Ashley's War (12 page)

“Do you ever find it intimidating working with those guys?”

“Oh, no, the guys are great, they come to me to take care of their injuries, and it doesn’t matter that I’m the only female they’re working with. To them I’m just the trainer. That’s it. They never have any issues coming to see me.”

Leda switched into coaching mode.

“Ashley, you have exactly what it takes for this mission. The CST role is a special mix of technical, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence skills. It’s not something that just anyone can do, but it’s also something at which more than one type of person can excel. You don’t have to be outgoing to be good at it. I know the special ops community from other work I’ve done and you are exactly the kind of ‘quiet professional’ they’re looking for. Your physical skills are obvious,
anyone can see that, but you have a quiet confidence that they will respect and that they require out there in the field. That’s all you need. Believe in that, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Ashley looked back at her and, true to form, said nothing. Leda had a decade of experience in the military, served in the much more senior rank of major, and had far greater experience with the special operations community than any of her teammates. This was a woman who knew what she was talking about. That fact gave Ashley some comfort, even if it didn’t silence all of her doubts.

Now she made another promise, not unlike the vow she had made to Jason late that night in the kitchen of their ranch house, to go at CST selection hard and never quit. “Okay,” she said. “I won’t; I promise. Now let’s get this done and find out whether we made it!”

5

Making the Cut

* * *

T
he next morning, aching but hopeful, the women boarded a bus for the JFK Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg to learn their fate. They may have been limping, sore, and exhausted, but a nervous adrenaline buzz kept them all at attention.

The soldiers filed into the Bank Hall auditorium, named after Army special operations pioneer Colonel Aaron Bank, known as the “father of the Green Berets.” It was an appropriate setting for the young female trailblazers, all of whom knew the legend of Colonel Bank, a former OSS officer who helped train and equip the French Resistance in World War II and afterward led Operation Iron Cross, a daring mission to train German opposition members to capture high-ranking Nazis, including Adolf Hitler. (That mission was aborted before it launched.) Bank had always thought the base an ideal location for a special warfare school, writing in his memoirs that “everything we required was available at Fort Bragg,” and had battled the Pentagon to get the center opened in 1952. This innovator of unconventional warfare had died several years earlier at the age of 101.

The theater’s subdued blue-green hues belied the special warfare combat experiences that were usually shared from its stage. With nothing to do but wait, Ashley settled her nerves by trying to figure out the order in which the CST hopefuls would be called into a nearby classroom to learn how they had done in the Assessment
and Selection. She knew she had finished all the physical tests at the head of the class, and had reason to be optimistic. But despite Leda’s assurances to the contrary, she still worried that her less forceful personality would somehow count against her.

Strangely, no one who went into the room came back out; they just disappeared. “They must be leaving from doors we can’t see,” Ashley guessed, “so no one can ask them how it went.” In fact, she reflected, the whole assessment cycle had been a journey through the unknown, with instructors simply commanding them about their tasks and scratching notes on their pads. There was no feedback at any time, and there had been no yelling, screaming, or intimidation tactics. It was nothing like what she had expected. It was just a cold, sterile assessment of whether she had what it took to join this mission. Or not, she worried. The minutes ticked by.

“Lieutenant White!” she suddenly heard from across the room. At long last it was her turn. Heart pounding, she struggled to keep her face expressionless and entered the large classroom where her “lane walker,” the instructor who had observed her throughout the last day, sat with a stack of papers on a desk in front of him, one of which had her name on it. From the corner of her eye Ashley spotted fellow soldiers she had met during the week sitting at desks sprinkled throughout the room, but the space was so big it was impossible to hear what was being said. In any case, Ashley’s eyes stayed glued to those of the instructor who sat across from her.

The cadre began with a positive observation about her performance—“outstanding strength and physical stamina in marches and runs; strong PT score”—before launching into a catalog of her weaknesses: “Need to exert more vocal leadership; be more forceful when leading group.” The perfectionist in Ashley heard every fault he mentioned, loud and clear, and missed the achievements.

“You rated top ten percent of all the candidates, Lieutenant White,” he finished. “Congratulations.”

And that was it. Two arduous months of winning Jason over,
preparing her packet, readying herself physically and mentally, then working her ass off in the field, and it had ended in an instant. Fighting through a heady cocktail of excitement and fatigue she thanked the cadre, and proceeded toward the side door he had pointed her to. She quickly glanced back and watched as several candidates headed toward another exit. Ashley’s path led to the main entrance of Bank Hall, where she stepped out the front door into the brisk March sunshine. She was holding a folder embossed with the image of
Bronze Bruce
, a twenty-two-foot statue of a Special Forces soldier that was the first memorial in the United States to the Vietnam War. The real statue towered over the Army Special Operations Command’s Memorial Plaza and its wall listing the names of special operations soldiers killed in action. At the top of the folder was printed:

“2nd Lt. White Ashley I.” for her middle name, Irene. Inside sat a certificate.

United States Army

John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School

To All Who Shall See These Presents Greeting

Be it known that 2nd Lt. Ashley I. White

Completed

Cultural Support Team Assessment & Selection Phase 1

Ashley was in. Holding the papers made it all seem real.

She finally let out a big, magnetic smile, the kind that reaches from cheek to cheek and dares others not to return it. It was the first thing Jason had noticed about her at that ROTC pizza party all those years ago during her freshman year at Kent State.

A
s soon as she pushed through the front door she heard the cheers exploding. All the women who had been selected now stood milling about in an ever-larger cluster on the grass. Lane, the Guard soldier and Iraq veteran from Nevada, was there, though they didn’t know one another
yet. It was no surprise that Leda and Anne were there as well. Each time the door opened and a new teammate who had survived the grueling week emerged, the growing crowd shouted out its congratulations.

