“Oh, I can’t wait to tell him this,” Ashley said, as she and Lane arrived at the camp where they would be living with the Rangers. It sat just downwind from the “poo pond,” a place where multiple septic systems from across Kandahar Airfield dumped the product of 1,800 portable toilets—enough to serve thirty thousand military personnel and civilians—into a huge, mud-colored, semi-treated sewage stew of feces that was roughly the size of Lake Michigan. The stench of the poo pond was aggravated by the dry, summertime Kandahari heat.
A rugged-looking young Ranger wearing the Regiment’s workout uniform of black shorts and a tan T-shirt had picked them up in his truck at the airstrip and now deposited them at their barracks.
“Hey, welcome,” he said, with a casual air. “Glad you’re here!”
Oh, God, this actually is happening, Lane thought to herself, amazed by how informal and welcoming he was. She felt like she was in a movie, one she hoped she would enjoy remembering one day when she was a lot older. Right now she just had to survive—and make sure she and Ashley proved themselves quickly.
A sergeant major was there to greet them as they hopped out of the jeep, and he was all business. “Welcome,” he said, and pointed to their barracks. “Here’s where you’ll settle in. You guys need to get your kit ready and be all set to go tomorrow. I want you on the bird out on mission tomorrow night. Let me know if that is a problem.” The way he said it, he made clear he would hold the women to the same standards as everyone else; no special treatment. He was deadly serious about the business his Rangers did every night, and he wanted to make sure they were, too.
Both women knew that Rangers typically get thirty-six hours from their arrival in-country to their first mission, and since the first sessions back at the Landmark Inn every CST had lobbied for the same high standards to be applied to them. Ashley and Lane had discussed this on the plane from Bagram. They didn’t want to be eased in; better to get the first mission behind them as soon as possible. “We’ll be ready to go, Sergeant Major,” Lane answered without hesitating.
They made their way inside the reinforced building—at least they didn’t have to sleep in tents, Lane thought—that would be their home for the next eight months, and to their new quarters: each had a twelve-by-twelve room she would share with a roommate or two. Subtracting the space occupied by bunk beds, dressers, and a wall locker, there was little room left for moving around. Down the hall was the bathroom: four toilets, four sinks, and three showers. Only a narrow hallway separated Ashley’s room from Lane’s. If they yelled loudly enough they could speak to one another without leaving their beds.
The first female soldier they met was Meredith Rose, a medic and Iraq veteran who, it turned out, had learned the CST mission on the job. She had simply been asked by a commander one day if she thought she could “run around and catch terrorists” with the special operations guys. Meredith knew the only answer to give was “yes” and a few days later she moved to Kandahar and began going out with the Rangers to search and question women. She had been there ever since.
Meredith lost no time in organizing a tour of the barracks for the new arrivals. “We get to clean those ourselves, so keep your flip-flops handy,” Meredith said, pointing to the showers. “There are a couple of other girls living here—you’ll meet them. We all live on this hall.”
As she stepped into her room once more Ashley saw another young woman—a brunette, petite, like she was, sitting on one of the beds. Ashley put her hand out and introduced herself.
“Great to meet you,” the young woman answered. “Tracey Mack. I’m in field artillery.”
She pointed Ashley toward the other bunk across from her.
“It’s not much, but it works,” she said of their little room.
“You guys hungry?” she asked. “You haven’t eaten yet, have you? Let me take you down to the Boardwalk.”
“The what?” Ashley asked.
“You’ll see,” Tracey answered.
The field artillery officer had faced her own challenge of fitting in six months earlier when she arrived in Kandahar as an untested, twenty-four-year-old second lieutenant serving as the resident expert on the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS.
