Shoot Like a Girl

by Mary Jennings Hegar

  “Jennings . . . Get in here,” I heard him call out from inside the office.

  I stiffly marched through the doorway and stopped two feet from his desk. Popping a sharp salute, I could barely contain my smile. I was excited to be starting my career and meeting my first commander, to begin a mentoring relationship I was sure would span the next twenty years. I couldn’t wait to learn all he had to show me.

  Major Johnson’s office was dark, musky, and smelled of cigars. Even when he was seated at his desk, he was still an imposing figure with a brusque demeanor. He stood well over six feet tall and reminded me of Bigfoot, only without all the hair. His high-and-tight military haircut revealed an enormous head, one that matched his burly frame.

  “Sir, Lieutenant Jennings reports as ordered!” I was to hold my salute until it was returned, as I had been taught. With my eyes focused at an imaginary point in front of me, I could see Major Johnson eyeing me up and down, taking in my strict adherence to military decorum.

  “Shit,” he said under his breath. “Lieutenant, the first time your time of the month gets in the way of doing your job, you’re fired. Now get out of my office.”

  He didn’t return my salute. He just glanced back at his computer, ignoring me, not saying another word. I stood there frozen, still saluting, shocked into silence by what he had just said. Then, contrary to all of my training, I slowly lowered my salute and did an about-face. The fact that, in his mind, I didn’t even rate a returned salute did not bode well for my time assigned to his squadron. I was at a loss for why he would show such a lack of respect for me after having just met me. As I walked out of his office, I tried to think of all of the possible reasons for the interaction. Was I being tested? Should I stand up to him?

  I decided to give it a few days so I could get a bead on him. Sure enough, it was just as I feared. There was no underlying lesson to be learned. He was just a misogynistic jerk. I’d have to keep my head up, toughen up, and learn to get along with someone who clearly disrespected everything I was trying to accomplish. This wasn’t the first time I had to bite my tongue, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. To be honest, I would learn a lot from my short time working for him because, after all, you can learn a hell of a lot from the leaders you do not want to emulate.

  —

  I feel strongly that your success in life has little to do with your situation and everything to do with your reaction to it. Instead of wallowing in despair, I chose to funnel the frustration I was feeling at moments like this into being better at absolutely everything I did. One of my favorite places to do this was at the range.

  We had to qualify to carry various service weapons, which involved simply stepping up to the target and firing your weapon. Depending on how many shots you got in the center, you either fail to qualify, qualify, or shoot expert. Throughout my career, whenever I hit the gun range to qualify, I would always leave with an expert rating. Whether I was using a handgun or a rifle—no matter what—shooting always seemed to come naturally to me.

  After the incident in Major Johnson’s office, I got the chance to blow off some steam at the range in Misawa. Once again, I qualified expert, and one of the instructors there high-fived me to congratulate me on my shooting.

  “Outstanding, Jennings. You shoot like a girl.”

  I stood there baffled. Did he just compliment me or insult me? Was I going to have to deal with this kind of shit here, too?

  Seeing my expression, he quickly elaborated. And what he said would stick with me for the rest of my career, every time I picked up a weapon.

  “No, really,” he continued. “Women are physiologically predisposed to being excellent marksmen. It’s about their muscle tone, center of gravity, flexibility, heart rate, respiration, and, in my opinion, psychology.”

  “Really?” I responded, fascinated by this news.

  “Yes, seriously,” he went on. “You see, there’s a lot of ego involved in how well you shoot. Frame of mind is one of the keys to accuracy when firing your weapon. If you put too much pressure on yourself, your grip tightens and you sabotage yourself. A lot of guys let their egos get the best of them and feel like they’re not a real man if they can’t shoot. The chicks come in here and have fun. I try to teach my guys to shoot like a girl when I can. You know, the Soviets were extremely successful at using women as snipers during World War II.”

  He smiled once again, then turned away, leaving me standing there in silence. There were physical advantages to being a woman in combat? I went home that night and did some more research. Turns out he was right. I learned that women in general even handled G’s better than most men. “Pulling G’s” refers to the acceleration vector downward when fighter pilots execute sharp turns or climbs. It’s that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach at the bottom of a roller coaster when all of your weight seems to multiply and you feel like you’re being pressed down into your seat. In people with more upper-body strength, pulling G’s sends blood away from the brain, which can result in “G-LOC” or G-induced loss of consciousness. In those who have more lower-body and abdominal strength (like most women), it’s easier to execute the maneuver that prevents G-LOC. This is done by tightening your legs and stomach, thus preventing excessive blood from flowing away from your brain and pooling into your legs.

  If this was true, and the military seemed to make decisions about who should do which job based on gender stereotypes, why not make all of their snipers and fighter pilots women? A long shot, sure, but the research helped me see how equally absurd it was to bar women from certain jobs without even assessing them individually to see if they had the right stuff. I was proud of myself for shooting like a girl, damn it, and I planned to fly like a girl one day soon. I’d be the best pilot in the Air Force.

