from Iraq, where she ran an operating room at an Army hospital.

“She couldn’t believe how I looked like I was going to jump out of my skin at any time,” Ohlinger said. “I didn’t recognize that in myself, but other people did. It was anxiety, nervousness. It’s hard to be around people again, always wondering who’s behind me.”

Leaving is tough, too. Ohlinger will find out in June if she has to return to Iraq. Her son Colin was 8 when she went over the first time.

“Colin said, 'Will you get hurt or will you die?'" she said. “And instead of saying, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll be home,’ I was pretty frank with him. I said, `There was always that possibility. But I’ll do everything I can to come back to you.’

“And then he asked me, ‘Why do (you) have to go?’" And I said, `Because somebody else’s mommy has to come home.’”

Female officers often equate their roles as a mother stateside with their job as a military supervisor.

Sgt. Kendra Tyler, 30, of Forest Park went to Iraq earlier this spring with the 961st Engineer Company of Sharonville. She left two daughters, ages 18 months and 8 years, with her parents in Pennsylvania.

“If you look at it,” said Tyler, a mechanic, “you’re either keeping two children or an entire squad on their Ps and Qs.”

A downside: The female troops who struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder for more than three months may begin to feel the absence of soft emotions.

“A common reaction for a female combat veteran is, 'I am a horrible mother because I can’t feel love for my children,’” psychologist Chard said. “Men are more likely to be in a state of constant anger.”

As a group, female veterans insist their work is important and distinguished. It’s as if the emotional price they pay equals the risk they face in making greater contributions in war.

“Women have come a long way in their roles in the military,” said Lt. Col. Sherrie Lakes, 55, of Loveland and a registered nurse in the Army Reserve. “I am proud to be a part of this exclusive group; we have risen to the challenge and proven our worth.”

For one year, she was in charge of the operating room at a military hospital in Tikrit, Iraq. The first patient she treated as a 3-month-old Iraqi child with shrapnel wounds.

“I know some of the stuff I saw over there I never want to see again,” said Lakes, who is more emotional and quick to tears since her overseas experience. “I saw a body that was 95 percent burned, and the soldier was still alive.”

Still, the women bring home a sense of accomplishment, a sense that the time they spent in Iraq or Afghanistan served a greater good.

Strittholt’s eyes light up and she speaks enthusiastically about her service. She proudly recalled how she took energy pills to stay awake during her first year in Iraq as she hauled troops and supplies to every corner of the country.

“It was a 24-hour mission followed by a 48-hour mission and a 72-hour mission. We constantly were going. We got shot at. They tried to blow us up. They threw everything they had at us.

“But we kicked ass.”

Welcome and well met!

Welcome to Warrior Maidens in History, a site dedicated to all the women who, throughout history, have fought for what they believed in. For those whom we know by name, those who hid their identities, those who led armies into battle or simply followed their hearts, this site is for them. Ranging from the beginning of recorded history to the present day, this site is here to tell their stories of strength and valor.

If you know of any women who have fought for their country or their beliefs, and you think they should be featured here, let me know! Email me at warriormaidensinhistory (@) gmail (dot) com.
For the first post of a new site, I am putting in a decication to a very special friend of mine. Her name is Lt. Puswald, Army RN.

She's one of those gals who knows exactly what every warrior has to go through - between warrior training herself, and seeing the outcome when someone gets hurt. What better way to start a blog on lady warriors of the past, than to start with one in the present?

Happy readings!