Mommy fires big guns

'Mother Truckers' can take the load

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

CAMP ROBERTS - They call themselves the "Mother Truckers" and they work daily to prove they can haul the same load as any male soldier.

Across the military, the lines are blurring on what is considered a combat assignment, demonstrated most dramatically in recent times by the POW ordeal survived by soldiers like Pfc. Jessica Lynch and Spc. Shoshana Johnson during the hot combat of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The Army and Marines draw a line on women serving in the combat military occupational specialties of infantry, artillery and armor, as well as the "special operations" commando tasks. No matter how the line is drawn, though, modern warfare blurs the line every day of combat. No Iraqi soldier asked Lynch or Johnson if they were "combat support" or combat infantry soldiers.

They just shot them, broke their bones, took them prisoner and killed their comrades.

For the women of the 1498th Transportation Co., a California National Guard unit headed for duty in Iraq, the distinction between combat and combat support is meaningless. For months in the wet and soggy hinterlands of Fort Lewis, Wash., and the rolling hills of Camp Roberts, the "mother truckers" of the 1498th have shouldered their M-16s and heavier weapons and soldiered along with the men.

Jokingly, the unit refers to itself as the "1st of the 498th Infantry (Truck)" because they have run around in the woods and fired as many rounds in training as most infantry companies that routinely operate from fox holes.

"I operated a .50 caliber machine gun just to show the men I could do it, and I carried the heaviest parts, just to show I could do it," Sgt. Alicia Jean Smith said.

"And some man dropped it on her big toe," another female soldier joked during an informal "bull session" about the life of a female soldier.

"My little boy - he's 3 years old - he's so proud," Smith said. "He asked me, 'Mommy, did you fire the big guns?' He loved that."

The 1498th has nearly 30 female soldiers in its assigned strength of about 300, so the female soldiers represent about 10% of the unit strength. They sleep in a female-only barracks that has newspaper covering the windows for privacy, but each of the women soldiers are assigned amid the unit's half-dozen platoons of about 50 soldiers each.

The women serve in all capacities ranging from supply and postal specialists to squad sergeants and team leaders.

For many of the women soldiers, winning the respect of their male counterparts is a daily challenge. Several said they deal with subtle and blunt challenges to their rank, and to their physical capabilities.

Winning respect

For Spc. Linda Baltz of Modesto, keeping up with the men is no contest. A surgical scrub nurse, Baltz, 35, joined the Army on a dare from her teenage daughter who also was enlisting.

At the time, Baltz, a mountain expedition hiker, was getting ready for an adventure trek to Nepal where she was joining fellow mountain climber physicians headed for base camp on Mount Everest.

Instead of Everest, she is now trained as a "combat life saver" and soldiering in the field alongside the men headed for the final act of Operation Iraqi Freedom. About 6 feet tall, and a portrait of the alpha female warrior physique, Baltz faces the overseas deployment and its attendant challenges with characteristic good cheer.

"People kid me because I always have this sunny smile," she said. "But I've always had this sunny smile. I just get a kick out of it that all the guys out in the field felt they needed to get back to garrison for a shower after a couple of days. That's not rough!"

Field duty may not be rough by Baltz' expedition standards, but the duties in the 1498th are physically demanding for male and female alike.

The hundred or so teams of two-soldier truck operators drive a 45-ton vehicle, the Heavy Equipment Transporter System, a tractor-trailer with 48 big wheels. The trucks are used to haul 70-ton M-1 Abrams tanks or supplies carried in multi-ton steel shipping containers.

Getting the cargo secured is a matter of operating winches and chains. It is not work for the frail or vulnerable of whatever gender.

"All of our hands are hard now," observed Staff Sgt. Linda Ruth Freeman of Corona. "Our hands may be soft again some day, but not for now, not during this mission."

The mission that all soldiers of the 1498th look ahead to is hauling supplies across the length and breadth of war-torn Iraq. To the female soldiers, it is not man's work, or women's work. It is just "green machine" soldiers of the U.S. Army work.

"It seems as if when there's a small man that has trouble lifting the chains, that is acceptable," Freeman said. "But if a woman has trouble lifting the chains, that is not acceptable."

The women soldiers don't cast their lot in terms of complaint. They just believe that proving their abilities to soldier with their male counterparts is a daily mission requirement. In most ways, they see their military duty as identical to the men, and they find they enjoy comradeship, and that friendship is returned in the way of soldiers over time.

"I was out of the Army for many years, and I just missed the camaraderie, and you have friends, the kind of friendships that are like family," said Freeman, who rejoined the Army as a National Guard sergeant in 1996 at the age of 50. At 56, Freeman is among the most senior soldiers in the company, and one of the most able. She is the assistant platoon sergeant of the company's Third Platoon, assisting in the leadership of more than 50 soldiers.

Different problems

The women soldiers deal with some realities that no matter how much "green machine" uniformity of response is called for, their lot is still different from the men. For example, women soldiers can and do get pregnant. And women soldiers have to cope with the anxieties and fears of being raped, particularly in a POW environment.

With details unknown about the exact circumstances of the captivity of soldiers Lynch and Johnson, the topic of rape in prisoner status loomed equally as large as, say, the fear of having to go to war in a chemical or biological combat environment. But rape is a POW fear men have less anxiety about if only because it is less likely for men.

"Of course we're afraid about that, but there's nothing you can do about it except to be mentally prepared," Smith said. "You can't treat it as a violation of your womanhood. You just have to consider it an assault, like having your arm broken or your face punched."

