HOO-YAH! Heroes Week!

I found this via Mudville's Open Post. You Big Mouth You! is posting about heroes of the War on Terror. (Sorry, the administration still hasn't named this fight correctly so I refuse to change to the new "Struggle Against Violent Extremism "SAVE"?)

Anyway, he has a great post with many names and operates a site American Heroes. Being the raging feminist that I am (ahem), I couldn't resist posting another story about heroic women in combat.

Pvt. Teresa Broadwell is in the middle of the maelstrom, standing on tiptoe in the turret of a Humvee in a vain attempt, at 5 feet 4 inches tall, to see through the sight of her M-249 machine gun. American soldiers are down in the street. Iraqis are firing at her truck from the rooflines and alleyways along Highway 9 near the center of this dusty city an hour south of Baghdad.[snip]

When the fighting erupted, Broadwell was part of a three-truck patrol a short distance away. Their radios crackled with a call for help, and her patrol arrived on the scene within three minutes and drove smack into the middle of the killing zone. Lt. Guerrero jumped out of his Humvee, almost into the arms of Iraqis firing AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades at his convoy. Before they could shoot him, Guerrero heard short, controlled bursts from Broadwell's machine gun. The Iraqis ducked for cover.[snip]

Tracie Sanchez, the mother of four who was a gunner on the patrol Orlando was riding with, never got off a shot. As soon as the firing started, a round cracked her Kevlar helmet; then a grenade went off a few feet away from her truck, knocking her out of the turret. She collapsed inside the vehicle and credits her driver, Spec. Woodrow Lyell, with treating her wounds and, more important, calming her down.

Out on the street, a combat medic, 25-year-old Sgt. Misty Frazier of Hayden Lake, Idaho, found herself dodging bullets and running from wounded soldier to wounded soldier in a way she can hardly believe in retrospect. "That's the first time I had ever heard gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades go off that close, knowing they were shooting at us," she said. "I was very lucky."

The final woman in action that night, Spec. Corrie Jones, 27, of Shreveport, La., pulled up as part of a three-vehicle patrol to back up Broadwell's patrol, which she could see up ahead in the middle of the "kill zone." She began firing at the Iraqi attackers.[snip]

For her role in the Oct. 16 firefight, Broadwell was awarded the Bronze Star with V for Valor. Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne, pinned it on her uniform, along with the Purple Heart, in a recent memorial ceremony honoring Lt. Col. Orlando and two others killed during the firefight, Staff Sgt. Joseph P. Bellavia, 28, of Wakefield, Mass., and Cpl. Sean R. Grilley, 24, of San Bernardino, Calif. Broadwell was close friends with both men.

(source: Washington Post)

Add that to Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Major Tammy Duckworth and a few other ladies in the front.

And this story from the beginning of the war about SSgt Serena Maren Di Virgilio:

Their three-truck convoy had been hit with a rocket- propelled grenade.

“I heard myself screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything else,” Di Virgilio said as she looked away, as if watching a scene from the movie of her life. “Everything was black, and there was smoke everywhere. I’ll never forget that smell.”

And even though the medic from the Headquarters, 230th Military Police Company, was covered with shrapnel wounds, she took care of every soldier in her unit before caring for herself.[snip]

Di Virgilio — who is the single mother of 10-year-old Taylor Potts — said the real heroes are Sgt. Amy Kovac, who drove the truck out of the ambush, or Staff Sgt. Stephen Mandernach, who took over duties as gunner once Kephart was down.

But it was Di Virgilio who received the Bronze Star with “V” device. She also has earned a Purple Heart and a Combat Medic Badge.

And the horror of that day hasn’t changed Di Virgilio’s view of the Army: Before leaving Iraq, she re-enlisted.

(source: Stars and Stripes


HOO-YAH Ladies! Taking names and kicking butt!

Read about the other heroic men and women of the War on Terror.