SOLDIER GIRLS
The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War
Helen Thorpe
Scribner
397 pages; $28
When they signed up for the Indiana National Guard, the three women at the centre of Helen Thorpe's compelling new book, Soldier Girls, never imagined they would end up in a combat zone in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Michelle Fischer, who thought of herself as a "music-loving, pot-smoking, left-leaning hippie", signed up because it would pay for college and enable her to live on campus - not a bad deal, she figured, in exchange for what she thought would be 12 weekends a year, and two weeks of annual training. She'd be able to go to a great college and get in shape at the same time.
Debbie Helton, a beauty salon manager, signed up in the 1980s because she wanted to emulate her father, who had been an Army drill sergeant. She was one of the pioneers who integrated the unit, and by 2001, at 49, she had become a cherished den mother to the men, and growing number of women, there. Being in the National Guard, Ms Thorpe writes, "gave Debbie what some people found at church - a community, a way to connect to a larger circle, a means of submerging herself in a group that she held in high esteem".
Desma Brooks signed up in 1996 on what she calls a dare: a friend, who was dating a recruiter from the National Guard, urged her to take the physical, saying, "I bet you won't make it in." She ended up enlisting and discovered she enjoyed the camaraderie; with a cratering marriage and three children, she also found herself dependent on the pay cheques, which supplemented her factory job. A week after the start of the Iraq war in March 2003, she was shocked to learn she was being mobilised; she had three days to figure out where her children were going to live.
In Soldier Girls, Ms Thorpe - a veteran reporter and the author of the 2009 book Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America - recounts what happened to Ms Brooks, Ms Helton and Ms Fischer when their National Guard units were deployed. In doing so, she gives us a dynamic understanding of what it's been like for Guard members who unexpectedly found themselves shipped off to the front lines of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, their lives and plans disrupted, their families thrown into disarray. She chronicles how these once ordinary civilians were abruptly transformed into full-time soldiers, and how they coped with the boredom and isolation and terror of serving in places where land mines and improvised explosive devices and roadside bombs were a constant threat.
The debate over women in combat; the difficulties faced by women in the military (from sexual harassment within their units to service in countries where women lead highly circumscribed lives); the stress that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars placed on the American armed services and on individual soldiers with multiple deployments - such highly complex matters are all made palpably real through the prism of this book's three heroines' lives.
Soldier Girls is based on four years of interviews that Ms Thorpe did with the women (one did not want her real name used, and is referred to throughout by a pseudonym) and on information gathered from their emails, letters, diaries, Facebook postings and photographs. (Sadly, no photos appear in this volume.) Ms Thorpe's sharply drawn portraits are novelistic in their emotional detail and candour, underscoring the very different philosophical and political outlooks held by these three women before they went off to war, and the transformative effect (positive and negative) that their service would have on their daily lives, their sense of self and their relations back home.
Parts of this book do for women in the military what Kim Barker's wonderful 2011 book, The Taliban Shuffle, did for female war reporters, showing us both the humour and the perils of being a woman in a combat zone: the focus of intense and omnipresent attention (both wanted and unwanted) from their male colleagues, and extra scrutiny for their competence and toughness. The three central women in this book - who become close friends during their first deployment to Afghanistan - turn out to be just as competent and tough (and profane) as their male colleagues, even as they work hard at holding on to their femininity in the midst of a war zone.
The second deployment in Iraq would have serious consequences for Ms Brooks and Ms Helton (who by then went by her married name, Debbie Deckard); Ms Fischer, whose National Guard commitment ended in March 2007, stayed home to finish college, though she felt guilty that so many of her best friends were about to be sent back into danger.
The usually cheerful Ms Deckard got through the Iraq deployment physically unscathed, but returned home depressed and alienated; she woke up feeling that she was enveloped in Saran Wrap and worried that her civilian life had no meaning.
While Ms Brooks was on a mission to Tikrit, her truck hit a bomb, and the explosion left her with a severe concussion and debilitating headaches that would last long after her return home, as well as memory loss and bouts of anxiety and anger. One doctor suspected that Ms Brooks "had traumatic brain injury, although she had not been given that diagnosis and was not being compensated for that disability".
Ms Brooks struggled to relate to her children, who complained that Iraq had changed her. In 2013, Ms Thorpe reports, her son was arrested for breaking and entering a house; he faced charges that included burglary, armed robbery and battery resulting in bodily injury and was sentenced to 20 years. Later
Ms Brooks would wonder if things might have turned out differently for her kids if she had not been deployed and spent so much time away from them.
Throughout these travails, Ms Brooks, Ms Deckard and Ms Fischer - and some of their colleagues in the Guard - remained in touch by email and by phone, and sometimes in person. As this book so movingly documents, their shared experiences in the war and the war's aftermath created an unbreakable bond among them - a bond that, in the words of one, often made them feel more like a family than their "real" families.