The daughter of an Army veteran father who had worked as an MP, a dog handler, and an investigator during his thirteen-year military career, Tracey had entered ROTC during her freshman year of college. After graduation she was devastated to receive her assignment to the Army’s field artillery branch. Like Tristan, she loved the idea of being out in the fight, but all those jobs closest to the front were still closed to women. Instead of leading people in battle, she’d be managing paper clips, Excel spreadsheets, and Xerox machines back at headquarters. Fate turned, however, to offer her an opportunity: an assignment at Fort Bragg under a particularly open-minded colonel.
“Hey, we’re excited to see you on our books,” he emailed. “Our unit needs a leader and your battery is going to deploy next year.” Tracey leapt at the chance to be a platoon leader. Even six months earlier only a handful of women in the entire military would have had that chance. And now she was one of them, here in Afghanistan.
When she first arrived at Kandahar in the spring of 2011, the petite and perky Lieutenant Mack knew she made an easy target for the rough-and-tumble Rangers who had lived according to combat’s clock for an entire decade. She imagined they saw her as some smiling little girl who was hard to take seriously. She, in turn, felt intimidated by their years of battlefield experience and the intense camaraderie that was born of all that time in the fight together. Any one of these men would have died for another, she thought, whether they liked him personally or not. They had seen the entrails of friends and the brains of enemies and survived fighting that had changed them as people. She considered trying to make herself more “masculine” and harder-edged for the sake of fitting in by being less upbeat, less friendly, and a lot less jocular than she truly was, but in the end she figured that being fake would be even worse than being ostracized.
So Tracey launched a mission to prove herself. She would stand alone to the side each night in the JOC and learn the rhythms of the missions as she watched them play out, in real time, on the screens before her. She saw that the Rangers were straight-shooting: their guys’ lives were on the line out there and all they cared about was what each soldier brought to the table and how well he—or she, in the case of their enablers—could do their job. One night the planes that usually provided air support to the Rangers were prevented from flying because of lousy weather and she offered up her artillery system. After three months of pitching her capability Tracey finally got to demonstrate it, as the GPS-guided artillery struck the target dead-on. Once the men who had seen her around the JOC for all those months saw that she could deliver under the extreme pressure of combat—and could take being ribbed from time to time—they accepted her.
Now here she was, introducing the new gals to KAF. She felt hardened by her last six months at war—she had seen too many flags flying at half-staff as special operations guys got killed by IEDs or enemy gunfire. She marveled at how fresh-faced Lane and Ashley looked to her now.
“The Boardwalk is where we eat when we need a break from the DFAC,” Tracey told Ashley, using military shorthand for the on-base dining facilities. The Boardwalk was KAF’s global shopping and eating promenade. Want a hot dog? Try Nathan’s Famous. Latte? Grab one at the Canadian coffee shop Tim Hortons. Burgers and much more could be found at the Kandahar branch of T.G.I. Fridays, complete with its cheery red and white awning.
But no amount of American consumer merriment or salmon baguettes or chocolate croissants or waves of barbed wire and Hesco bastions could keep out the threats that lay in wait just beyond the fortified base. They lived in the heart of Taliban territory surrounded by an increasingly bold insurgency committed to its fight.
“Pizza or gyros?” Tracey asked Lane and her new roommate Ashley. Nothing else was open at the moment—it was 10 p
.m. Nearby hung a banner featuring an attractive blond woman with glossy red lips holding her sandwich and looking enticingly into the camera with the words “GYROS (YEEROS) for HEROES” in big, dark letters above the locator, “KANDAHAR RESORT.”
“The gyros are pretty good, actually,” Tracey said.
“What’s a gyro exactly?” Ashley asked sheepishly. Tracey showed her the brown beef wrapped around the silver spit on which the lamb circled around and around. The long line of service members queuing for the seven-dollar pita sandwich spoke to its popularity. “All right, let’s try it.”
First meal in Kandahar and already it’s an adventure, Lane thought to herself as they walked back to their new rooms to finish unpacking their gear and head to bed.
She looked down at her black Timex.
Tomorrow at this time we’ll just be getting ready to go out on mission . . . Lane thought. And she remembered the words Captain Matthews had left for them.
