And now it was time for his closing talk.
“All right, you guys, I want you to remember to go out there and be great. Be amazing, because you are. Don’t forget any of the stuff we learned this week. Don’t do stupid shit and always remember in the military perception is reality. So don’t mess with your Ranger buddy. Hang out with your CST teammate at mealtimes and every other time of day. Stay away from trouble. And for godsakes, stay in the gym. That is going to be the very first way that the guys you serve with measure you. So work out really hard every single day and show those guys you mean some serious fucking business, just like you showed all of us. I’m proud of what you did here this week. Now go and do it even better out there with your Ranger battalion. Show them you belong there. Do the work, and they will respect you and make you part of the team. Pay your rent and they’ll bring you out on mission every night. I know you’ll make a difference out there.”
Then he walked to the whiteboard and started writing.
“This is my phone number,” he said. “If anything goes wrong in Afghanistan, if anyone is mean to you, I will skullfuck them. And I mean it. Just call me.
“Now go out there and get it done,” he said. “Be great.”
Now this is what I always dreamed of when I dreamed of joining the Army, Kate thought. She wasn’t the only one who felt it had been the best week of her military career thus far.
A few days later, as the CSTs were enjoying two weeks of leave before their deployment, tragic news seized the headlines. On August 6, 2011, a rocket-propelled grenade blasted through an Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter in the eastern part of Afghanistan. Thirty-eight Americans and Afghans died, including twenty-two Navy SEALs from SEAL Team Six. The SEALs, according to Pentagon reports, had gone in as part of a team backing up Rangers on a mission to capture insurgents gathered at a compound in Wardak Province’s Tangi valley. It was America’s single worst day of casualties in ten years at war in Afghanistan, and the worst day in history for the Navy’s special warfare unit.
Lane was home in Nevada visiting her brother and a group of his friends when she saw the television news headline. No one else seemed to notice. In the midst of preparing for war in Afghanistan herself, she couldn’t believe how little attention any of them paid to all those war dead.
“You all need to tune in,” she said to her brother and the others in the room, pointing to the TV, even though the newscast had moved on to another story. “These are the guys I’m going to be out there with. This country is still at war, despite the fact that no one even remembers it.”
Back in North Carolina, Jason and Ashley were finishing up breakfast when the news broke. Jason’s first instinct was to turn up the volume, but then he quickly switched the channel. His wife was home for just two more weeks and he wanted to focus on their time together. He had given up a spot at the five-month Maneuver Captains Career Course, once called the Infantry Officer Advanced Course, to be home with her until she left. Artillery, Jason’s unit, had to fight hard to get those slots for its guys, and Jason had lobbied to secure a space in the July course. But when he found out Ashley would be leaving in August, he decided he had to turn it down. His wife was heading to Afghanistan with special operations and there was no way he would leave her during those last weeks before she deployed. The decision to stay was easy; harder was telling his executive officer and the other commanders who had backed him that his wife was the reason he wasn’t taking the vaunted spot.
His superiors were unhappy and said so. “Don’t burn a bridge,” they said. “Don’t you realize this decision isn’t good for your career as an officer?”
Eventually he turned to his battalion commander, a man he knew from his time in Afghanistan and a leader who had a career—and a marriage—he respected.
“Hey, Stumpf, let me put it to you like this,” his commander answered when Jason told him about the situation. “If anyone judges you for the decision you’re about to make, fuck ’em.”
Jason had never heard his commander utter a swear word in all the time he had served under him, even in the middle of the war in Afghanistan.
“Okay, sir, then I will go ahead and reverse my decision and take the September artillery course at Fort Sill,” Jason said, referring to the course that would be useful but more traditional—and consequently less helpful to his career trajectory. “It will give me an extra month with my wife.”
“I imagine I would do the same thing,” his commander replied. “Your wife is going to Afghanistan. You two are newlyweds. Enjoy the last month before she goes over there.”
Ashley was furious when Jason told her what he had done.
“I know why you did it, but you didn’t have to,” she insisted. “I would have come to see you on weekends.”
“Ash, be real,” he answered. “You would’ve been way too busy, and I would be full-on with a career course. It wouldn’t have worked. You know that.
“And besides,” he said, “I didn’t make the decision for you. I made it for us.”
Another difficult decision had to do with Ashley’s parents, Bob and Debbie. She had told them little about the CST teams because she couldn’t bear to have them worry. Jason initially tried to change her mind, urging her to at least tell them something about the program since she had always been so close to them, but he knew when it was time to back off, so he promised he wouldn’t say anything to them.
She did take her beloved brother Josh into her confidence. When the White kids were small, Josh would take his little sisters down to the pond near their Ohio home. Now the trio headed to Florida for a nighttime fishing expedition on a giant party boat. Ashley and Brittany both caught their first saltwater fish during that excursion, and the siblings were reveling in the day’s successful catch.
During the twenty-mile trip back to Pompano Beach, Josh and Ashley sat alone at the front of the boat, watching as the prow cut its pathway through the ocean.
