Soldier Girls Read online

  Alfred’s letter arrived during the week when Michelle was tackling her fourth gun. She had already mastered the rifle, the machine gun, and the automatic grenade launcher. Now she had begun studying the M9 semiautomatic. On a carefree, Indian summer kind of day, Michelle had all the pieces of a 9mm laid out across her desk when a drill sergeant named Mark Reed burst into the classroom. Reed was a thirty-six-year-old noncommissioned officer (NCO) in the marine corps, with olive skin and chiseled features. One week earlier, he had taught the class how to operate the .50-caliber. Now Reed appeared jangled. A plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center, he announced. Other planes had been hijacked, too, and one was in the air somewhere over Pennsylvania. The base represented a potential target. Reed told the students that if they heard anything unusual, they should jump out of the window and lie down close to the building. Then he left.

  Michelle looked down at the pieces of the 9mm strewn across her desk. Should she reassemble the gun? But the training models were held together with wire and pins, and she had no bullets. The absurdity of her situation struck Michelle: she was a trained soldier on a military base studying weapons, and yet she did not have a gun that would fire. Why did Reed want her to jump out of the window and lie down next to the building? That seemed like a dumb thing to do. Michelle felt unarmed, defenseless. When the instructor released them for their midmorning break, the students spilled out of the room. Many of them rushed to the bank of pay phones over by the vending machines. Michelle stood in line waiting to call her mother, but the base command turned off the pay phones before she got her chance. They had decided that it might be a security risk to let anyone call out. This left Michelle rattled. So did the increased security measures—drill sergeants organized night patrols and had everyone sign in and out at the entrance to each building.

  That evening, a crowd gathered in the common room to watch the impossible images—the passenger planes flying too low, the shuddering collapse of the towers. The room filled with noise as the soldiers hollered army chants and thundered, “HOOAH!” The weird energy in the room disturbed Michelle as much as the unbelievable images on the television screen. All that billowing dust met by this angry glee. Why were her classmates cheering? She felt so afraid that she didn’t even know she was afraid and instead had the unsettling sense that the scene around her had become surreal. Michelle felt cut off from the other people in the room, as if they were walled off behind glass. Money for college, a viable future—that’s all she had meant to sign up for. But as she watched the first tower fall and then the second one, and saw smoke pouring out of a hole in the Pentagon, she saw that she was also watching the collapse of her pretty expectations. The notions she had cherished in the spring, when she had brought Noah along to talk to the recruiters—the idea that they would upgrade their lives while also getting in better shape and risking nothing essential—now appeared vain and foolish. Her future seemed dim and freighted and hard to discern, but she could see already that it would be nothing like what she had imagined.

  2

  * * *

  Don’t Worry About Being a Female

  DEBBIE HELTON REGARDED herself a daddy’s girl, and her father had been a drill sergeant in the US Army. Seeking to emulate him, she had joined the Army National Guard when she was thirty-four years old, and by the fall of 2001, at age forty-nine, she had become one of the longest-serving women in the Indiana National Guard’s 113th Support Battalion, based in Bedford, Indiana, where she was a weapons specialist—41C (“forty-one Charlie”), fire control. Debbie could make the big guns on a tank shoot straight. She could also make grown men shrink with her smuttiness, and she had no problem drinking beer in the morning. She had been one of the pioneers who had integrated the unit, back when women were first allowed to join, and she had always gotten along seamlessly with the men who surrounded her—she was not the type to mutter if a guy started talking about anatomy.

  Over the years, Debbie came to play a maternal figure to most of the men in the unit, and to the growing number of women who served alongside them. Debbie was benevolent, chatty, kind. She had ivory skin covered in faint freckles; prominent cheekbones set high in a square face; short, curly dark brown hair that she often pinned back with barrettes; and a tall, spare frame. People called her Olive Oyl. She was a softball fanatic, a perennial volunteer, cheerful, buoyant. She took care of everybody else. Debbie liked to talk, though she rarely said anything personally revealing, perhaps because she did not consider her interior world important, and she had a way of constantly bestowing affirmation on others. She called other people “honey” or “dear” or “sweet pea.” If the 113th Support Battalion had a den mother, it was Debbie Helton. And being in the National Guard 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.

  That was Debbie on drill weekends. In her civilian life, she managed a beauty salon inside a department store at one end of a shopping mall. The department store was called L. S. Ayres. Debbie lived in Bloomington, Indiana, where she had grown up and was now raising her daughter. In addition to managing the salon, she also saw clients for waxing or electrolysis. Once a month, she drove up to Indianapolis to confer with her boss, who lived and worked out of Fort Wayne, Indiana—they would each drive to the L. S. Ayres store in Indy, meeting halfway.

  On the morning of September 11, 2001, Debbie left her house around nine, as the drive to Indy took roughly an hour. At about 9:15 a.m. she was heading northeast on Highway 37 in the gold 1990 Cavalier she had bought used after she had enlisted in the Guard, and could finally afford a vehicle, listening to the Bob & Tom Show. A person had to have a sick sense of humor to enjoy the syndicated comedy show, but it was Debbie’s main source of news. That morning the hosts ripped into the idiot who had accidentally flown his plane into an iconic part of the New York City skyline. The hosts were still apologizing for their misreading of the terrorist attack when she got to Indy. Her boss asked if she needed to leave. “No, I didn’t get a phone call,” Debbie replied. “I have a feeling we will have some type of involvement going forward, but I don’t know what or when.”

