Ashley's War by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon Page B

that entry in her personnel file empty while she served in the role. Her records could be corrected later.
    It was another senior officer Anne worked with in her new role who told her about the CST program. He was a tough-talking Yankee and a true professional; she credited his leadership with her success in the position. “Hey, Anne, I hear they’re letting chicks go to Q Course now.” He was referring to the Special Forces’ qualification course, a direct line to the Green Berets that had always been open only to men. “You gotta check this out, you would be great.”
    Anne was an engineer by training. She had completed the highly competitive Sapper Leader Course, a body-numbing, twenty-eight-day program that teaches combat leadership skills and small unitfighting, and had earned the right to wear the prestigious Sapper patch on her left shoulder. Sappers are trained to clear mines, deploy field defenses, and fight in close quarters. Women account for barely 3 percent of all Sapper Course students, and only 2 percent of its graduates. Not that Anne had ever thought of herself as being a “groundbreaker” or a feminist; in fact, she paid little attention to the fact that she was one of only three females in the course. She preferred to focus on her grit, not her gender, and wanted others to do the same. It was the difficulty of the Sapper Course—both mental and physical—that motivated her, and she finished strong among her male peers.
    Special operations had been a dream for her. Having seen bloody attacks in Afghanistan and lost soldiers in battle left Anne with a powerful feeling of unfinished business. She wanted back in the fight, and the Cultural Support Team was the perfect way to get there.
    Her colonel gave Anne a phone number for a civilian who was involved with the nascent CST program, Claire Russo, Matt Pottinger’s old pal from Afghanistan, who by then had been sent to Fort Bragg to help prepare candidates for the new teams. In February 2011 Russo had been quoted in a Foreign Policy article written by Paula Broadwell describing the new all-female unit headlined “CST: Afghanistan.” Within days the former Marine was fielding a barrage of calls and emails to her personal Gmail account from female soldiers who wanted to know more about this chance to work with special operations and exactly what they needed to qualify for it. Anne was among them.
    “You should come to Assessment and Selection,” Russo told her when they spoke in early 2011. “Sounds like you’d be terrific for it.” Not long afterward, Anne was sitting next to Ashley White over a bowl of cereal at the Landmark Inn.
    She looked around the motel and was astonished. Wow, all these girls could form their own little company of soldiers, she thought.She laughed as a serviceman who was staying at the motel wandered in to grab some breakfast, only to stop in his tracks, visibly startled, at the sight of thirty buff women dominating the room. He quickly turned and hurried out.
    Anne was ready. CST selection couldn’t be that much more of a mental and physical test than Sapper school, but whatever it was she felt prepared. War had changed her; most significantly, it had made nearly everything else seem easier by comparison. She welcomed whatever the week would bring.
    L eda Reston was also at the Landmark Inn that morning. She had known about the CST program before the other women, having learned about it from colleagues in the special operations unit she was working with just then. There was only one problem: the cutoff level was captain, and Leda had just been promoted to major. She was too senior for the program.
    Reston had served in the storied 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq as a civil affairs officer. Among her responsibilities was accompanying and advising the local U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team as they opened women’s centers and vocational training schools, which were designed to build goodwill among Iraqis. In addition,