Day 1 involved a 5 kilometer ruck-run with a full kit.
Then a physical fitness test.
And rope climbs.
A weak spot for Munday.
“I was nervous because rope climbs are very hard for me and in training I could only do one,” she said.
Her training partner, Army Staff Sgt. Samuel Perez, could see she was nervous as they watched others struggle.
“I was there telling her she could do it. I knew she could,” Perez said.
He was not wrong.
She proved it.
The rope climb success gave her a boost of confidence.
“For some reason, after completing that first day, I was good,” she said.
“I started to feel like I could do this thing and I proved to my squad that I was here to work and I deserved to be here.”
But Munday had yet to face her most difficult challenge in the course…
...the mountain obstacle course.
It’s over 650 feet up.
Participants had to jump to 5 platforms, across wide gaps, to grab a steel pole and slide to the ground.
And day 3 nearly broke her.
She’d rucked nonstop from one training spot to another.
“Your joints just start to scream. It’s painful.”
She considered quitting.
“I kept thinking, ‘I cannot take this pain anymore. I’m almost done but I cannot do it anymore.’”
But she pushed on.
In the end, she earned the French Desert Commando badge.
It’s a black and gold pin featuring a scorpion over a silhouette of Djibouti.
“I’m now able to look back and say, ‘I did that. We did that,’” she said, smiling.
She credited her persistence to her forebears.
Specifically, two of the strongest people she knows.
Her mom and grandma.
“They’re such strong women and they never let me quit when I was younger,” she said.
Of course they were proud.
Now she's encouraging others to go for it.
“Someone I work with said he wanted to do the FDCC but he didn’t think he was ready,” she said. “I said, ‘Sir, you’re never going to be ready.’ I didn’t think I was ready. But I got ready.”
As a kid, Eldridge Johnson Jr. just wanted to be a pilot.
When he was drafted, the closest he could get was helicopter mechanic.
It was the 1960s; racial divisions were deep and Black men like him faced barriers, even in the Army.
But he was determined. He'd fly.
And on Thursday, over 50 years later, the Army awarded him a Distinguished Flying Cross, the service said in a release last week. 🧵👇
Johnson set his heart on flying when he was 14, growing up in Chicago, after riding in a light airplane at a state park's open house, he told @SmithsonianMag in 2021.
He took flight lessons & soloed at 16, but couldn't afford flight hours for a license.
Drafted at 18, he'd heard about the Army's helicopters, but was told he'd have to settle for fixing them.
He arrived in Vietnam in June 1969, a door gunner & eventually a crew chief on Hueys, Bell 47s & OH-6 Cayuses.
But he knew he had what it took to sit up front.
"The pilots were all white except one," he told @SmithsonianMag. "I said, 'Okay, I'm going to do that one of these days. These guys are not the sharpest knives in the drawer."
I’m not sure I should tweet this right now. I don’t know that I have the stamina to get through all the nuance. But anyway, let’s talk about this @PentagonPresSec claim that Stars and Stripes enjoys “complete editorial independence” and is so valuable for informing the troops.
Why is it then, Mr. @PentagonPresSec, that Stars & Stripes REPORTERS are the only persons IN THE WORLD who DoD specifically & summarily disqualifies from making FOIA requests? Screenshot from DOD’s annual FOIA report data in 2020 — being a S&S reporter specified as denial reason.
(Note I did not file those five requests for S&S or as an S&S reporter. I filed them two weeks after DMA had ordered S&S to plan to cease publication by Sept. 30, 2020 — I had reason to believe S&S wouldn’t exist by the time these requests would be fulfilled.)
Pfc. Emily Zamudio was in the first platoon of women to complete Marine boot camp in San Diego. She's now the first entry-level female Marine to earn the 0311 MOS at SOI-West on Camp Pendleton, Calif., the service says. (Tessa D. Watts/U.S. Marine Corps) dvidshub.net/news/405503/tr…
“Knowing that the infantry is a male-dominant MOS, I wanted to prove that I can do a man’s job,” Zamudio said. “Hopefully this opens the door for more females.”
Zamudio was also motivated by her mother's example of perseverance and tenacity while often working more than one job to provide for the family.
“My mom supported me as much as she could and she was always there,” she said.
A U.S. Army EOD team member handles an exploded 107mm rocket for documentation after it was intercepted by a U.S. C-RAM in a failed attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Aug. 30. After interception, the rocket tumbled nearly 100 yds onto the airfield. (U.S. Air Force)
A team of airfield operators, maintainers and air transportation specialists pose with an American flag at Hamid Karzai International Airport during last month's evacuation. (Undated U.S. Air Force photo via 621st Contingency Response Wing)
A crew of air traffic controllers pose for a photo at Hamid Karzai International Airport last month. Lacking a traditional control tower, they positioned themselves on the ramp to coordinate air traffic. (Undated U.S. Air Force photo)