A Heroine

One of my e-friends (friends I have never met in person, I met them on line and only know them through email) send a newspaper story on the daughter of a friend of hers, returning home from a tour in Iraq. Made me tear up. Of course, I’m old enough that the whole women in the fighting military is a revolutionary new idea. I remember when I was in college a friend and I discussed going into the military (something I now wish I had done, but oh, well. . . . .) and did not because at that time the rumor was ‘the women don’t get to do anything but be secretaries, and have to be wh---s for the officers’. With apologies to two good e-friends who were in the military at that time.

Now women do everything the men do and no doubt do it as well or even better in some instances.

The article mentioned this woman’s niece wearing a shirt proclaiming ‘Aunt Val is my Heroine’. She, and all she represents, should be everyone’s heroine. Bad enough for men to leave their families and friends to go to any war, especially one so controversial. I cannot imagine the torn feelings a mother leaving her children to do the same.

But, for those who say ‘what’s a woman gonna do in combat’ - just think about a mother defending her children. I’d far rather face any man I can think of and some I can’t. Imagine knowing that seeing her children again depends on her survival. No, I think the women have the advantage here, in sheer will to get back to mother their children.

One of my aunts was a combat nurse in WWII. A cousin’s daughter compiled her letters home, and those are fascinating. At one time she and another nurse went on leave, and when they went back to where they had been stationed, their unit had been moved, and they were in fact behind the enemy lines! She never made much of her service, I don’t recall her talking about it too much at all. It was just something she did, and moved her life on. I’m having a hard time reading a thick book about those early combat nurses - what they went through is just amazing.

Heroines, every one. And don’t you forget it. Blessings on them all, and all the thanks that can be gathered.