Ashley's War (7 page)

It was Ashley’s turn to sit quietly and listen. She heard him out, but it was clear she was unmoved by his entreaties.

“I promise,” he continued, “I’ll help you find another tour. Why do you want to go looking for trouble?”

“I want to do this, Jason, I think this program is important and I want to go for it. I am not going to train all of these years and then not serve when my country is at war.” As she pressed her argument to the one person who had always encouraged her to speak her mind, Ashley’s eyes were now watering. “What if I wait for another deployment and then the war is over? I can get this out of the way and do something I’ll be really proud of when I’m a grandma and rocking on our porch.

“Besides,” she added, moving next to her big husky dog, Gunner, on the couch where she and Jason snuggled and watched movies on weekends, “who knows if I’ll even make the team? We don’t have to decide anything yet.”

She motioned for Jason to join her, but he sat silently in his recliner, trying to put himself in her place. He knew his wife was tough and talented. If she wanted something she would get it. He wasn’t worried she wouldn’t be selected; what worried him was he was certain she
would
.

He saw in her eyes that same look of determination, that total indifference to everything around her that had been so evident in Ranger Challenge. If she really thought this was something she had to try for, how could he do otherwise, when he loved her so much and she had done exactly the same thing for him a year earlier?

“All right, Ash, if you want to go for this, let’s do it,” he finally said. It was long past midnight, and he was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. “But you better dig in. You’re going to have a tough fight at selection. You don’t quit. If you call me and say you need me to come pick you up because you didn’t make the cut, it had better be because you broke a bone and couldn’t walk yourself out of there. You want this? We’re going at it full throttle. No half steps.”

This is what Ashley was thinking about at the Landmark Inn as she grabbed a yogurt and set off to find a seat with the other girls. She had promised then to give it her all, and she was ready.

No half steps, Ashley thought. Time to dig in.

She sat down and began introducing herself to her tablemates.

A
nne Jeremy was one of the first people Ashley met that morning. Tall, fit, and blond, she looked more like a television anchor than a soldier, but her temperament was serious, no-nonsense. She had proven herself on the battlefield at just twenty-three after Taliban rocket fire blew up and sliced through a caravan of vehicles in the supply convoy she was leading. She never felt she deserved the awards she received for her bravery and thought only of her soldiers killed in the battle, but her commanders felt otherwise after seeing her composure in leading her convoy through more than twenty-four hours of intermittent heavy arms fire and hours of prolonged enemy contact. Back at her base she went on to become her combat engineer company’s first female executive officer, or XO. Officially the role was off-limits to women, because the Army had coded the job for men only in its personnel system. But the colonel she served under in Afghanistan thought she was one of his most promising officers, so he simply left that entry in her personnel file empty while she served in the role. Her records could be corrected later.

It was another senior officer Anne worked with in her new role who told her about the CST program. He was a tough-talking Yankee and a true professional; she credited his leadership with her success in the position. “Hey, Anne, I hear they’re letting chicks go to Q Course now.” He was referring to the Special Forces’ qualification course, a direct line to the Green Berets that had always been open only to men. “You gotta check this out, you would be great.”

Anne was an engineer by training. She had completed the highly competitive Sapper Leader Course, a body-numbing, twenty-eight-day program that teaches combat leadership skills and small unit
fighting, and had earned the right to wear the prestigious Sapper patch on her left shoulder. Sappers are trained to clear mines, deploy field defenses, and fight in close quarters. Women account for barely 3 percent of all Sapper Course students, and only 2 percent of its graduates. Not that Anne had ever thought of herself as being a “groundbreaker” or a feminist; in fact, she paid little attention to the fact that she was one of only three females in the course. She preferred to focus on her grit, not her gender, and wanted others to do the same. It was the difficulty of the Sapper Course—both mental and physical—that motivated her, and she finished strong among her male peers.

Special operations had been a dream for her. Having seen bloody attacks in Afghanistan and lost soldiers in battle left Anne with a powerful feeling of unfinished business. She wanted back in the fight, and the Cultural Support Team was the perfect way to get there.