  Debbie was mesmerized by the idea of firefighters running up all those stairs. She also wore a uniform, she also strove to rescue. She wondered if she would find a call from the Guard on her home answering machine, but when she got back to Bloomington, no call had come. That was disappointing to her—she would have liked to be needed. Her regular monthly drill weekend fell four days later. When she arrived at the armory in Bedford, she found the 113th Support Battalion’s Bravo Company in a tumult. People were milling around, tasks abandoned. She heard a fellow Guardsman say that maybe the active duty troops would go, maybe the Guard would assume responsibility for security in the United States. They talked about the fact that Bill Clinton had just finished closing bases. If there was a war, the regular army would be stretched thin. The uncertainty assailed the unit in disparate ways—emotionally, they were splintering. Some of the younger guys feared being left out of the action. “Let’s join the marines,” Debbie heard one urge another. More settled members of the Guard worried about being sundered from spouses and children, while others expressed anxiety about the danger of a deployment. Debbie herself did not chafe. She thought she would find whatever sacrifices might lie ahead infinitely more satisfying than her job at the beauty salon.

  Debbie had acquired ideas about devotion and selflessness from her parents. She idolized her father, a warm and attentive man who worked construction and had allowed her to follow him around on job sites, making mortar, carrying hod, toting bricks. She always spoke kindly of her mother, but without the same degree of adoration, suggesting a hidden rift. Debbie’s mother battled anorexia and addiction to prescription pills, and Debbie found her father a more reliable source of emotional support. When she had declared that she wanted to learn how to shoot a gun, back when she was a teenager, he encouraged her to
take a formal class at the rifle range at Indiana University, and then he gave her a .22. She spent most afternoons at the quarry, dropping plastic containers into the deep, cold water, and perforating them until they tilted from view. Most of her friends were boys, but she was the best shot of them all.

  Debbie graduated from high school in 1971, and one year later she married her high school sweetheart. Her husband persuaded Debbie they should have children, then started an affair while Debbie was pregnant, according to Debbie. After Debbie gave birth to their daughter, Ellen Ann, she and her husband divorced. He married the other woman, had another daughter, and got another divorce. Debbie would shoulder the cost of rearing their child alone. In 1975, when Ellen Ann was one, Debbie looked up the nearest military recruiting station in the phone book, imagined offering herself to the army. She was twenty-three. The recruiter, a uniformed soldier in his forties, rejected her as soon as he heard about Ellen Ann. Really and truly, he said, the military does not recruit single parents. Debbie had imagined that the military would receive her gladly, and left staggered.

  A practical person, Debbie scouted for another way to support herself and her child. Growing up, Debbie had cut hair for all the boys in the neighborhood—it had started when her best friend, Jim, came to her and said he wanted to keep the money that his father had given him to pay for a haircut. Debbie’s grandmother worked as a cosmetologist at Redken Laboratories, making color mixes for hair dye. She suggested that studying electrolysis would provide a guaranteed income, and it would take only one year. “That sounds like fun,” Debbie responded. “I like working with my hands, I like working with people.” Good-humored, stoic, practical—that was Debbie. If she experienced anguish at being asked to trim her dreams, that was never articulated.

  Debbie finished her cosmetology degree in 1976. She found a job working for a woman who ran an electrolysis business, then started her own. She lived frugally. Debbie and her daughter shared a two-bedroom efficiency apartment, and Debbie got around town by walking or by bus. She supplemented her income by waitressing at a local bar called Time Out. A coworker recruited her to join a local softball team, and the two of them played together in the outfield. One evening, her coach’s brother dropped by to watch the game. How cute is that guy, Debbie thought. To her surprise, Tony sought her out after the game. He was suave and good-looking—“kind of like a Greek god,” Debbie told friends—and mentioned that he was serving in the army. Later he stopped by the bar where she worked a few times, and flirted with her some more. Tony’s charm bamboozled Debbie, leaving her starstruck. One evening, Tony seemed loath to part from such a rapt audience.

  “Are you going my way?” he asked.

  “I wish!” Debbie replied.

  So Tony asked her out on a date. He was five years younger, and Debbie assumed the relationship might be brief, but he never broke it off. After Ellen Ann turned three, Tony and Debbie married, and two years later, Tony legally adopted Ellen Ann. By then, Tony had left the army and had started working at the sheriff’s department. When Tony lost that job, however, he did not seem in a hurry to find another. He loved material things, and while unemployed—during which time Debbie supported all three members of the family—he bought aquariums, rare fish, fancy cologne, gold jewelry, according to Debbie. After several years of this, Debbie confronted her second husband. “You’ve either got to work or you’ve got to go,” she said. “Because you’re expensive.”

