Ashley's War

by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

  All the usual side conversations had stopped. The room was silent. For a half second Kate wondered if the Green Beret would accept the challenge and beat Amber into the ground with his fist.

  “No, no, no, there is no way you can do that many push-ups. You girls don’t even have to do that many in the girl version of the PT test,” he said. “Come on. Be real.”

  “Oh yes, I can,” Amber volleyed. “We can leave right now for a PT test. Let’s do it.”

  She stood up and pushed her chair away from the small table, its legs scraping against the tile floor. She knew she was doing just what she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t stop. If someone is taunting you, telling you that you can’t do something, and you know that you can, how can you just sit there and spew words, when you could let your actions prove you correct?

  She stared at him, then pointed to the floor.

  “Let’s go, right now. Let’s do push-ups here.” Amber called out to the class, “Somebody get me a stopwatch, we are going to do push-ups.”

  The Green Beret stared back in disbelief.

  “That is totally ridiculous, I am not doing push-ups right here in the middle of the class. You are way out of line, soldier.”

  “All right,” Amber spat back. “But let’s just be clear that that was you saying no.”

  The Green Beret offered nothing further beyond a searing look of disgust, and finally the instructors intervened.

  “Well, okay,” one of the female cadre announced in a softer tone than had been heard for the past ten minutes. “Why don’t you go ahead and sit down.”

  The moment stretched on in all its awkward stillness as Amber made her way back to her seat.

  “Do I have another volunteer?” the teacher asked.

  As Amber sat quietly, sulking in anger and embarrassment, Lane passed her a note.

  “Way to go,” it said. “That was for all of us.”

  The sentiment wasn’t universally shared, of course. Sarah, the MP who had served in Europe and abandoned her dreams of becoming an Army doctor so she could get closer to battle, understood Amber’s frustrations but felt she should have been more tactful. Humility and tact, not tough-guy tactics, would win the day; going in aggressive with these guys would only alienate them further.

  Even if some may have disagreed with Amber’s tactics, they all knew what it was like to drown in frustration when other people place limits on you. In fact, the desire to bust through those limits was the reason most of them showed up for Assessment and Selection in the first place.

  Later, during a water break on the firing range, where the women had been practicing on their Beretta M9s, a few of Amber’s teammates and the trainers searched out a spot of shade from the North Carolina summer sun. Just then an older woman whom they had met earlier in the course approached the cluster of sweaty CSTs.

  “I just want you girls to know how proud of you we are,” the woman said. “In my opinion you deserve a Green Beret and you are going to be the first girls to get one.”

  Amber was too mortified to even look at her trainers. “This is why they don’t want women here. These guys spend years getting trained to become Green Berets, they test themselves physically, mentally, and every place in between, and someone thinks that a couple weeks of training is any kind of equivalent—that we deserve anything close to the accolades that these guys get? We are no better than fresh-off-the-boat privates right now. No way in hell we are even close to what they do.”

  And that was the rub. Amber wanted to see special operations open to women and she believed they all should have a shot at going to Ranger School but only if there were no shortcuts, no dumbing down of any of the requirements, the same standards for everyone. And everyone would have the chance to meet them.

  The month of accelerated training wore on, and by early July, four weeks into the class, it was getting close to decision time. The choice was essentially between the patient, persistent, creative work of building relationships—the Special Forces village-stability side—versus the aggressive, fast-paced, physically intense, and potentially far more dangerous task of being there when doors burst open—the Ranger Regiment side.

  By this time, most everyone instinctively knew which “side of the house” she wanted. Most leaned toward Special Forces, but not all.

  The more aggressive, outspoken personalities like Cassie felt they belonged with Ranger Regiment. She knew she would be inspired, not cowed, by these soldiers and was confident she would be able to hold her own with them in the field. Ever since the now-infamous role-playing exchange everyone assumed—correctly—that Amber wanted to go in that direction as well. Lane, too, was intrigued by the direct action side.

  They all knew the Rangers tended to be a lot younger than the Green Berets and, consequently, sometimes less mature. The Rangers also had a strong identity; the roughly three thousand men of the 75th Ranger Regiment all wore a tan beret. The women would have to show they could fit in among these guys who lived for war. Fitness also was key. The Rangers marched toward their targets with anywhere from fifty to seventy pounds of gear on their backs usually in the dead of night, for miles on end and often on truly treacherous terrain. A serious misstep or the failure to keep up could quite literally cost a life—their own or, even worse in their own minds, a fellow soldier’s. The only women the Rangers were willing to consider taking out with them were soldiers who tested off the charts in fitness levels and showed that they could keep pace and stay in formation. They also needed women who were aggressive enough to want to go on night raids, but likable enough to connect with Afghan women and children during some of the most difficult moments of their lives. And they had to be mature enough to understand that while they were there to help, their mission was not to run an election or open a women’s center. Their job was to be the softer side of the hardest side of war.

