Women soldiers tell of living through war.

Listen to the stories of women soldiers who have returned from their tours in Iraq and view their photographs in our interactive story about what it means to be female in a war zone.Mariel Sosa enlisted in the 372nd Transportation Company after graduating from college and served as a forklift operator at Anaconda in Balad.

Her mother, she said, had trouble dealing with her absence, and didn’t say much when Sosa called home. “She just wanted to know that I was OK, and then she would pass the phone over,” Sosa said. She did speak to her father a lot. When she did, though, she described the animals like goats and cows she saw in Iraq that are not part of the regular street scene back home in Brooklyn, N.Y.

She also sent emails and letters home, primarily writing about her fear of not returning. “I would tell my sister how I was feeling,” she said. “But I wouldn’t tell my parents because they were just so worried.”

To ease her homesickness, her family sent care packages, and her sister sent music. “It was whatever was out on the streets, mostly calypso and reggae music.” Sosa’s mother sent her food, including Ramen noodles and Lipton soups.

Casey Elder, 23, was a military police specialist while serving in Iraq from March 2003 to June 2004.

“In the field,” she said, “female soldiers were used as a means of intimidation for interrogations.” The squad in charge would warn the insurgents that if they did not cooperate, they would bring in a woman to make them more uncomfortable. When interrogating a woman, a female soldier was put in charge from the start due to cultural sensitivities.

Spending time with Iraqi orphans was Elder’s favorite experience. The soldiers collected gifts from their care packages—particularly school supplies—and gave them to the orphanages in Sadr City. “It was really great to donate these tools that were frivolous to us, but that they so desperately needed.”

After coming home, Elder became a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War and the Bozeman Peace Seekers. Her boyfriend, who has been against the war since its start, has changed the way she now perceives what is happening in Iraq.

“I knew the lies that Bush had told about weapons of mass destruction. But my boyfriend got me excited.”

 

When Kenita Bauerle and her platoon were assigned to patrol the streets of Samarra in March of 2003, she was a fresh-faced private just nine months out of boot camp. By the time she left in 2004, she was a war veteran.

“I grew up a lot, having to be away from home,” she said.

Just one month into her first tour, she was awarded a Purple Heart, after a bomb exploded and sent shrapnel into her arm and face while she was manning the gun on a Humvee in a convoy. No one was killed in the attack.

Being a woman in the army, she said, meant constantly having to prove herself.

“They have an idea that women are too sensitive, that we don’t like to work, that we’re weak,” she said. This attitude only made her more resilient.

She pulled double workouts at the gym to ace her physicals and eventually worked her way up to sergeant.

Bauerle was assigned to a second tour of duty from December 2005 to December 2006. She trained Iraqi policemen in Falluja and guarded prisoners at Abu Ghraib after the torture scandal.

She said that thoughts of her family and friends kept her going during bouts of loneliness.

“We didn’t have a whole lot of spare time.”

 

Thirty-six-year-old Kelli Riley was a finance specialist helping with the soldiers’ payroll in Iraq, where she served from November 2004 to November 2005.

A single mother, she sent her daughter, Teanna, to live with friends in Florida while she was deployed overseas. Her daughter, who is now nine years old, had a difficult time adjusting while she was away. She had to change schools twice because she was lashing out at her peers. “Calling home to speak to Teanna was difficult,” Riley said.

In addition to her friends and family, Riley said she missed her freedom most during her deployment. Surrounded by a 20-mile fence at LSA Anaconda—a base of about 250,000 soldiers near Baghdad—and with a job that did not require her to go off the base on missions, she felt like a prisoner.

“You’re still wearing a uniform, and you still had to do something to work, but you couldn’t go outside that wire,” she said. To battle the loneliness, she spent most of her free time reading books by Nora Roberts.

 

Kirstin Hugo, 26, was a sergeant in the 36th Combat Aviation Brigade. She was deployed as a medic at LSA Anaconda from August 2006 to June 2007.

While waiting to cross into Iraq from Kuwait, Hugo passed the hours reading about other soldiers’ war experiences.

Hugo and other female soldiers were warned to be especially careful outside the wire that surrounded the base. “When I was going through my pre-deployment training, we were told that there is a higher bounty on American females’ heads than males,” she said. “Insurgents receive more money for footage of women being killed because there are fewer female soldiers than male ones.”

The most uncomfortable aspect about being a woman in the army, Hugo said, was the stares from male soldiers. “When you are part of a small population of people, it bothers you,” she said.

Though being a female soldier had its difficulties, accommodations were made for the women. Nail and hair salons operated on her base, and limited supplies of makeup were available at the Post Exchange.

“The Army isn’t glamorous,” Hugo conceded. “You get dirty. Smelly. You may not take showers for days. I don’t expect to feel feminine all the time, but it does feel good to wear makeup and perfume in uniform, especially when you haven’t worn civilian clothes in months.”

 

Sue Friedly was deployed to Iraq on March 20, 2003. She was a staff sergeant of the Charlie Company for a year.

With a bachelor’s and a master’s in Middle Eastern Studies and fluency in Arabic, Friedly’s company used her assets. Rather than perform the job she was trained to do as a communications specialist—hooking up phones and satellite systems—she began to work as a translator between Iraqis and the other soldiers.

“I wasn’t kicking down doors, but I would be the third guy in, even though I had no combat experience and no urban fighting training,” she said. “They were clearing the rooms, and I was there talking to people.”

The fact that Friedly was a woman also helped her to bridge the gaps between the Iraqi and American cultures, she said. In Arab cultures, it’s rare to see women initiate conversations or take on roles of power.

 “A lot of times, we got women to come and approach us and talk to us when it wouldn’t be acceptable for them to talk to a man,” she said. “Even men wanted to talk to women because, culturally, they thought they were less likely to get shot by a woman. Women are seen as kinder, gentler.”