More female casualties now than with Korea and Vietnam combined

Photo courtesy of Scott Antoinette Scott at home with her husband and
one of her daughters.

Female Iraq veterans face struggles at home
By NATHALIE LAVILLE
Observer Contributor
March 26, 2008

Sgt. Antoinette V. Scott was born in 1970 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. When she enlisted in the U.S. Army, she didn’t know she would be back at Walter Reed 33 years later, with a brain injury, a hole in the cheek and a broken jaw.

Scott, 37, was injured on Nov. 14, 2003, after being deployed in Iraq for eight months. While driving a five-ton truck in a convoy, Scott suddenly lost control of the vehicle and thought it may be because she ran over a piece of glass or metal.



“I didn’t realize immediately that my vehicle along with myself had been struck by the explosive,” she said.

Time moved quickly after that. Scott said she immediately regained control of the vehicle, and brought the truck to a stop.

“I was kind of dazed so, my assistant driver was like, you know we need to move… we have just been hit, and I am just sitting here and thinking – did this really happen? - not realizing that I have a big hole in my face, I was bleeding profusely and my jaw was broken,” Sgt. Scott said.

She managed to transport the soldiers to their destination before getting medical attention. She was then flown from the Troop Medical Center to Baghdad and ended up in Walter Reed for a 50-stage reconstructive facial surgery.

Equal rights, equal risk

Scott is just one example of the many women in the military who face the same risks as men in the battle ground. In Iraq, almost any military position can be a target and the enemy is not clear. There is no way to hide from roadside and car bombs or from mortars.

Captain Kristin Dabbieri, 30, served as an Army medic in Iraq for one year and said that the Iraq War is different from previous ones in that women are more involved.

“[People] are saying we can’t be in combat roles; we are in combat service support roles. However we are involved in convoy operations, some of our medics are on the front line,” she said.

“So when they say combat, what is considered combat? They need to define a little bit that word, because as much as we were considered combat service, I felt like we were involved in like combat.”

There are currently 95 female U.S. soldiers who have been killed while serving in Iraq and nearly 500 have been wounded. There have already been more female casualties than in the Korean, Vietnam and the first Gulf War combined.

One reason for the larger number of female casualties is that women also make up more of the army. Currently, 15 percent of the military is female; almost double the rate from 25 years ago. Additionally, women make up 20 percent of new military recruits.

Women are now actively engaged in fighting in a way that American women have never been before, said Lory Manning, director of Women in the Military Project of the Women’s Research and Education Institute.

“So there are many of them who have bad wounds, more of them have been killed in combat operations, and they face the same kind of problems as men could with things like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Manning said.

“I didn’t know I was going through PTSD”
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http://americanobserver.net/2008/03/26/women-vets/