Since 9/11, 250,000 women have deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, or both, as members of the armed forces. Women in the military, many of whom are placed in combat zones while on active duty, comprise 11% of soldiers currently serving. One hundred-twenty female soldiers have lost their lives in combat since 9/11, and 800 have been wounded.*
These wounded female soldiers first captured Laura Browder’s imagination for a book project four years ago. A conversation with an Army psychologist changed the writer's focus: “She told me, ‘You really need to expand your project. No one comes home [from war] without wounds,’” Browder remembered.
Browder, professor of American Studies and English at the University of Richmond, spoke January 12 at Nazareth College in the second presentation of the school’s “Coming Home from War: A Veteran and Family Discussion Series, ” co-sponsored by the Veterans Outreach Center (VOC) of Rochester. Browder’s interviews with dozens of women soldiers and veterans, and collaboration with photographer Sascha Pflaeging, resulted in the book, When Janey Comes Marching Home. It features soldiers’ stories in their own words about their lives in the military: deployments, missions, relationships, motherhood, and coming home.
Controversy has always swirled around the topic of females serving in the military since the Revolutionary War, much of it based on myth or stereotypes, rather than fact. More recently, said Browder, the media and the public’s attention centered on two extreme pictures of the female soldier: Jessica Lynch, portrayed as a helpless victim, and Lynndie England, the torturer.
“I thought there had to be more to the story [of female soldiers] than that,” said Browder. As Browder presented photographs of the soldiers featured in the book and briefly commented on each, the complexities and uniqueness of each woman's experiences within the military became clear.
What had surprised Browder as she spoke with these women was their overwhelming desire to deploy: “I had come into the project thinking that women would be reluctant to deploy, but discovered that for many or most of these women, it was the highlight of their lives.”
Air Force veteran Candice Kundle, a nursing student at Nazareth, nodded her head in agreement as she listened to Browder. In her eight years of service, from the age of eighteen, Kundle was deployed thirty times and had to leave her now eight-year old daughter when the child was just six-months old.
Leaving her daughter was difficult, she said, but “when you join [the armed services] you have no choice.” Kundle’s parents helped care for her daughter until 2008, when she decided against re-enlisting; her husband is currently serving in Afghanistan. Despite the difficulties resulting from the separation from her daughter and husband, Kundle’s heart for those serving in the military is reflected in her goal after college: “I want to go back, as a civilian nurse, to help the wounded.”
Browder’s follow-up to the book is a documentary film about mothers at war. “There are 100,000 mothers serving in the armed forces, and one-third of them are single mothers,” Browder stated. One female Marine told Browder about her ongoing desire to serve, despite having to leave her children behind in the care of others: “I can always be a mother. I can’t always be a marine.”
* VOC President and CEO Jim McDonough shared these facts, and more, before introducing Browder. My column over the next few months will feature pieces focused on the military and its veterans; in particular, the unique stressors and issues soldiers and veterans experience in their relationships while deployed and at home.
Please subscribe to my column by clicking on the Subscribe tab above.
Comments