Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-289).
Contents:
Kandahar -- The call to serve. Uncle Sam needs you ; Hearing the call to serve ; The Landmark Inn ; 100 hours of Hell ; Making the cut ; Training days ; Diamonds among diamonds -- Deployment. Arrival, Afghanistan ; Operation "Fit In" ; The "Terp" ; Climbing mountains in the night ; Making a difference ; The lies of war -- Last roll call. The first death ; A grief observed ; The man in the arena ; Kandahar.
Summary:
In 2010, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command created Cultural Support Teams, a pilot program to put women on the battlefield alongside Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and other special operations teams on sensitive missions in Afghanistan. The idea was that women could access places and people that had remained out of reach, and could build relationships -- woman to woman -- in ways that male soldiers in a conservative, traditional country could not. Though officially banned from combat, female soldiers could be "attached" to different teams, and for the first time women throughout the Army, the National Guard, and the Reserves heard the call to join male soldiers on special ops missions. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon uses exhaustive firsthand reporting and experience with the complexities of war to tell the story of CST-2, a unit of women hand-picked from across the Army, and the remarkable hero at its heart: 1st Lt. Ashley White, who would become the first Cultural Support Team member killed in action and the first CST remembered on the Army Special Operations Memorial Wall of Honor alongside the Army Rangers with whom she served.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.