Thread by @daniellamyoung

Welcome to Coffee & Culture. Today, I'll tell you a war story.
In this story, men & women are together in combat, deliberately, for one of the first times, & we have to negotiate our roles in a job that nobody prepared us for.

The Only Woman on the Sand 🧵

The noise of two giant Army helicopters taking off is deafening. The silence, after you & 25 of your closest colleagues have jumped off the back and they’ve taken off, leaving you alone and stranded just outside an Afghan village, is sobering.

As the dust from the rotorwash settles, I look around, squinting against the harsh glare of the desert sun. I can make out the village hundreds of meters in front of us, & I can see the narrow path that we will have to cross to get from the open desert into the center of town.

We assume our patrol position and begin to march, knowing there shouldn’t be much danger here today, but never taking anything for granted. Every one of us can think of friends lost on other missions just like this, missions where nobody was supposed to die.

We steadily move forward. Out in the open country of Afghanistan it takes us nearly four times as long to cover ground as it would back home, because we never know what part of the road could be rigged with bombs, or what rocks might be perfect hiding places for snipers.

This is what fighting terrorists is like. This is asymmetrical warfare. I wonder if, once I get back home, I’ll ever look at a pile of trash along the side of the road, and not feel my heart tighten with fear, wondering if this will be my last day on earth.

Up front, our Lieutenant puts his arm up in the air, a closed fist the signal that we should all stop dead in our tracks and not move another muscle. We’ve barely been on the ground for twenty seconds, that kicked up dust still has not yet settled deep into our lungs, but already

he can tell that something is wrong. Over the radio, I hear the warning: “The path to the village is caved in, we’re gonna be canalized on this road. Everybody be on guard.” Fear tenses in my heart, but I know that the guys with the right machines are up front and on the alert.

But something else is bothering me too, & I’m trying hard to put my finger on it. As the only female Soldier in the group, I have been more than encouraged to speak up and speak out, but I have to have more to go on than just my ‘woman’s intuition’.

That’s when it hits me, a realization that maybe only I can make. Where are all the children? I think, as the sinking feeling that this is not normal hits me. Usually they are swarming out of their village, racing towards the choppers as fast as their little feet can carry them.

We’ve had situations where the pilots had to do another go-round, the landing zone they were targeting covered with children dressed in rags, waving heartily at the birds overhead. I know why I notice it too—vanity; girliness; whatever-you-want to call it.

As we’ve started to do more and more missions with a few of us first women included on actual combat patrols, I’ve had the opportunity to leave the base where I usually sit at a desk, supervising intelligence operations.

I love to see the children, & they love to see me. I’m flattered & honored when I see the eyes of little Afghan girls lighting up when a girl soldier comes marching by. I imagine they’ve never even dreamed of such a thing. I wonder if it might inspire one of them someday.

But today, I don’t see anyone little. Where are the six-year-old girls toting young baby siblings on their hips? Where are the boys with slingshots made from sticks, and the goats they run around with?

Where are the children with the bright red-purple hair that you’d swear is dyed but is actually a phenomena almost exclusively in the deserts of Afghanistan, some DNA left-over of Ghangis Khan.

The back of my mind is scrambling to connect the dots. I know the answer here, why can’t I think of it. and then I do, then, suddenly, like a flash of light, or a bomb, it comes to me.

“Stop”, I cry out with a bravery that I didn’t know I had. I’m not the leader here, and while anyone can make a danger call on a patrol, I know that I’ll never live it down if I’m wrong. “There are no children”, I yell even louder, when everyone turns to look my way.

I stare at the raised eyebrow on the Lieutenant. We’re the same rank, but he’s the mission commander, while I’m just here to talk to the women. I watch realization quickly dawn on him, & both his eyes widen. “Everyone hit the ground”, he yells louder than he ever has in training.

That’s the first moment I know that I wasn’t wrong. The danger is there, a bomb on our path. Over the next five minutes our team will verify it with fancy equipment, but the absolute lack of children is the only confirmation that we need.

The Afghan villagers may be ambivalent about American soldiers. They might waver back on forth between supporting us or helping clothe and feed the terrorists who try to take our lives, but they love their children as much as any other parents.

For months now, as an intelligence officer deployed to Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, I’ve briefed this to teams of soldiers going out beyond the wire. We call them indicators, signs of danger.

No children is a sign of death. Looking around me at all the Ranger-tabbed men lying in the dirt, their eyes glued to the sights of their black a& tan assault rifles, I realize the lack of children is an indicator that any woman might notice faster than even the best-trained man

That was just one mission, on one average day, in 365 days at war. But that mission stands out to me more than most of the others. That mission demonstrates why diversity matters, why, after 250 years of existence,

the Army finally realized that having women on the team could be more crucial to mission success than any of us had ever suspected. After 2.5 centuries we finally realized an important truth:

when both men & women are trying to kill you, it makes a whole lot of sense to have both men & women trying to keep you alive.

What we learned that day on the sand was that the US Military for over 2.5 centuries had been placing importance on everyone being the same. But we learned that day that maybe it’s even more important for everyone to be different.

It turned out, we didn’t need the women to be men, we needed to be women. It quickly became obvious that it was important for everyone to have a seat at the table or a pair of boots on the sand,

& for everyone to be empowered to speak up about what they see from their own unique perspectives, from their different life experiences.

That’s how we get 360 degrees of safety. That’s how we increase the likelihood of mission success and profitability. That’s the business case for diversity.

Nobody can possibly know everything they don’t know. The only way to protect yourself—your lives, your mission goals, your combat team & your country—is to surround yourself with others who are completely different from you, & then give them a voice, my leader gave that to me.

In 1869 John Stuart Mill, a philosopher who developed all of his ideas with his wife, by the way, wrote, “What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing—the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.”

What he meant was, we don’t know what women are capable of, not yet. Not physically, not mentally. Not in war, not in business, not at all. For all of history, we women have been controlled and dictated to. Cultural norms have determined what we are capable of.

For the first time in history, all the barriers are starting to come down, whether it’s the #metoo movement where women are speaking publicly about assault, women running for the highest political offices in tons of countries all over the world,

or women taking up arms right alongside male soldiers. The only way we are going to truly know what we are capable of is when we pull down every last barrier and release our potential.

@threadreaderapp please unroll

Click here for a fuller, easily sharable version of this story: daniellayoung.medium.com/the-only-woman…