That women in the military become pregnant, either by poor planning, or design, becomes a burden that other female soldiers must cope with.

"It does give women a bad name because everybody talks about it," said Staff Sgt. Alice Pursley, a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. "There were two women who got pregnant, and they got sent home, and everybody talked about it."

At the prospect, and the sometimes attraction that combat poses for the adventurous, Pursley said "Some (women) will say, 'I want to go! I want to go!' But when the bullets are flying, getting pregnant is one way to get out."

The women soldiers point out with pride that in the 1498th, they have registered, by far, fewer reports to "sick call" taking them off duty status for a range of complaints from the minor to the serious.

The female soldiers pointed out far fewer women from the company who have been taken out of the overseas "deployment schedule" for "medical hold" classification than their male counterparts. A "medical hold" represents a physical disability that would prevent a soldier from shipping overseas with the unit.

In other words, if unplanned or deliberate pregnancy is a way to elude hazardous duty, male soldiers have many means of finding medical reasons for retiring from the mission.

"We do a lot less sick call, and we do a lot less whining about every little thing," Staff Sgt. Rhonda Prudam said.

The burden that a "deployment pregnancy" imposes on the reputations of other female soldiers is that it becomes a visible reason for leaving the unit, the soldiers said.

"If a guy gets out, he gets out and he just finds another way to do it," Smith said. "For a female, it's just another way out, but man or woman, if you really want to get out of deployment or the Army, you're going to find a way to get what you want."

Beyond pregnancy, sex in the ranks and fraternization - men in romantic situations with women soldiers - poses problems of their own. One soldier described military vehicles as potential "rolling hotels," and all acknowledged that when men and women work closely, they sometimes form attachments.

"There's nothing that could be done about just being human," one soldier said. "It's going to happen."

And that makes married soldiers responsible for managing their own emotional lives within the military. But the same problems are posed, if not in such close quarters, out in the private sector, the soldiers said.

Doing infantry

What these women soldiers are most proud of is a daily demonstration they carry their own weight, and then some. For every day since the 1498th was activated for federal duty since Feb. 11, the women soldiers have been slinging their weapons and firing them, sharing the fortunes of training for war in fox holes and tents, and turning out daily for duty in "battle rattle" - flak jackets, helmets, heavy equipment and gas masks.

"As far as I'm concerned, women can do infantry, because that is what we have been doing," said Spc. Tracey Ford, who carries a squad automatic weapon.

Ford prides herself on being a squad member who carries the M249 SAW, a light machine gun that is twice as heavy as an 8½-pound M-16. With a 200-round box magazine for bullets, the SAW weighs 22 pounds.

Used for high-volume fire, taking out "hard targets" and clearing buildings, the light machine gun is a heavy duty weapon.

"I carry the SAW because those men didn't think I could," said Ford, who tops 5 feet by a few inches and whose weight dripping wet is not quite 140 pounds.

Shouldering the weapon is one issue, but shouldering the pain of family separation is something that may be even more difficult for mothers than fathers. These soldiers call themselves the "Mother Truckers" because about two-thirds of the two dozen women are mothers.

"We are basically moms here," Sgt. Irma Ramirez said. "We worry about our children, and we worry about the young soldiers here. It's just our nature."

For SAW-weapons operator Ford, family separation is a situation she cannot dwell on.

"I'm a single mother, and my ex-husband is in the Navy in Kuwait and I haven't seen my daughter in six months," Ford said.

Ford relocated from her home in Louisiana to California. She believed she was showing up for National Guard annual training when the 1498th was activated, and she found out suddenly, on Feb. 11, that she was headed for the Middle East where her ex-husband was already serving. Her little girl is with family in Louisiana.

"If I spent my time worrying about things that I cannot control, I could not perform this mission," Ford said. "I have to let family take care of family, and in the meantime, these soldiers I am in this unit with - they are my family."

Every family has a head of household. And if the women of the 1498th are spread out in their duty assignments across the large company of 300 or so, there is one female soldier they all defer to in rank, authority, and respect.

Sgt. 1st Class Mona Boissy is the noncommissioned officer in charge of the company's maintenance platoon, 50-plus soldiers charged with keeping the company's more than 100 vehicles rolling, whether they are running up the hills of "Camp Bob," or off onto the dusty and sand-swept back roads of Iraq.

Boissy, like a couple others among the female soldiers in 1498th, is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm with the 3rd Army, the army group that gained fame in World War II under Gen. George S. Patton Jr. Some believe Boissy is more like Patton than not. No doubt she is a leader, and that she is in charge of her troops, whether leading the maintenance platoon or the contingent of female soldiers.

Hard, but fair - everyone acknowledges she also has a well of compassion that other soldiers draw inspiration from.

"She is awesome," Spc. Rosa Elmore said. "She is our mom, and she is one tough female. She corrects, but she praises."

Boissy can be taciturn and doesn't share her philosophies, but as one of the combat veterans of a unit peppered with combat veterans, she carries her responsibility with a seriousness born of experience.

"I promised I would bring them all back," Boissy said. "It's a promise I work every day to keep."

For Prudam, a seasoned veteran soldier, respect and change do not come easily. She believes women soldiers will have to change the way they are viewed by their male counterparts rather than wait for the men to change their views about women in the ranks. She contends that women soldiers doing the same work have to wait longer to achieve rank, and that often a less qualified man is promoted instead of a more qualified woman. Some, but not all, of the women agreed with her.

"We are going to have to be agents of change," she said. "Nothing is going to change to get us equality of treatment unless we do the changing."