The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War
Helen Thorpe
Scribner
397 pages; $28
When they signed up for the Indiana National Guard, the three women at the centre of Helen Thorpe's compelling new book, Soldier Girls, never imagined they would end up in a combat zone in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Michelle Fischer, who thought of herself as a "music-loving, pot-smoking, left-leaning hippie", signed up because it would pay for college and enable her to live on campus - not a bad deal, she figured, in exchange for what she thought would be 12 weekends a year, and two weeks of annual training. She'd be able to go to a great college and get in shape at the same time.
Debbie Helton, a beauty salon manager, signed up in the 1980s because she wanted to emulate her father, who had been an Army drill sergeant. She was one of the pioneers who integrated the unit, and by 2001, at 49, she had become a cherished den mother to the men, and growing number of women, there. Being in the National Guard, Ms Thorpe writes, "gave Debbie what some people found at church - a community, a way to connect to a larger circle, a means of submerging herself in a group that she held in high esteem".
Desma Brooks signed up in 1996 on what she calls a dare: a friend, who was dating a recruiter from the National Guard, urged her to take the physical, saying, "I bet you won't make it in." She ended up enlisting and discovered she enjoyed the camaraderie; with a cratering marriage and three children, she also found herself dependent on the pay cheques, which supplemented her factory job. A week after the start of the Iraq war in March 2003, she was shocked to learn she was being mobilised; she had three days to figure out where her children were going to live.
In Soldier Girls, Ms Thorpe - a veteran reporter and the author of the 2009 book Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America - recounts what happened to Ms Brooks, Ms Helton and Ms Fischer when their National Guard units were deployed. In doing so, she gives us a dynamic understanding of what it's been like for Guard members who unexpectedly found themselves shipped off to the front lines of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, their lives and plans disrupted, their families thrown into disarray. She chronicles how these once ordinary civilians were abruptly transformed into full-time soldiers, and how they coped with the boredom and isolation and terror of serving in places where land mines and improvised explosive devices and roadside bombs were a constant threat.
The debate over women in combat; the difficulties faced by women in the military (from sexual harassment within their units to service in countries where women lead highly circumscribed lives); the stress that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars placed on the American armed services and on individual soldiers with multiple deployments - such highly complex matters are all made palpably real through the prism of this book's three heroines' lives.
Soldier Girls is based on four years of interviews that Ms Thorpe did with the women (one did not want her real name used, and is referred to throughout by a pseudonym) and on information gathered from their emails, letters, diaries, Facebook postings and photographs. (Sadly, no photos appear in this volume.) Ms Thorpe's sharply drawn portraits are novelistic in their emotional detail and candour, underscoring the very different philosophical and political outlooks held by these three women before they went off to war, and the transformative effect (positive and negative) that their service would have on their daily lives, their sense of self and their relations back home.
Parts of this book do for women in the military what Kim Barker's wonderful 2011 book, The Taliban Shuffle, did for female war reporters, showing us both the humour and the perils of being a woman in a combat zone: the focus of intense and omnipresent attention (both wanted and unwanted) from their male colleagues, and extra scrutiny for their competence and toughness. The three central women in this book - who become close friends during their first deployment to Afghanistan - turn out to be just as competent and tough (and profane) as their male colleagues, even as they work hard at holding on to their femininity in the midst of a war zone.
The second deployment in Iraq would have serious consequences for Ms Brooks and Ms Helton (who by then went by her married name, Debbie Deckard); Ms Fischer, whose National Guard commitment ended in March 2007, stayed home to finish college, though she felt guilty that so many of her best friends were about to be sent back into danger.
The usually cheerful Ms Deckard got through the Iraq deployment physically unscathed, but returned home depressed and alienated; she woke up feeling that she was enveloped in Saran Wrap and worried that her civilian life had no meaning.
While Ms Brooks was on a mission to Tikrit, her truck hit a bomb, and the explosion left her with a severe concussion and debilitating headaches that would last long after her return home, as well as memory loss and bouts of anxiety and anger. One doctor suspected that Ms Brooks "had traumatic brain injury, although she had not been given that diagnosis and was not being compensated for that disability".
Ms Brooks struggled to relate to her children, who complained that Iraq had changed her. In 2013, Ms Thorpe reports, her son was arrested for breaking and entering a house; he faced charges that included burglary, armed robbery and battery resulting in bodily injury and was sentenced to 20 years. Later
Ms Brooks would wonder if things might have turned out differently for her kids if she had not been deployed and spent so much time away from them.
Throughout these travails, Ms Brooks, Ms Deckard and Ms Fischer - and some of their colleagues in the Guard - remained in touch by email and by phone, and sometimes in person. As this book so movingly documents, their shared experiences in the war and the war's aftermath created an unbreakable bond among them - a bond that, in the words of one, often made them feel more like a family than their "real" families.
©2014 The New York Times News Service