Her colonel gave Anne a phone number for a civilian who was involved with the nascent CST program, Claire Russo, Matt Pottinger’s old pal from Afghanistan, who by then had been sent to Fort Bragg to help prepare candidates for the new teams. In February 2011 Russo had been quoted in a
Foreign Policy
article written by Paula Broadwell describing the new all-female unit headlined “CST: Afghanistan.” Within days the former Marine was fielding a barrage of calls and emails to her personal Gmail account from female soldiers who wanted to know more about this chance to work with special operations and exactly what they needed to qualify for it. Anne was among them.

“You should come to Assessment and Selection,” Russo told her when they spoke in early 2011. “Sounds like you’d be terrific for it.” Not long afterward, Anne was sitting next to Ashley White over a bowl of cereal at the Landmark Inn.

She looked around the motel and was astonished. Wow, all these girls could form their own little company of soldiers, she thought.
She laughed as a serviceman who was staying at the motel wandered in to grab some breakfast, only to stop in his tracks, visibly startled, at the sight of thirty buff women dominating the room. He quickly turned and hurried out.

Anne was ready. CST selection couldn’t be
that
much more of a mental and physical test than Sapper school, but whatever it was she felt prepared. War had changed her; most significantly, it had made nearly everything else seem easier by comparison. She welcomed whatever the week would bring.

L
eda Reston was also at the Landmark Inn that morning. She had known about the CST program before the other women, having learned about it from colleagues in the special operations unit she was working with just then. There was only one problem: the cutoff level was captain, and Leda had just been promoted to major. She was too senior for the program.

Reston had served in the storied 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq as a civil affairs officer. Among her responsibilities was accompanying and advising the local U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team as they opened women’s centers and vocational training schools, which were designed to build goodwill among Iraqis. In addition, her brigade commander had made her the direct liaison to all key Iraqi officials with whom they worked, including the local governor and deputy governor. No woman had ever served in this role, and Leda was determined to live up to the faith her colonel had placed in her by picking this young captain to replace a battle-seasoned major. She may have been the sole female on the colonel’s staff, but, like Anne, she thought little about it. She considered herself first and foremost a soldier entrusted with a job that could further America’s mission and keep soldiers alive if she did it well, and she was determined to succeed.

She did that by developing solid working relationships built on mutual respect with Iraqi officials. They would call her cell phone
directly at all hours of the day and night, often to warn her when ambushes lay in wait for U.S. military convoys on the most well-traveled roads. She also received valuable intel from the Iraqis about how the American forces could track down certain insurgents. This was the height of the surge in Iraq and the fight was escalating. During her service with them, the 82nd’s deployment was extended from twelve to fifteen months, a blow for many, especially those who had previously deployed and had now logged a series of holidays away from their families. Leda carefully studied her commanding officer as he led his soldiers, and absorbed everything she could about leadership and about the new rules of counterinsurgency.

Leda was one of the few females serving in the military who fully appreciated the advantage their gender difference could bring to the fight at hand. Being a female had proven handy in Iraq; like her compatriots in Afghanistan, she inhabited that “third gender” Pottinger and Russo had identified (neither American male or Iraqi female). This enabled her to be taken seriously without being viewed as a threat. She loved being outside the wire, mingling in Iraqi communities and developing relationships with military men and civilians alike. She also loved working with the special operations guys, whom she saw as embodying the integrity and high standards she had always hoped to find in the Army.

Leda’s experience in Iraq had cemented her determination to deploy again, and she especially wanted to work with special ops. Already her career had taken her on a circuitous path from cross-country star—she attended a small college in Florida—to Army reservist to high school teacher and, finally, back to the military after 9/11. When she learned the Army was looking for women willing to go out on dangerous missions with special operations teams, there was no way she was going to miss out on this one-of-a-kind opportunity because of some technicality.

Eventually she won approval from Lieutenant General John Mulholland, the decorated Special Forces commander who led his
men into Afghanistan following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Mulholland now headed the Army’s entire Special Operations Command. If he would sign off on her application, no one would overrule him.

There was only one caveat: the more senior Major Reston would have to serve as the officer in charge and handle all the team’s administrative demands as well. She agreed immediately. For a workaholic like Leda, with little need for sleep and few outlets aside from running marathons and working out at the gym, the twin jobs were hardly an issue.

