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Women and the military are words only recently synonymous with one another. In the past, the role of women has been confined to the home front, but modern ideals have challenged this stereotype.
The wars of Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed a whole new generation to war. Yet some things haven’t changed. A mother still worries for her sons fighting abroad. A young soldier is afraid of saying goodbye to her family. And a new generation of commissioned officers prepares to take command.
These are the unseen faces, and the untold stories. These are the hearts that still beat fast at the sound of the national anthem, hand poised in salute, or crossed over heart. These are the ones who sacrifice their lives for the sake of our own. These are the women that stand behind the flag.
RED
The alarm blares at 5:30 a.m., and Michelle Johnson can’t afford to hit the snooze button. Johnson, 21, is a cadet in the U.S. Army ROTC program. Aside from the hectic writing of essays, cramming for exams, and part-time job responsibilities that a normal student faces, Johnson also has military superiors to report to, physical and tactical training to complete and sanity to maintain. “It takes a lot of work to be in [ROTC], and not everyone can do it,” says Johnson, an assistant S3 Operations and Squad Tac. “It challenges you physically, mentally [and] emotionally, but it builds confidence [in] you to be a leader.”
Johnson finds support among her comrades, saying: “We’re a family. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and we all help each other out.” One of these “family” members is Blakely Pflaumer, who has completed her cadet training and is now a fifth-year senior. Pflaumer says one of the reasons she joined the ROTC was to be a leader. “The military is a place that has these [leadership] characteristics that you can’t really get anywhere else,” Pflaumer said.
A regular day for Johnson and Pflaumer includes a morning of physical training, military science courses, and “lab” sessions filled with activities such as rappelling, basic rifle management, and how-to sessions such as “how to knock out a bunker, [or] how to do an ambush.” Not exactly the activities of a typical Southern California girl. “The difference [between] me and [other students] is that early for me is 4 a.m., while for others it’s 8 a.m. Most people will never pick up an M-16 rifle, but I do,” said Johnson.
Pflaumer and Johnson are well-supported on the home front. “My dad was in the Navy,” Johnson said, “and he just told me: ‘Make sure this is what you want to do.’ After analyzing it, I knew it [was].” Pflaumer’s situation was slightly different: “I didn’t come from a military family,” she says, “And there was a lot [my family] didn’t understand. They were still very supportive, a little nervous, but they believed in me.”
Though their support network is strong, and extends into their superiors and the community, this does not exempt them from fear. “There’s the obvious fear of getting killed or maimed, but I’m more [afraid] of coming away with PTSD,” Pflaumer said. “This is a deeper fear for me, because people with PTSD lose themselves in it. You’re lost even though you’re alive.”
For Johnson, the fears lie in her success as an officer. “I’m afraid of not being a good Lt. when I’m commissioned, [and] not being able to lead well. I want to do everything in my power to help and learn, and be there for my people as much as I can,” she said.
Balancing the life of a student and that of an officer-in-training is rarely easy for Johnson and Pflaumer. Johnson is taking pre-requisite classes for nursing, works part-time in Del Mar, all along with her ROTC commitments. ROTC activities always take precedence, which can complicate studying for the next test or writing the next paper. “It’s hard because you give yourself a three-hour block of study time in the library, but you always get interrupted, usually by a phone call,” said Pflaumer. “One time, I threw my cell phone out the window, after I was given an assignment I thought would be impossible.”
Yet, conquering the “impossible” is part of the allure for these women. “You think you can’t do something, and then [discover that] you can,” said Johnson. “It forces you into situations where you have to overcome your fears.”
There is a calm passion and purpose behind the words of this next generation of military officers. These are women who understand the true meaning of pressure, and when the time comes, they will be ready for it.
WHITE
Molly Fischer didn’t like seafood. This was just one of the culture shocks the 23-year-old from Minnesota faced while stationed in Japan last year. Fischer is a Master-at-Arms in the U.S. Navy, a job which primarily encompasses law enforcement, expeditionary warfare, and force protection. While in Japan, she served in a branch of the military police, and was often called to assist in domestic violence cases.
The daughter of a former Navy soldier, Fischer joined the military to “have [a] change in my life.” This “change” is what caused her to find herself setting foot in Yokosuka, Japan. While in Yokosuka, Fischer worked hard to become the best at her job. Amidst the male-dominated culture of the Japanese, this was not always easy. “It was difficult for the [Japanese] to take orders from a woman,” Fischer said.
Fischer worked often with Japanese police when handling domestic violence cases involving U.S. servicemen. “We weren’t allowed to go into the house until JPS got there,” said Fischer. “But usually they would get there and then turn the case over to us.”
When asked about the high-incident rate of domestic violence cases, Fischer cited cheating and the stress of being away from home as primary factors. Another consistent issue she and her co-workers were called for involved cases of unattended children. “[Japan] is a pretty safe country, and children are often put on trains as [early as] first grade, and [are] left at home alone too,” said Fischer. “If we got a call, we would have to find either a neighbor who would agree to watch them, or they would come back to the office with us until we could get it worked out.”
Being a woman did have its advantages when handling domestic cases. Women were more likely to open up to Fischer, and when children came to the office she would often be able to play and interact with them. It helped in other ways too: “I was a desk sergeant at one point, and had to do a lot of multi-tasking –something guys can’t seem to be able to do very well,” said Fischer.
