She's Still My Hero

The headline may be wrong but she's still my hero...

She's a soldier and not a marine...but hey, who cares.

It's not the unifrom she wears that counts,

it's the valor that underlies the cloth...

Female Marine Gets Historic Silver Star The Associated Press Monday, March 10th 2008, 4:00 AM

Army Spec. Monica Lin Brown

CAMP SALERNO, Afghanistan - A 19-year-old medic from Texas who braved insurgent gunfire to pull her comrades to safety will become the first woman in Afghanistan and the second woman since World War II to receive the Silver Star.

Army Spec. Monica Lin Brown used her body to shield five wounded comrades and pull them to safety after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees last April, the military said.

"I did not really think about anything except for getting the guys to a safer location and getting them taken care of and getting them out of there," Brown said Saturday at a U.S. base in the eastern Khost Province.

She said ammunition going off inside the burning Humvee was sending shrapnel in all directions, so she helped drag the soldiers away from the vehicle.

"I was in a kind of a robot mode, did not think about much but getting the guys taken care of," she said.

Eventually, she helped move the wounded some 500 yards away and treat them onsite before putting them on a helicopter for evacuation. "I did not really have time to be scared," Brown said. "Running back to the vehicle, I was nervous [because] I did not know how badly the guys were injured. That was scary."

Brown, of Lake Jackson, Tex., is scheduled to get the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest medal for valor, this month.

Pentagon policy prohibits women from serving in front-line combat roles - in the infantry, armored or artillery divisions, for example. But the nature of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with no real front lines, has meant female soldiers take part in close-quarters combat more than in previous conflicts.