  Tony moved out when Ellen Ann was eight, although they stayed in touch. Looking for a more consistent income, Debbie landed the job at the salon at L. S. Ayres. She earned $110 a week. Debbie’s best friend, T.J., was also a single mother. Often Debbie went to the bar where T.J. worked—it was called Shipwrecked Jimmy’s, and T.J. had to wear a ruffled top and tight shorts with an anchor on her bottom. One evening, T.J. introduced Debbie to a friend named Jim May, a member of the National Guard. “Oh, I wanted to do that,” Debbie said. “I tried to sign up for the army, but they told me I couldn’t. They won’t take single moms.”

  The National Guard would take her, Jim May said. But she had to be under thirty-five. From that point forward, when Debbie ran into Jim, he asked if she had signed up. On July 11, 1986, Debbie turned thirty-four. She steeled herself for another rejection and returned to the same recruitment office she had visited a decade before (which recruited for the Army National Guard as well as the regular army). A recruiter explained that if she gave up custody of Ellen Ann, then she could enlist in the Guard, as May had suggested. Training would force a separation from her daughter of anywhere from six months to a year, depending on her job specialty, but then all she had to do was show up for drill one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.

  Ellen Ann was thirteen going on fourteen and when her mother raised the possibility of living with her grandparents, she responded with enthusiasm. Ellen Ann seemed to think the new arrangement would involve the suspension of parental authority. Her grandparents lived close by, and Ellen Ann would not have to change schools. Debbie made certain to underscore that she didn’t really want to give her daughter away. “This is a legality,” Debbie told Ellen Ann. “You’ve still got Mommy.” Tony opposed the idea, saying he didn’t think Debbie could make it through boot camp. “You’re too old!” he told her. Debbie’s mother said, “Well, if you really want to . . .” But her father encouraged her. “You’ve wanted to do this for so many years,” he said. “You should sign up.” The thought infused Debbie with a renewed sense of purpose. The extra income would help, too—and she craved travel. Sometimes mechanics from the 113th Support Battalion flew to Germany to maintain vehicles for the regular army. She wanted to fly to Germany. She had never flown anywhere overseas.

  Debbie started running to get in shape. Right after the July Fourth holiday—one week before her birthday—she went to the closest processing station, in downtown Indianapolis, and said she was ready to sign up. A nurse took down her vital statistics. “You don’t weigh enough,” the nurse pronounced. The scale said that Debbie had dropped to 110 pounds. At five feet eight inches she was supposed to weigh at least 113 pounds, according to the height and weight chart. The nurse said to come back after she gained some weight. “I have to sign up before July eleventh or they won’t let me in!” cried Debbie. The nurse mentioned an old army trick: go home and eat bananas. Debbie returned the following week and stepped back onto the scales.

  “Tell me it’s a hundred and thirteen,” she begged.

  “It’s a hundred and thirteen,” the nurse said.

  Debbie borrowed her parents’ car to visit the National Guard armory in Bedford, Indiana. She learned that the jobs that were open to women in the 113th were office work, cooking, or fire control. She chose fire control, because she had always liked guns. In the fall of 1987, after Ellen Ann had started eighth grade, Debbie shipped off to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where her father had done his basic training. There were forty women in her dorm, and she was the oldest. A few were as young as eighteen or nineteen; most were in their twenties. Debbie fell into the category expected to perform the fewest exercises; to graduate, she only had to complete nine push-ups and thirty-four sit-ups, and run two miles in twenty-three minutes and six seconds. But she kept up with the others out of pride. And when it came to shooting, nobody could touch Debbie. “I can see you’ve done this before,” one of the instructors said after her first day on the range. She had to get twenty-three out of forty to pass; she had scored in the high thirties. The instructor said he thought she still had room to improve and taught her how to coordinate her shooting and her breath. Then Debbie got a perfect score, forty out of forty. She was the only woman to make “expert”; the rest were ranked “marksman” or “sharpshooter.” When the drill sergeants couldn’t find fault with Debbie’s performance, they hazed her about her age. “What’s wrong with you?!” a drill sergeant yelled at a young woman who could not keep up with Debbie. “You’re nineteen years old, you’re going to let her pass you? She’s thi
rty-five! She’s a granny here!” After that, they called her Granny Helton.

  Back in school, the other kids had called her Two-by-Four, Rail, Olive Oyl. Well, I am skinny, she had told herself. Now she said, Well, I am old. Debbie found basic training harsh physically but not mentally. She never crossed the drill sergeants; it only resulted in extra push-ups. Instead she tried to fit herself seamlessly into the whole. Debbie watched the younger recruits squander energy in rebellion; she found the time went easier when she aligned herself with the commander’s overarching goals. When punishments befell Debbie, it was generally for wrongs enacted by her bunkmate, Kathy, a perpetually disorganized young woman who jumbled her tasks and could not figure out how to reassemble her weapon. Kathy made her bed sloppily, and both of their beds got ripped up. The girl eventually confessed to Debbie that she came from a home that had involved battering. She may have had a learning disability, Debbie thought; Debbie showed Kathy how to make a bed with tight corners, how to organize the parts of her weapon as she broke it down. “Get yourself a pattern,” Debbie coached. “Don’t scatter the pieces; you’re more likely to make a mistake. Lay it out in a certain order.”