  —

  After those six months behind the scenes in the backshop under Major Johnson, I was sent out to work on the flightline, where the tempo was a lot faster and the hours were longer. I didn’t mind working my tail off, but it did make it difficult to find time to work out. I fought against my old knee injury to go for a run now and then, but usually I spent my free time exhausted and home with Jäger.

  The flightline is where I finally did find a leader worth following, but in an odd twist typical of the confusing military hierarchy, technically, I outranked him. Senior Master Sergeant (SMSgt) Matt McCabe was the senior noncommissioned officer (SNCO) assigned to my flight and, as such, he was the highest-ranking enlisted member under my command. Air Force officers tended to move around throughout their career in order to get a good breadth of experience, but the SNCOs and other enlisted members usually stayed put for longer to develop a greater depth and expertise in a specific field. Sergeant McCabe had been there for a few years, and he would prove to be a gold mine of information and leadership lessons for me during my time with him.

  I don’t know how he did it, but he was the most squared-away airman I would ever meet. His uniform was always clean and crisp. Somehow, at the end of a fourteen-hour shift during an exercise wearing chemical gear and gas masks, he still managed to look like he had just gotten out of the shower. He took great pride in the fact that he ran a tight ship, and by the time I took the reins, his flight was already producing excellent results.

  One day, early on in my time on the flightline, I was addressing the group of mechanics under my command. Sergeant McCabe stood next to me, towering over me with his hands on his hips. To this day I don’t remember what I had been saying, but he nodded in approval as I laid out the law to my flight. He then walked back toward my office with me, asking me if I had a minute to chat. I was about to make an excuse that I was too busy when he grabbed me by my upper arm and pushed me through the door to my office. “No. We need to talk now.”

  Shutting the door behind him, he proceeded to lay into me about leadership, telling me in no uncertain terms why what I had just said to my flight was the complete opposite of
what I should be doing. I was shocked. “Why didn’t you say anything out there?” I asked him.

  “Because that would undermine your authority. I’m not going to let them see me be disrespectful to you . . . I’ll agree with you in public, but in the future maybe ask me for my opinion in private before fucking up the flight I’ve been building for months.”

  Officers would come and go from the flight, but Senior Master Sergeant McCabe would be there to stay for a few years until his next assignment. It would be the last time I made the mistake of overlooking the true leader of the flight and disregarding the greatest resource I had at my disposal—his years of experience and his willingness to teach me rather than oppose me.

  They say that for every terrible officer out there, there’s an SNCO who failed the Air Force. Well, Senior Master Sergeant McCabe took his job of turning me into a good officer very seriously, and to this day I remember him as one of the greatest mentors I had in the military.

  —

  Now that I was all settled into my new job in Japan, it was time to start preparing to apply for a pilot slot off of active duty. In order to even be considered, I needed the endorsement of my entire chain of command and, basically, to be rated the number one choice from the whole base. I had to do everything I could to make myself competitive.

  In August of 2001, I went back to the States for a couple of months on temporary duty at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had requested and been granted a slot to attend the Aircraft Mishap Investigation School, which would, I hoped, make me look even better on paper to the higher-ups. The optional course was only about six weeks long, but it would make me an enormous asset to the base should there be any type of incident.

  On September 11, 2001, a few weeks into the program, I woke up and began getting dressed for class as usual. The news was always on in the background, but what I heard that morning froze me in my tracks. Someone had crashed a plane into one of the World Trade Center towers, and smoke was rising from the skyscraper like a chimney. I was glued to the television as the reporters speculated as to what had happened. Mechanical failure? Air traffic control error? I was sure whatever it was, we’d be discussing it in class.

  As I stood to turn it off, I watched in horror as the second plane impacted the tower on live TV. This was no accident. My stomach turned as I began to realize that we were under attack. Kirtland was on lockdown as I drove in to class that day, and Humvees with mounted weapons made their rounds. Flight schools across the country were closed. Air traffic was closed to nonmilitary flights for a short time. Our country would never be the same.

  Unfortunately, in this most unstable of environments, I had already made plans to obtain my private pilot’s license. The first step in pilot training during these years was supposed to be in the T-3 aircraft, but the fleet was grounded for some mechanical issues. As crazy as it sounds, sending pilot candidates to get their private licenses became the Band-Aid solution until another suitable resolution could be arranged. Now that I was back in the United States, I wanted to take the opportunity to achieve this critical milestone, and I was willing to use up all of my leave to do so. I decided to spend the entirety of my leave hanging out with my family and my husband in Austin while going to school for a few weeks to learn to fly. Getting my license on my own, I knew, would make me a much more attractive candidate; it was one fewer step that the Air Force would have to pay for, but finding the money to do it on my own wasn’t easy either.

  A few years earlier, while I was still in college, I had spent all of my savings to buy a brand-new Yamaha FZR600 motorcycle. I’d replaced the stock pipe with a carbon fiber Yoshimura exhaust system that made me feel like I was flying a jet whenever I opened her up. This bike was my baby, but during my time in Japan, I’d had to keep her in storage. At this point, I knew I had to make smart decisions, so I resolved to sell my bike to pay for my private license. It broke my heart, but it was just one in a long line of sacrifices I had to make to achieve my dreams. I was sure it would be worth it.