Take a measured course and a wide berth within your lines of operation. Show us all what you are capable of.
Lane promised herself she would do no less.
9
Operation “Fit In”
* * *
Hey, Ash, check it out!” Lane yelled. She was pushing a large box toward Ashley’s room with her boot. The girls had been eagerly awaiting this package from Fort Bragg. The carton displayed a large letter P encircled by a C, the logo of Crye Precision, a New York City–based company founded by two Cooper Union graduates in 2000 to “revolutionize the soldier” by creating a new line of camouflage uniforms and body armor for the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Forces. The Cryes were designed to work in every environment where America’s soldiers deployed, from desert to forest to swamp to city, and in every type of climate, elevation, and light condition. Members of Ranger Regiment wear the Cryes every night on mission, and the CSTs had lobbied Leda relentlessly for the same uniforms. She, in turn, had pushed relentlessly on her team’s behalf. The CSTs thought they looked ridiculous out there wearing their regular Army “MultiCams.” As if they didn’t stand out enough.
“It’s like Christmas,” Lane joked as she pulled the green and brown uniforms from the box and started handing them out to her teammates.
The soldiers laughed, but their reverence for the Cryes was real. They were undeniably proud to have the chance to wear the uniform worn by the Army’s hardest fighters. And with their built-in kneepads, the Cryes would be a big help when the CSTs took a knee after running out of the helicopter. The Crye top was another prized item with its elbow pads and lightweight, breathable material that minimizes sweat under body armor. It also has a high, zip collar that keeps gear like rifle straps from brushing and irritating a soldier’s neck. The Rangers who popped their collars reminded Lane of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, and for weeks she would think about Tony Manero on the dance floor every time she boarded the bird alongside her platoon.
“Uh, Lane, look at this,” Ashley said, parading up and down the tiny space between their bunk beds. She was drowning in camouflage that was at least two sizes too big: the waist was a solid eight inches wider than her hips and the waistband nearly reached her armpits when she pulled the pants up. The shirt was so tight it felt like the top of a wetsuit. Thank goodness no one will ever see it, she thought, since she would always be wearing another top and full body armor over it.
She looked like a little kid borrowing her parents’ camouflage, and Lane was nearly doubled over with laughter.
Lane had the opposite issue as Ashley: her pants were tight in spots where they should have been loose and loose where they needed to be tight. The area around the groin, which featured a nylon-cotton blend zip fly with a handy Velcro closure for quick action, was somewhat puffed out because something the manufacturers had intended to cover was missing.
“I don’t think they planned on girls wearing these,” Lane deadpanned.
Ashley asked around to see if any of the Rangers had suggestions for remedying her wardrobe challenge. She got lucky and scored a handsome pair of green suspenders that did the trick; from that moment on they became her signature.
Of course, their sartorial problem was hardly a first for women in the military. In World War II, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps had been supplied with uniforms made by manufacturers that only produced clothes for men. Women’s garment makers charged higher prices for every item and the Army wasn’t about to pay more to outfit the ladies. One woman in the 1950s noted that the women’s uniforms looked like they “were intended for a race of giants.” Mildred McAfee, the first director of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) in the U.S. Navy, complained they “looked like a comic opera costume.” Nothing, it seemed, would fit a woman’s form: jackets had heavy shoulder pads and were tightly fit in the chest area; skirts were too narrow for a woman’s wider hips. Shoes and neckties were deemed unfeminine. The basic design may not have been “all that bad,” one servicewoman said, but “the end product could not have been worse from any standpoint.”
Things didn’t improve much come Vietnam, where women’s uniforms crumpled in the heat and disintegrated after the repeated washings required by the tropical humidity. Most women ended up wearing men’s fatigues and boots, even though their official uniform in theater was a two-piece outfit complete with skirt and pumps. When the Women’s Army Corps director demanded that women wear the traditional outfits, a Corps major protested that “WACs are in Vietnam to do a job and not to improve the morale of male troops.” Finally a commander stepped in to de-escalate the fashion war and allowed that the WACs could keep on wearing the tropical fatigues “if desired.” Most did.
