Private First Class Monica Brown was awarded the silver star for bravery in combat, and then removed from her Afghanistan unit for...being a woman.
KHOST, Afghanistan -- Pfc. Monica Brown cracked open the door of her Humvee outside a remote village in eastern Afghanistan to the soft pop of bullets shot by Taliban fighters. But instead of taking cover, the 18-year-old medic grabbed her bag and ran through gunfire toward fellow soldiers in a crippled and burning vehicle.
Within a few days of her heroic acts, however, the Army pulled Brown out of the remote camp in Paktika province where she was serving with a cavalry unit -- because, her platoon commander said, Army restrictions on women in combat barred her from such missions.
"We weren't supposed to take her out" on missions "but we had to because there was no other medic," said Lt. Martin Robbins, a platoon leader with Charlie Troop, 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, whose men Brown saved. "By regulations you're not supposed to," he said, but Brown "was one of the guys, mixing it up, clearing rooms, doing everything that anybody else was doing."
Not only was she asked to join this mission, she did her job bravely and without regard to her own personal safety. If that's not acting like a man, I don't know what is.
Bottom line, women can do these jobs, and we should let them if the want to do it.
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While this circumstance certainly doesn't prove that women should be part of usual combat units it does show that young Monica Brown is heroic.
Posted by: The Real Sporer | May 3, 2008 9:21 AM | Permalink to Comment