About as much as anyone with Buford on 7/1/1863,....honey

"I Guess I've Done My Duty"

"she was petite, blonde, and looked like a more likely candidate for Princeton's Cottage Club than for combat...."The first time you get blown up by an IED, you're like, Dude, this is badass! but after that you're like, This really is not cool at all anymore. But riding out there, getting shot at, shooting back -- that doesn't get old."

EFFIN-AY!!!!

Her name was Spec. Alison K., and I stupidly assumed that she must be a rear-echelon soldier with a job at the embassy or somewhere like that -- she was petite, blonde, and looked like a more likely candidate for Princeton's Cottage Club than for combat. I was dead wrong about that. After I'd explained to her satisfaction what I was doing in Iraq, I asked her where she was from, where she was stationed, and what her duties were, as I do almost any soldier I talk to. She was originally from California, she said, and was with the 2-2 BSB at FOB Rustamiya, in east Baghdad (she was wearing the Indian Head patch so I knew she was from 2nd ID). She was 25, and twelve months into her first tour. I asked if it had been a rough deployment; she said yes, her truck had been hit by IEDs four times. Clearly she was not a rear-echelon soldier.

I hesitated to press for details, since you never know whether a soldier will want to go into what's happened to them, but she dove right in without my even asking. She drove a recovery vehicle for the 2nd BCT, 2nd ID, and went outside the wire three or four times a week to help drag burned-out Humvees, tanks, and Bradleys back to base. "We get either sniped at or IED'd pretty much every mission," she said. "East Baghdad's really rough, but it's awesome like that. You should visit before you leave!" It took me a moment to realize she wasn't being sarcastic. "The first time you get blown up by an IED, you're like, Dude, this is badass! but after that you're like, This really is not cool at all anymore. But riding out there, getting shot at, shooting back -- that doesn't get old." Many soldiers would disagree, obviously, it was hard to doubt her enthusiasm. She seemed to genuinely love combat, and she related two stories with particular relish. First, the time she was taping from her vehicle so that people could see what a convoy looked like, when, right there on tape, the truck directly in front of hers had hit an EFP and exploded in a cloud of flames. "It was insane," she added unnecessarily: "There no way you could ever plan to get a video like that."

Where do we get such men and women?

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