Things in the twenty-first century had most definitely improved since the days of mandatory pumps and skirts, though strange-fitting uniforms abounded. Now, in 2011, at least the CSTs could wear the same clothing as the men they went into combat with, even if they required some adjustment to make them work.
The next hurdle for the CSTs concerned office space. The women had been given a room on the second floor of the Tactical Operations Center, or TOC, far from the Rangers’ team rooms on the bottom level, which meant they had to run up and down the stairs all day to learn about missions, intel, and anything else that was happening. Anne told one of the Ranger platoon sergeants that she wanted to move her teammates downstairs.
“Honestly, I don’t know if you guys can handle us—we’re kind of a crazy bunch down here,” the Ranger said, half joking. In any case, he added, there was no free office space near the team rooms.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Anne replied, undeterred. “We’ll just take over the broom closet.”
And so the CSTs spent an entire day cleaning out an old housekeeping closet that happened to be next door to the briefing room, and transformed it into the semi-official headquarters of the Cultural Support Team. It was big enough to hold a few desks and computer stations, and they settled right in. Ashley surrounded her computer with photos featuring her baby niece, Evelyn, her beautiful twin sister, Brittany, and snapshots of her and Jason. She also made it her business to keep everyone well fed, just as she had back at Bank Hall. Jason was sending regular care packages stuffed with all the sweets she loved, especially gummy bears and M&Ms, which Ashley stored in big jars positioned around the office/closet for visitors to enjoy. Ashley’s mom also sent goodies, including her rich, homemade chocolate chip cookies, which somehow managed to arrive in Afghanistan still gooey.
One day Anne was telling Ashley about how great the food was on the base where she served during her first Afghanistan tour, and Ashley had an idea. “If you get us a breadmaker . . .” she said. In no time the machine had arrived and Ashley’s mother was sending special bread mixes and all kinds of ingredients from Ohio. Ashley broke the machine in with a batch of raisin bread, and the entire hallway soon smelled of freshly baked bread. Rangers stopped in to try the treats and joked that the CSTs were just trying to torture them with the smell of home. Back in
Ohio, Mrs. White would laugh over the phone with Ashley during their weekly Sunday phone calls at the fact that her daughter was baking even while she was at war. Some things never changed.
In reality everything had changed as day became night and night became day. Each “morning” the CSTs woke up at 1 or 2 p.m. Usually they headed right to the gym for a CrossFit workout, rope climbs, and toe-to-bar leg lifts. They completed dozens of lunges, then a series of Olympic lifts and pull-ups. Then they practiced rope climbing. Ashley had raised her own thirty pull-up standard and found herself getting stronger each week. Then, when time and briefings allowed, came a long run around the base, sometimes in full kit and sometimes wearing just the Ranger workout gear of black T-shirt and shorts. After that it was time for “breakfast,” which came when most of their friends and family back home would be eating dinner. Before they commandeered a pickup truck they could use for the quick ride to one of the dining halls, the CSTs requisitioned boxes of Special K with Strawberries and packets of oatmeal they could eat in their rooms or at their desks while working on the computer. They would spend the “day” figuring out what the actual night would hold, attending intel briefings and pre-mission briefs, and getting their minds and notecards ready for the evening’s mission. By 10 p.m. they were prepping. If all went well and even close to what they had expected, they would be back on base in the early predawn hours. Then they had “dinner,” usually known as breakfast, and headed off to their post-mission brief. By the time that finished it was time to wind down, usually with an episode of Glee or How I Met Your Mother on someone’s computer in the office. Ashley often turned to the movie Bridesmaids for her post-mission mental recess. Then the CSTs would make the short walk back to their rooms, change for the gym, do their workouts, and finally grab a few hours of rest. The next day they’d start the whole routine all over again.
Ashley's War Page 17