Fischer is now stationed at the Naval Air Station-North Island in Coronado, Calif. Her job has transitioned into one that primarily involves force protection, which she says is essentially “guarding high-value stuff.” Fischer was recently involved in a mission to San Francisco, Calif., for Fleet Week, and in one assignment guarded the pier. She is anticipating deployment soon however, something that causes mixed feelings, and brings about some of her fears.
“I’m afraid of saying goodbye to my family,” said Fischer. “We are very close, and I’m just afraid having to face those [farewells].” Her mom already had “freaked out,” when she joined the service, because “I was her baby girl. I wasn’t the youngest, but I was the youngest girl.”
Despite these fears, Fischer credits the Navy with helping her life make a “360-degree turn-around.” She says: “The Navy has really helped me mature as a person. I’m finally getting somewhere in my life.”
BLUE
The phone rings and Melinda Anderson’s heart skips a beat. With two sons deployed to Iraq during this war, it’s easy to understand her concern. She has witnessed these boys grow into men, men who are willing to die for their country.
“It makes me very proud to know that they love their country so much that they were willing to lay down their lives for it,” Anderson said. Her eldest, Bobby, was a sergeant in the Marine Corps when the U.S. invaded Iraq in the early months of 2003. Her second son, Kenny, is currently serving with the Marine Corps’ 4th Force Reconnaissance team, and recently returned from his first deployment to Iraq.
The differences in Bobby’s and Kenny’s deployments were profound, their mother says, particularly in the area of communication. “With Bobby, since he was in the initial invasion, they were moving too fast for there to be time to communicate much,” Anderson recalls. “So receiving a letter from him was like treasured gold.”
She stayed away from the news. “I knew it would just make me worried, and the boys were very considerate about not telling me about the situations when they’d been under fire.” Both Bobby and Kenny were fortunate not to lose anyone close to them during their deployments, something they were all thankful for. “I really prayed for them a lot,” Anderson says.
With Kenny’s deployment, communication was easier due to different mission operations, and they were able to talk on the phone almost every day. “It made me feel so good to hear his voice,” Anderson says, “because in that moment, I knew he was OK.”
She always felt trepidation when leaving the house, though. “I was always afraid I would come [home] and that car would be pulled up to my door, or that message would be waiting on the answer machine when I got home.”
Yet Anderson refuses to let fear take over her life. With two younger children still living at home, “I knew I had to be strong for them,” she says. “Because wherever a parent is at, that’s probably where the child is going to be at. I knew if I was worried, they would be worried.”
The emotions that come with sending your children off to war are a mixture of joy and sorrow. “They are going to do what they have been trained for months and years to do, and there is joy in that ability to utilize those accomplishments.” Yet there is much sorrow as well, “because you know they might never come back,” says Anderson, her voice breaking for a moment.
“I’ll never forget when I drove Bobby down to San Diego to put him on the boat to Iraq,” Anderson says. “I was driving my son to war, and it was a concept I couldn’t quite wrap my head around.” Anderson pauses, reliving the memories of that day.
They stopped at a barbershop on the way down, a delay Anderson was grateful for, “because it gave me a few more precious minutes with him.” She sat in the back, her mind drifting as his still-short hair was cut off. “I remembered when he was a little boy. Too short for the barber’s seat and the cape was so big they had to wrap it twice around his neck to fit him. Now, he was sitting there, with the cape being almost too tight because his neck was so thick with muscles,” she said with a laugh.
On the drive she took with Bobby to Camp Pendleton, she and Bobby talked and talked. “As we got closer we got kind of quiet, and then all of the sudden I just burst into tears.” The moment Anderson will never forget is when Bobby leaned over to her and placed his hand on her shoulder and said, “Mom, I know God is going to be with me and I know I’ll be back, so I don’t want you to worry.”
She dropped him off later that day. “I was never good with long goodbyes. We hugged for a while and he held me so close, and that’s when I realized this could be the last time I’d ever see him again.” Then, she got in the car and drove away, watching her son, the Marine, fade into the background through her rearview mirror.
In regards to the war, Anderson has mixed feelings. One the one hand, “As a country, we’ve learned that we must support our troops, because they’re willing to give their lives for you and your children,” Anderson says. Yet the anti-war sentiments that have begun to run rampant as the war has progressed have hit closer to home. “To hear it is just devastating, it hurts so bad, and it even makes me angry sometimes,” she says, a clear defense in her voice. “It’s really sad when people say, ‘Well, we support the troops, but not the war,’ and I just say ‘Please, just stop at the ‘but.’”
When Bobby returned from his first deployment, it was as if the whole Anderson family could finally relax. “I just felt so at peace knowing he was home,” she said. “He could finally relax too, knowing he was home and was not on call. He mostly slept and ate the first few days he was home, enjoying those mom-cooked meals.”
Bobby was called up to deploy again six months later. The second time around was harder for him, Anderson recalls. But when she asked him about it, he said something that she will never forget. “He said to me, ‘Mom, once you’ve been through the hell of war, you never want to go back, but we’ve got guys over there who haven’t been home for months. They haven’t seen their wives or anyone, and so we’ve got to go back to relieve them.’”
It is these sentiments that have formed the pride that Anderson carries in her heart, and it is these deeply held convictions that keep the men and women of the U.S. armed forces going. There is a different note in Anderson’s voice, one that is a combination of humility, tenacity, and strength. It is these qualities that have carried her through the three deployments of her sons. She remains a proud Blue Star mother, who has seen her little boys turn into real men.
She says: “We want our freedom, but we don’t want to pay for it, and it is the men and women of the U.S. military that take upon themselves to perform this task. We need to recognize that.”