“It’s going to be a bit sketchy where I’m going to be,” she began. “Jason just got back, you know, and he’s telling me the Guard units are kind of ragtag over there, and I wouldn’t be making much of a difference with them if I went to Kuwait. So I signed on for a special mission, a new one, which the Guard encouraged me to volunteer for. I’ll be with the Rangers, not kicking down doors or anything, but as an enabler. I’ll be going into more dangerous areas, getting much closer to real combat, but I’ll be with the best of the best. And I’m going with an amazing group of girls who all made it through this pretty tough selection and training process. It’s an incredible team.”
He wasn’t saying a word, so she paused, then asked: “What do you think?”
Josh knew she was telling him and only him because she knew he would understand and wouldn’t try to stop her. Ever since he was a kid he had wanted to join the military, and as a high school senior had even been accepted to West Point. But when the acceptance letter arrived his then girlfriend, now wife, had been brutally honest with Josh: he could join the Army if he wanted, but she didn’t want the life of a military wife with babies on her hips and a husband off at war. “I can’t do it,” Kate said. “I’m just not cut out for that kind of life.” So Josh found another way to serve: as a state trooper, where he confronted the danger of the unknown every single night but at home in the U.S.A.
Josh knew how important his approval and blessing were to Ashley. He didn’t have the heart to try to dissuade her, and he knew it was impossible anyway. He risked his life every night in his own job. Who was he to say she should stay home, safe and sound, when duty was calling her?
“Do it, Ash,” he said. “You’re so good at what you do. I can’t tell you I won’t worry about you every day, that I won’t feel scared every second of your deployment. But I support you, and I understand why this is so important.”
Now it was his turn to go silent. “Actually,” he continued, “I’m envious of you. I wish I would have had the opportunity you have before you now. You’re going to be g
reat, and you’re going to do such important things.”
And yes, he promised not to share the details with their parents.
A few weeks later Josh, Kate, their little daughter Evelyn, Bob, Brittany, and Debbie White said goodbye to Ashley in Fayetteville just before her deployment.
Two days afterward, it was Jason’s turn to see his wife off to war. They drove in his pickup to the Landmark, where the CSTs would meet to head to Pope Air Force Base, just outside Fayetteville. He tried to make small talk on the way and so did she. She reminded him she had left a list on the refrigerator of things around the house she wanted him to do while she was away.
Jason pulled up to the front door of the Landmark, the same place where Ashley’s first adventures in Assessment and Selection had begun five months earlier. He pulled her rucksack and duffle out of the truck bed and set them down by the door.
“Okay, this is it,” she said, as she stood before the motel’s entrance.
“You sure you don’t want me to help you carry your bags in?” he asked.
“No, no, no,” she insisted. “You go ahead now.” He watched her make the effort to stay strong and keep from crying in front of him and the other girls. This was not a group that welcomed tears. And he knew Ashley wanted to remain composed for him as much as for herself.
He hugged her and kissed her goodbye.
“I’ll talk to you from Germany,” she said. “I think it’s okay to let you know when we’re leaving for Afghanistan.”
“Babe, I don’t think you’re going to jeopardize operational security by telling me when you’re wheels-up—I don’t think they’re tracking that!” he said. “Pump your brakes and be calm; you are going to be fine.”
“Okay, well, I’ll text you and I’ll start emailing you when we can,” she said.
The silence was uncomfortable.
“What are you going to do the rest of the day?”
Jason smiled. Who cares? he thought. You are about to go to war.
“Oh, you know, usual stuff: put some gas in the truck, cut the grass, do the laundry . . .” His voice trailed off as he realized that he would now have to do all of those things without her.
“Maybe I’ll get a pizza. I don’t know.”
The last time things were this awkward it was Jason who was about to get on a plane and go to war. I have no idea what people do when the shoe is on the other foot, he was thinking.
So he hugged and kissed her one more time.
“Don’t be a hero,” he said. “You have nothing to prove. You went and did something I have never done: be part of special operations and work with Ranger Regiment. You don’t have to prove anything to me. Just promise me you are coming home.”
“Okay,” she replied. “I’ll be okay.” Jason got in the truck and slowly drove away.
In his rearview mirror he saw Ashley reach for her bags, then disappear through the sliding glass doors of the motel. He pulled into a nearby gas station and called his dad.
“Every time I see a C-17 for the next few hours I’m going to be looking up and wondering if it’s Ashley. It’s terrible being on this side of deploying—I never thought about what she was going through when she dropped me off,” he said. “I feel like some stay-at-home dad. I’m the one who is supposed to be leaving.”
As soon as he got home he sat down in the bright yellow kitchen where two nights before she had cooked salmon and potatoes for supper. He pulled out a calendar to start tracking the months until she returned home safely to him.
“It’s the end of August by the time they finish getting fully in-processed,” he calculated. “By the time they reach their base and really get into their jobs it will be September. The battalions will switch out in September–October so that will eat up a couple of weeks as the new guys settle in. Then we’re looking at the winter months, when the operations tempo gets a lot slower.”
He was making little scratch marks on the calendar as he thought out loud.
“If we can just make it to the winter and the first hard frost and snowfall when all the fighting quiets down, we will be fine.
