Tanya Biank - Undaunted: The Real Story of Americas Servicewomen in Todays Military

UNDAUNTED

UNDAUNTED

The Real Story of Americas Servicewomen
in Todays Military

TANYA BIANK

NAL C ALIBER

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First published by NAL Caliber, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, February 2013

Copyright Tanya Biank, 2013

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Biank, Tanya.

Undaunted: the real story of Americas servicewomen in todays military/Tanya Biank.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-59917-4

1. United StatesArmed ForcesWomenBiography. 2. Women in combatUnited States.

3. United StatesArmed ForcesMilitary life. I. Title.

UB418.W65B53 2013

355.009252dc23 2012031014

Designed by Spring Hoteling

PUBLISHERS NOTE

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

For my sister,
Colonel Maria A. Biank
United States Army

All that I am, I will not deny.

Joan of Arc

And though she be little, she is fierce.

A Midsummer Nights Dream, William Shakespeare

Lieutenant Candice Frost and I first met on a scorching late-summer afternoon twelve years ago at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I was a military reporter at the time for the local paper, the Fayetteville Observer, and was writing a story about servicewomen in the 82nd Airborne Division, an almost all-male unit whose mission is to parachute behind enemy lines, seize airfields, stake out ground, and pave the way for follow-on forces. At that time only 3 percent of the divisions 15,000 paratroopers were women.

I came on post to interview the lieutenant because she was breaking new ground in the Army. For the first time in its history, the 82nd, an elite fighting force, had a female soldier assigned to an infantry regiment: Candice had recently been named as the assistant intelligence officer for the 505th Parachute Infantry Regimentthe only woman in the 4,000-member brigade.

As I sat across from Candice in a shaded office, the thin twenty-four-year-old redhead, two years out of West Point, sat up straight with an earnest look on her rosy-cheeked face, like a precocious student onstage about to win the spelling bee. It was evident that Candice had things to accomplish and dragons to slay, and shed have no time for knuckleheads who got in her way.

What if the unit jumps into combat but doesnt take you with them? I asked.

If you put me in this slot, Candice said, looking at me intensely with her blue eyes, Im going to war. It was easier for me to imagine Candice at my door selling Girl Scout cookies than with a helmet on her head, but her looks were clearly deceiving.

Hell hath no fury if they dont send me, she continued. They had enough faith to put me here. I am willing and able.

I scribbled in my notebook and continued my questioning. What about soldiers who dont think you should be in an infantry unit?

The guys that have the biggest mouths, I say, come on, lets run. Candice was a marathoner, and being a good runner in the 82nd was as important as being a good shooter. Thats the great equalizer.

After we said our good-byes, I realized I hadnt expected her bluntness. But in a division where the male ego was as high as the operational tempo, I figured that attitude would serve her well.

On the last Sunday of August, on the front page of the Observer, the story ran with a headshot photo of Candice, her face covered in camouflage paint, lying prone and aiming an M4 at the camera, and when Candice arrived at work Monday morning, someone had cut out and taped her picture to the door of her office and everywhere else in the unit. She took the attention, however it was intended, in stride.

A few weeks later Candice got married to a fellow officer, an infantry lieutenant named Will OBrien. Two days after her first wedding anniversary, planes hijacked by terrorists struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The next decade put the American military on an unprecedented path of war service.

Candice and I would not talk again until ten years later. I was looking for the right mix of subjects for a book I wanted to write about women in the military. A mutual military friend referred me to a Major Candice OBrien, now a mother of two getting ready to deploy for her second tour to Afghanistan.

I think you interviewed me a long time ago at Fort Bragg for a story about women in the 82nd, Candice said when I contacted her. Do you remember?

How could I forget?

Candice is just one of many women whose service in the military has made a lasting impression on me. In the course of reporting, Ive seen them in action, while sharing a tent in the Middle East, on board a boat in the South China Sea, along the DMZ in Korea, and on the side of a steep jungle mountain in Vietnam. Weve shared stories, as well as granola bars and toilet paper.

More recently, as an Army wife living on military posts, Ive gotten to know servicewomen off duty as neighbors, wives, mothers, and volunteers. Ive sat beside them in church pews, on playground swings, at memorial services, and formal military balls. Over the last twenty-two years, Ive had the privilege of pinning on my sister Marias rank, as she rose from lieutenant to colonel, and Ive been fortunate to have her as a neighbor at three duty stations, including our current one, where she is a brigade commander at Fort Eustis, Virginia.