  Toward the end of the course, representatives from both mission sets came to brief the CSTs. The Ranger Regiment representative played a slick video shot in night-vision-goggle green that illustrated the direct action raids that were their specialty. “We are looking for the most outstanding soldiers,” the sergeant major announced, “and we want you guys to come and work with us. We need the best people we can get.” He was a stocky guy, brimming with energy. Standing at the front of the class he began to outline the traits they were seeking. “We’re really excited to have you join this mission,” he said, “because you can go places we can’t and talk to people we can’t. You are going to contribute a huge amount, and we need you to get the job done. And rest assured, if you belong with us, we will find you.”

  Sitting at a desk a few rows in front of the Ranger leader, Tristan couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Oh my God, we are being recruited, she thought to herself. The burly Ranger was making Amber’s argument that they actually did bring something to the mission, with a high-tech, multimedia assist to show them the intensity—and the adrenaline rush—of the fight they would be joining.

  Tristan knew she belonged with the ass-kicking Rangers. Months earlier she had turned down a job training women at her base in Fort Sill because she saw no reason why she would be any better at it than a man. She was not a female soldier; she was a soldier who happened to be female, and all she wanted to do was go to work in a job—and in a place—that mattered to the mission. And that was not training women; it was with the Rangers tracking down insurgents in the hills of Afghanistan.

  Her fellow West Pointer Kate’s heart pounded throughout the recruiting pitch because she knew deep inside that that badass video was all her. Kate loved tactics, she loved fighting, and she wanted to wear her kit and get terrorists. She had even dreamed that evening in night-vision green about using her small frame to the Rangers’ advantage by tunneling onto a target to get a bad guy.

  Kimberly, the MP, had only one thought after watching that video.

  I want to do this now. She, along with a handful of the others, was hooked.

  Finally the day a
rrived when they learned their assignment, and there were few surprises. Among those who made the cut for the Rangers: Leda Reston, Tristan Marsden, Sarah Walden, Amber Treadmont, Kate Raimann, Lane Mason, Anne Jeremy, Kimberly Blake, and Ashley White.

  When Ashley heard her name followed by the words “Ranger Regiment” she first felt surprised, then a strong sense of satisfaction, then trepidation. She had wanted this challenge, had even confided to her teammate Kristen that she hoped she would get the assignment, though she still had her concerns about her ability to fit in. Within minutes of the announcement the new team—the first-ever all-Army group of women to officially be joining Ranger Regiment on missions and in combat every night as enablers—made their way to a picnic table outside Bank Hall to discuss the details of their pre-mission training with Leda, their new officer in charge. From the original group of sixty, they were now just twenty. “The alphas of the alphas,” someone joked.

  There was one more challenge that Ashley faced after the past two months of Assessment and Selection and training, and she dreaded it. She had to share the news with Jason.

  By the time Ashley arrived home, Jason was already in the living room waiting for her. He had received her text about Ranger Regiment, but when she walked through the door with a fellow CST and announced that a group of them assigned to Regiment would be heading over to Mash House for dinner, he knew that the longer discussion would have to wait. Her elation made it easy for him to hold his questions—for now. She was so happy and excited; he was left torn between feeling extreme pride in his ass-kicking wife and intense worry about what she was getting herself into.

  At dinner that night Jason was again the only man, this time seated at a long table filled with more than a dozen buff female soldiers. Sitting at one end of the table next to Ashley, he found himself watching her intently. Something was different, and despite his anxieties about the reasons behind the dinner, he was feeling a deep sense of pride. Here she was, his typically reserved and quiet wife, with a group of women she hadn’t even known two months earlier, and she was in the thick of the conversation, interjecting during other women’s stories and cracking jokes with the other girls. He was surprised by how comfortable she was with her new teammates. And how popular. He heard stories from many of them about Ashley’s performance over the past few months: how she had tried to help the other girls to learn to fast-rope in the gym, how her PT scores had impressed the trainers, who had rarely seen a woman score so high on the men’s scale. And it wasn’t just her physical prowess that inspired them; it was also her generosity. Girls told stories about her cookies and sandwiches, her loans of shoes and socks that Ashley brought for them without their ever having to ask. He realized that this CST thing was turning out to be a kind of sisterhood. It was something he never imagined women could have in the military, let alone a kinship his own wife would be part of.

  Finally the couple found themselves alone, heading home in Jason’s Chevy pickup, and the topic they had shoved to the sidelines came roaring back.

  “So how are you feeling about it all?” Ashley asked.

  Jason hesitated, chose his words carefully, and calibrated his tone in an effort to disguise his real feelings.

  “I don’t know, Ash, those guys are heavy hitters. I love those Rangers, and I truly admire what they do. You know I wanted to go to Ranger School. But it is guns-up for them. They are not hired to go give out hugs and be ‘culturally sensitive.’ Those guys are animals once they’re in the field. That is what they’re trained to do.”

  “I know,” Ashley replied, “but these guys have a plan for us; they really want us there and they think we can make a difference.”