She couldn’t wait to get started, but the scene at the Landmark Inn threw her off kilter, just as it had Ashley. First: There were dozens of tough, strong, women roaming around the room, cautiously sizing each other up. Each knew that the program had a limited number of spots, so they would naturally be in fierce competition with one another. But the vibe in the room went well beyond competitiveness. Here was a group of women who cared more about being the best they could, not besting the girl next to them. A sense prevailed that this was a unique Fort Bragg event.

“Let’s kick this thing’s ass!”
That
was the attitude of the moment.

O
n her way to work out at the gym across from the Landmark, Leda ran into Ashley, who was heading to the same place. Both of these women were gym junkies; neither would go a day without hard-core exercise. Each started her morning with a dawn workout that included CrossFit routines and a several-mile run.

CrossFit for most of these women was a way of life. Many of them did at least one workout a day, and sometimes two. This results-oriented fitness regimen was stacked with movements such as squats, jumps, sit-ups, handstands, and pull-ups, and reflected influences from gymnastics to rope climbing, rowing, and weight lifting. In CrossFit every exercise is measured and the routine is constantly varied, so the body gets stronger while always being forced
to adapt to a new set of strength tests. The program started in California, then spread to gyms around the country, and it particularly attracted members of law enforcement, and special operations—men and women alike. Virtually all the CST hopefuls were CrossFit devotees who tracked their workouts meticulously in their quest to be stronger, faster, fitter, and tougher.

Leda had spotted Ashley earlier that day standing by herself in the Landmark’s lobby. While most of the other women were buzzing around and talking a big game about their physical readiness for the upcoming selection, Ashley seemed content to quietly take it all in while she waited in line at the front desk for her room key. It takes a great deal of self-possession to look so at ease in that sea of type A women, Leda thought.

Now working out next to Ashley in the gym, Leda was impressed with her raw strength, to say nothing of the ridiculously high number of dead-hang pull-ups she could bust out. Most men couldn’t make it to twenty-five as Ashley was doing now, Leda thought. She looked forward to getting to know this girl.

She had no idea then just how intertwined their paths would become.

T
he second group of fifty applicants, the active-duty soldiers, gathered at the Landmark Inn two weeks later, and included Amber Treadmont and Kate Raimann. Also there was Kristen Fisher, a military intelligence officer just months out of liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. Kristen’s father was an Air Force veteran who had impressed upon her the importance—as well as the fun and camaraderie—of serving. Like Ashley, she had turned to ROTC to pay for school. Somehow the four years of college snuck by her and before she knew it she was in the Army. She and a fellow intel officer, Rigby Allen, had both spotted the “Become a Part of History” poster at Fort Huachuca in Cochise County, Arizona, where they were training, and decided to take on the CST application process together. Polar opposites—Kristen was a bubbly former
NFL cheerleader and Rigby was a self-described “roughneck” who played rugby in college—the two were just three months into their intel officer training before they arrived at the same gloomy assessment: their future held endless desk jobs, not the excitement of the front lines they had had in mind when they signed up.

All Rigby had ever wanted was to be a soldier. She grew up in Michigan playing “army” in the woods with her older brother and sister, and dreamed of leading a real maneuver one day. Her grandfather had served in the 82nd Airborne Division and her dad was a Navy photographer for three years during Vietnam. Without them ever explicitly pushing the children to serve, both men had made it clear that being in the military and serving your country was the most important and patriotic work an American could do. After the Navy, Rigby’s father took a job as an engineer at the defense contractor Northrop Grumman. On “Take Your Kids to Work” day she and her siblings would scamper through the helicopters he designed. When she finally landed in ROTC at Western Michigan University, she felt more focused than she did in any classroom; the program trained cadets to be infantry platoon leaders, which was exactly what she had always wanted to do in life. But soon reality set in. “Then,” as Rigby later put it, “you realize you are a woman. And women can’t be infantry platoon leaders.” Stuck to a desk in Arizona, she spent so much time staring at a computer that she finally had to see a doctor about her eyestrain. That was the last straw. Rigby decided she was going to find a way to get as close to the front row as she could, and the minute she spotted that female with an M4 on the poster taped to the bathroom wall at Fort Huachuca, she knew this special operations program was her ticket out.