Holbert managed 40 military correspondents and oversaw 70 civilian reporters during the battle to control Fallujah, Iraq. (Courtesy photo)
Life in the Marine Corps full of reward, pain
By Kate Wiltrout
The Virginian-Pilot
© April 3, 2008
NORFOLK
During 30 years in the Marine Corps and reserves, Col. Jenny Holbert witnessed a revolution in women’s military service – and confronted the personal costs and professional perils of war.
When Holbert enlisted in 1978, women at Parris Island, S.C., weren’t taught to shoot – but they were educated in luncheon etiquette and how to wear gloves and apply cosmetics. They weren’t supposed to wear camouflage.
Today, Holbert finishes her post as a public affairs officer with the Marine Corps Forces Command in Norfolk. After two months at Quantico, she’ll hang up her camouflage at the end of May.
During the first Gulf War, Holbert learned what it’s like to be the spouse left behind when a parent deploys. Her husband, a Marine tank officer, was sent to Saudi Arabia after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Then a reservist, Holbert was called up to active duty and worked 14 to 16 hours a day.
“Honestly, about the first 30 days that Lloyd had left, I was very angry with him for leaving me, because I was stuck,” she said. “It was just so difficult, trying to hold everything together and you’ve got the kids wondering what’s going on.”
“Sometimes I’d come home, and the kids had been watching TV and they wanted to know if Daddy died,” she recalled.
She remembers a surreal scene at a kids’ birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese near Twenty nine Palms, Calif. There wasn’t a single man present. The entire Marine division had been sent overseas.
Holbert and her husband eventually divorced. In 2004, her children now grown, she was sent to Iraq.
“It was my first deployment ever to a combat zone. When I was a young Marine, a female officer, women didn’t deploy. You might fly in – I was a finance officer at the time – to pay Marines, but then you’d leave again,” she said.
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