  The more she spoke, the more certain he was that she didn’t fully understand what she was getting into. Jason felt his anxiety rising. By now they were home and had climbed out of the truck, but they got no farther than the entryway to the living room before the conversation turned hot and angry.

  “Ash, these guys go looking for fights,” Jason said. “That is what they do for a living. Do you understand? That’s their job. Their body count is high—when I was in Afghanistan I saw their flag go to half-staff all the time because their guys were getting killed. You don’t need to be there for that.”

  He was now pacing around the room. “What happened to the humanitarian stuff? When did you decide this direct action stuff was what you wanted to do? It just doesn’t feel right.”

  Now it was her turn to give in to the anger.

  “You are the one who always told me I can do anything,” she said. “Is that only if it was a job you approved of? Why would you, of all people, want to hold me back now?

  “I had just finished school when you deployed. I never told you not to go to Afghanistan even though I sat, by myself here, in this house, for a year and I never complained to you. Now when I want to do my duty and get my deployment done you say, it’s too dangerous?

  “You’re just being selfish, Jason,” she said. She wasn’t quite shouting, but her voice had grown louder—and more filled with hurt. “And you know it.”

  Jason fought the urge to throw his fist into the living room wall. He felt even worse when he saw Ashley’s tears start to fall.

  She ran past her collection of Minnie Mouses and into the bedroom, then slammed the door behind her.

  There, alone on the couch, he tried to calm himself. He watched the clock as the hours ticked by and the night passed. Never before, during all the years of their courtship or in their short and very happy marriage, had they slept in separate rooms.

  As soon as the sun began to rise he called his father back home in Pittsburgh. He didn’t give him all the details, but explained that Ashley wanted to deploy on some kind of special mission that made him exceedingly nervous. Jason’s dad, who ran the family’s grocery business, had always been his role model. His father was going through a difficult time, too, having started divorce proceedings from Jason’s mother. This hadn’t surprised Jason—their marriage had been a challenge for some time—but it did sadden him, and lately he had been thinking a great deal about lasting love and how to keep it.

  “Jason, this is something you really don’t want to do,” Ralph Stumpf finally replied. “You don’t want to hold your spouse back. Trust me on this. If you do that, if you hold someone back, they will eventually end up carrying a grudge. Let Ashley be what and who she is, and support her, the way she has supported you, even in those times when she was afraid that something would happen to you when you were off in Afghanistan.

  “Look,” he continued, “I’ve never experienced war, you know a lot more about it than I do, but in fifty years, do you want Ashley to look back at your kids and your grandkids and feel like she missed out on one of the most important opportunities she could have had because you didn’t want her to go? Do you really want to take the risk that she might feel this sense of regret, wondering what things would have been like if she had had that experience? Everyone says ‘no regrets,’ but everyone has them, and if she gives this up for you, she will always look back on her life and there will always be something missing. And this program is always going to be the ‘if only.’”

  “Listen, Dad,” Jason said, knowing he couldn’t dispute the soundness of his father’s argument and the deep personal experience it came from. But he was not yet ready to give in. “Here is the ‘if.’ If she doesn’t do this program, she is still here. We start a family. We move forward with our lives.”

  “Come on, Jason,” his dad answered. “You guys love each other so much—it’s obvious. You all will have decades together and the children and the grandchildren will come. You’ll have a happy wife and a happy life, as the saying goes. You’ll see; it all will come in time.”

  Jason hung up the phone, put on his running clothes, and jogged out the front door and down the road. Even then he knew, in his heart, that she had to go, whether or not he wanted her to and even if he was right about it.

  When he returned, she was still
in the bedroom with the door closed. “Ash,” he said, walking into the room, “look, I’m sorry, I know I was being selfish. I won’t make you choose, it’s just that . . .”

  She interrupted him.

  “Listen,” she said, sitting up in the bed and looking like she hadn’t slept, either. “I know you know a lot more about all of this than I do. I know you shot artillery for these guys and you know them and you know what they do. And if you want me to stop the program I will go in on Monday and tell them I’m out. That’s it. I’ll never bring it up again. I promise. I love you and respect you that much.”

  “No.” Jason shook his head. “I thought about it all night and talked it through with my dad this morning. It’s not about what I think. You want to work with those guys, that is who you are. You earned this chance. And I know if it were me going to work with Ranger Regiment you’d back me. I don’t like it, you know that, but you have my unconditional support.”

  Ashley offered him her sideways smile.

  “Just promise me you’ll be careful, and you won’t try to be a hero. That you won’t take any more risks than you have to.”

  “I promise,” she said. “I promise.”

  He prayed she would be able to keep that vow.

  7

  Diamonds Among Diamonds

  * * *

  Okay, soldiers, quit screwing around,” Sergeant Scottie Marks bellowed. The twenty CSTs who had made the cut for Ranger Regiment were milling around classroom tables at a training facility sometimes used by the special operations command.