Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield

TitleAshley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield
Publication TypeBook
Year of Publication2015
AuthorsLemon, Gayle Tzemach
Number of Pages292
PublisherHarper
CityNew York
Abstract

In 2010, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command created Cultural Support Teams, a pilot program to put women on the battlefield alongside Green Berets, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and other special operations teams on sensitive missions in Afghanistan. The idea was that women could access places and people that had remained out of reach, and could build relationships -- woman to woman -- in ways that male soldiers in a conservative, traditional country could not. Though officially banned from combat, female soldiers could be "attached" to different teams, and for the first time women throughout the Army, the National Guard, and the Reserves heard the call to join male soldiers on special ops missions. In this volume, the author uses firsthand reporting and experience with the complexities of war to tell the story of CST-2, a unit of women hand-picked from across the Army, and the remarkable hero at its heart: 1st Lt. Ashley White, who would become the first Cultural Support Team member killed in action and the first CST remembered on the Army Special Operations Memorial Wall of Honor alongside the Army Rangers with whom she served.

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907256621

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