Leda rushed over to embrace Ashley.

“I knew you were in,” she congratulated her tentmate. “See? I told you you have what it takes.” Ashley only smiled. She hoped that someday she would get the opportunity to let Leda know how much her encouragement had meant to her.

The fact that the young lieutenant from the National Guard had finished so successfully spoke for itself. Of course, being Ashley and a White, she still wished she had come in first in everything, but given the caliber of the competition she would take it. And now she would focus on making herself stronger, faster, and fitter before the more formal CST training started the following month.

But there was just one problem. The training course was scheduled to begin around the same time as her wedding, and she and Jason had already postponed their church ceremony once. She had no intention of doing so again. Besides, she had her dream strapless white wedding dress picked out, and at that very moment a seamstress back in Ohio was busy tailoring the beaded gown.

I’ll figure it out, she promised herself. For now, she would enjoy the day. She couldn’t wait to call Jason and tell him her good news. She had indeed done him—and herself—proud.

T
he same set of nerve-racking evaluations played out two months later at the same Bank Hall theater on Fort Bragg. This time for the active-duty soldiers.

This group—including Kate, Tristan, Rigby, and Amber—had completed their Assessment and Selection in a separate program from the Guard and Reserves. Once all members of the CST team had been selected they would come together to train as one class, but for scheduling purposes the active-duty and Guard and Reserves troops tried out for the program separately.

Earlier that morning, the fifty or so active-duty CST aspirants had taken over an old barracks building they found on Fort Bragg, and spent an hour doing battle with the caked-on grime, mud, and sweat they had accumulated from a week in the field. When Kate heard one of the instructors shout from the doorway of the classroom, “Lieutenant Raimann!,” she still felt the gleam that came from donning a fresh uniform after six days of rucking. Working to remain calm and expressionless, she took her seat across the desk from the cadre and waited.

“So,” the young NCO said, and began to walk through her scores in each of the categories in which she had been tested. “You don’t read well enough and you certainly don’t write well enough. Officers are supposed to publish, you know, and you don’t have the writing skills for that.”

Kate was stung by his evaluation. She secretly harbored dreams of becoming a writer after she finished her service in the Army, and wondered who he was to question her ability. But she sat silently and betrayed no emotion, hands folded in her lap, waiting for him to continue.

“You are just average physically,” he went on. “There are a lot of girls out here that are stronger than you are and a lot are fitter. You are definitely middle of the pack. At best.”

He stared at her, then pushed the JFK Special Warfare Center folder toward her on the desk.

“Congratulations,” he said, “you’re accepted.”

No longer able to suppress the pent-up emotion of the past few months, Kate let out a big sigh of relief and happiness. She scooped up the folder and ran out the door before the instructor could change his mind. On her way, she felt a pang of sadness as she looked over her shoulder at the women who were leaving through the other exit. They had tried as hard as she had but hadn’t made it. Most of them she would never see again.

Outside, on the same patch of grass where Leda and Anne and
Ashley had stood not long before, Kate paced about waiting for her tentmates to emerge. She had been one of the first in her group to hear the good news.

B
ack in Bank Hall Tristan stood waiting her turn, trying to look cool and stoic. In truth, she was churning inside; she felt the stakes had only grown higher for her since the CST selection began.

I know in my bones this is what I’m supposed to do, she was thinking. And these are the people I’m supposed to be working with. The only other time she remembered feeling this certain about the rightness of her path was when she first visited West Point. But Tristan had grown accustomed to disappointment in her career, and from the moment she first spotted the CST poster back in Oklahoma, she hadn’t let herself believe that the mission was even a possibility. Now that she had seen who and what the program had to offer, she couldn’t hold back her enthusiasm. She had finally found her people; she wanted this opportunity so badly she feared she would crash if they turned her away. I am so close, she said to herself. They can’t say no.

Now, sitting at the instructor’s desk in the giant classroom, she was about to find out.

The cadre never looked up from his papers as he ticked through the different events. “You didn’t take charge on the obstacle course,” he began, clearing his throat to make certain she was listening. Tristan vividly remembered that test: the soldiers had to dig their way underneath a silver barbed-wire fence using a tool, and ensure that everyone else on the team made it through the makeshift tunnel. “People needed leadership and you just froze.” She had been team leader at that point and when one of her fellow trainees got stuck in the mud beneath the coiled barbed wire she hadn’t moved fast enough to develop an alternate plan.

“And you did well on the ruck march,” he continued, “but at the
end, when
you
were doing so great, leading at the front of the pack, so many soldiers were dragging behind you. You should have motivated your team more.” That final, deadly ruck march in which they carried around forty pounds of gear all day included a portion where the women marched not as a team but at their own pace. Tristan had broken into a run every time she was on her own, blasting past nearly everyone while they slogged along in her wake. By the end of the march of twenty or so miles the cadre ordered the women to finish as a team. Some women limped and others were struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Tristan felt uncomfortable yelling at them to push through their agony and fatigue when they clearly were motivated and trying their best. She didn’t want to make them feel any worse than she knew they already did; she felt it would sound like bragging.

But she remained silent, not daring to protest the cadre’s account of her leadership skills.

She waited calmly for him to deliver the verdict.

“Okay, well, that’s it,” he said. “Congratulations, you’re in.”

Seconds later Tristan was running down the hall and pushing the front door open. For the first time since leaving college she felt she was finally on the right path.

For the duration of Assessment and Selection the soldiers had had to shed every digital or electronic device—watches, phones, personal computers—that linked them to the world outside, a challenge that for many was equal to the physical tests of the selection process. Now they had their gadgets back and everyone was busily phoning moms, dads, husbands, boyfriends, and friends to let them know they had made it.