  In late September 2001, I signed up for a private pilot’s license course in Georgetown, Texas, thirty minutes from Austin, and began within days of the government reopening flight schools nationwide. My civilian flight training was a complete whirlwind—I studied day and night and spent as much time in an aircraft as I could. I ended up obtaining my license in two and half weeks, which broke a school record. About three days into my training, it was already time for me to go solo cross-country. “Cross-country” meant that you landed at a different airport from the one where you had just taken off, and for rookie pilots, it was a big deal.

  I was ready. I planned out my solo flight from Georgetown to Waco to College Station (Texas A&M University), and back to Georgetown. At this stage, having been training for only three days, I knew very little about flying. Essentially, I knew that you had to navigate by calculating wind direction, and the resultant heading was what you needed to hold for a certain amount of time in order to get to the location you’re aiming for. That’s it. I knew almost nothing about using my other instruments for navigation. I wasn’t flying blind, not really, but when I look back, I’m both amazed and alarmed at how little I knew at the time.

  I ran through my preflight checks and took off from the small airfield in Georgetown, Texas. I was more thrilled than nervous—I was finally going up in the air on my own! I had been dreaming of this moment for years.

  My leg from Georgetown to Waco was uneventful. I checked in with Houston flight following like I was supposed to, and the controller replied in an annoyed tone that he saw me. I know Houston airspace is crazy, so I felt a little bad for troubling him. But during my leg from Waco to College Station, the weather started getting worse. The ceiling was getting lower and lower, which pushed my flight path lower and lower, since I wasn’t rated to fly into clouds yet. I thought I’d be okay, though, because I was meticulously correcting for the wind and staying on track. Then I was almost grounded by the National Guard.

  Halfway to College Station, I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. As I turned to see what was happening, two Black Hawk helicopters suddenly appeared, flanking me on my left and right. Houston hailed me on the radio to inform me that I was heading right for Texas A&M University during a football game. Since 9/11, there had been a restriction on aircraft flying too close to large gatherings of people. I was to divert my course immediately.

  I complied, my heart pounding wildly, and I soon realized that I would be so far off course that I would have to recalculate the route, which I couldn’t do while flying so close to the ground, under the weather, by myself, with only eight hours in my flight time logbook. I turned around, waved at the helicopters, and quickly went over my options. I probably should have just flown back to Waco, but since I was more than halfway to College Station, I wasn’t sure I’d have enough gas. There was also the worsening weather to consider.

  In my head, I hurriedly calculated an educated guess as to an alternate route that wouldn’t put me too close to the stadium. Then I reluctantly called the air traffic controllers in Houston on the radio.

  “Yes, Cessna seven six November . . . Go ahead,” he said, sighing.

  “Houston, Cessna seven six November . . . um . . . Be advised . . . Well . . . I’m a student pilot on my first solo cross-country, and that divert I just made has knocked me off course. The weather is getting worse, and I’m not 100 percent sure I can find College Station now.”

  Luckily Senior Master Sergeant McCabe had taught me that asking for help was a strength. Admitting I was out of my depth was a good thing, I had learned.

  In the tense silence that followed, you could sense the shift in the Houston Air Traffic Control facility as the previously annoyed controller suddenly made me his top priority.

  “Uh, copy that, Cessna seven six November. Squawk one two seven six and ident for me.” This was his way of trying to fi
nd me on his radar. I flipped the switch on my transponder that made me light up on the controller’s screen for a moment, and he confirmed he could see where I was.

  “Okay, Cessna, come left another five degrees to heading one three zero. Check in with me again in one five mike. I’ll get you a weather update.”

  Relieved that someone was going to be able to talk me to my destination, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding. I’d just calm down, follow his heading, then check in with him again in fifteen minutes and hope for the best. But then things got even worse.

  “CESSNA SEVEN SIX NOVEMBER, HOUSTON . . . ARE YOU THERE?” The uncharacteristic near panic in the controller’s voice scared me out of my momentary calm.

  “Yes! Houston, Cessna seven six November . . . I read you.”

  “Cessna, you dropped off of my radar.” He sighed. “Your transponder must be malfunctioning. Recycle and ident.” But despite multiple attempts at troubleshooting, we couldn’t get my transponder to function consistently. We both slowly realized the situation. I was off his radar and entirely on my own.

  “What do you see around you?” he asked.

  “Well, I’m in the middle of nowhere . . . Cows?”

  He chuckled. “Anything else?”

  “I’m just about low enough to read street signs, but no. I don’t see anything else.” I took a deep breath. I could do this. I knew I could. “I’ll be okay, though,” I reassured him. “I know I can find it. I’m sure I’ll at least see the town soon.”

  Unable to do anything else, the controller replied, “Well, you were on a good course last I checked. Hang in there. I’ll call ahead and tell them to be on the lookout for you. Good luck.”