“We just have to make it to November.”
II
Deployment
8
Arrival, Afghanistan
* * *
Cassie sat bumping around in her seat as the lumbering C-17 flew east to Germany’s Ramstein Air Base. Each of the CSTs had received a letter just before graduation, and Cassie now thought about its contents as she rode to war with her nearly twenty comrades-in-arms. It was a personal letter printed on gray and white stationery and was from Captain Tara Matthews, who had been program manager for the CSTs’ classroom training that summer. For nearly three years Matthews had served in special operations as a team leader in civil affairs. Matthews had come home to Fort Bragg after deploying to Afghanistan and had run the summer training program.
Matthews had been effective and efficient, but the CSTs hadn’t sensed that she possessed any deeply held views on their pathbreaking program or had considered its place in women’s long march toward combat. Then, at the very end of the course, she surprised her students by sharing this letter, just as they were on the verge of starting their own tours in Afghanistan. Matthews was older than many of the CSTs, but only by a few years. But as they read her words, they heard the voice of someone who had seen a great deal and now wanted to share what she knew with a group of women with whom she obviously felt a strong connection.
Cassie had read and reread the letter she found inside the folder holding her graduation certificate, and although the note was addressed to the entire group, she felt that Matthews was speaking directly to her in the most personal way.
“The ultimate effects of this program on the coming generations are yet to be seen,” she had written.
“Thank you for rising to the challenge of being female warriors in today’s Army. I don’t know if you recognize that your presence here has been foretold by the generations of women that preceded us in military service to the nation, and that you walk a path in advance of a more efficient and tested generation that will strive to follow you, and carry us into the future.
“The mission has not yet run its course. Don’t limit your actions in pursuit of success. Take a measured course and a wide berth within your lines of operation. Show us all what you are capable of.”
That’s exactly what I intend to do, Cassie silently vowed.
“Know too that the eyes of the Army and, increasingly, the Nation, are on you. This is an opportunity for failure as much as it is one to succeed. Do not block out the voices of opposition, study them and defeat their words and prejudices through brilliant action.”
Cassie had felt strongly from the beginning—perhaps more than most of the other women—that the CSTs were, whether they liked it or not, a group of trailblazers who had better not mess things up for those who would come after them. And she was awed by the women who had come before them, especially one female soldier who had gone out with the Rangers on missions long before the CST program was in place. The subtext of Captain Matthews’s letter was clear: if one of them screwed up out there it wouldn’t be just her mistake; it would belong to “all women.” In her heart, Cassie saw herself as just another soldier who was taking part in the ancient struggle to live up to her potential as a warrior. She didn’t see herself as a female soldier, just a soldier. But Cassie’s own path had shown her that there was still a long way to go before military women would have the same opportunities as men, from serving in infantry to attending Ranger School to trying out to become a full-fledged member of Special Operations Forces.
Like many of the women in Captain Matthews’s course, Cassie had conditioned herself to swallow her disappointments and channel that energy into making herself better and stronger. But nothing had lessened the frustration she felt over her own suffocated potential. Until she joined the CSTs. The summer just past had been the best of her life: she, Tristan, Kate, Kristen, and Isabel—an intel officer
stationed in Korea who was her roommate at selection and now her closest friend—and some of the other unmarried girls had spent nearly every night together, going to dinner and the occasional bar on weekends, then eating and working out together during the week. She was a long, long way from those lonely nights of doing crossword puzzles on the floor back in Iraq.
Cassie and her teammates had come to understand each other in ways no one else could, or probably ever would. They had forged a bond based on friendship and respect, cemented by the fact that they had never before known people like themselves. Women found them weird for wanting to go to war. Men found them threatening. For a long time Cassie thought this was a reality she alone had experienced, but then she got to know her new teammates.
And now this “band of sisters” she had come to love was about to split up and scatter to outposts across the country in teams of two and three. They wouldn’t see each other for months, and perhaps not at all during the full, eight-month deployment. Cassie was eager to get to her base and start going out on missions, but she didn’t want to think about saying goodbye to her teammates. Together they were making history, and while most of them remained focused on their personal goals rather than the larger backdrop against which their own trajectories would play out, Cassie found herself one of the few who were keenly aware of the moment. Perhaps it was the women’s studies major in her, or possibly it was the ROTC Cadet. Or maybe it was the rucksack at her feet that was filled with books like Sebastian Junger’s War, Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor, and Pete Blaber’s The Mission, the Men, and Me, which follow platoons of soldiers or special operations units into some of the toughest battles America’s troops have faced. Whatever it was, Cassie couldn’t help but feel that this deployment was something that somebody, someday would want to know about.
Cassie had pulled the unfortunate duty of chalk commander, meaning she was basically the airplane’s chaperone. It was her job to make sure all the names on the manifest were on the plane, and would be on tomorrow’s flight to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. She led the gang of women in boarding the C-17, and was therefore among the first to feel the curious stares from the male soldiers who were hunting for space on the webbed seats along the plane’s sides. A huge cargo pallet carrying supplies to the troops in Afghanistan filled the plane’s midsection.
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