The untold story of black women in the Gulf War

Laura B. Randolph

WAR memories do not come easily to Phoebe Jeter. Even now, as the 27-year-old lieutenant recalls the January night when she heard the two words--Scud alert--that forever changed her life, there is still a discernible tightness in her voice. "Hearing the sirens go off, knowing the Scubs were coming to our area," she says, her voice trailing off. "Everybody was scared . . . we didn't know where they were heated."

As she quickly learned, the Scubs were headed toward the base where she commanded a Patriot missile platoon. In her three years in the Army, she'd practiced destroying the deadly missiles countless times. But those were just exercises, war games. This was real. Any number of those Scubs could be carrying chemical warheads. And even if they weren't, even if they just hit their target, they could kill or maim. What if she made a mistake? What if, God forbid, she choked or missed? These and other thoughts raced through her mind as she shouted commands through her gas mask to her tactical control assistant, Spec. Danny Davis.

"I was in charge of the van that is the engagement control center--where we fire [the Patriot missiles] from. I was the commander inside that van. I was in charge of everything that happened inside that van. It was my responsibility," recalls Lt. Jeter.

That night in the desert, her responsibility became her triumph. Before it was over, Lt. Jeter, who headed an all-male platoon, ordered 13 Patriots fired, destroying at least two Scuds. And something else happened to Phoebe Jeter that night in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The young ROTC graduate from Sharon, S.c., who joined the Army "for some adventure," discovered something about herself she never knew but will always retain. "I learned that I could do anything that I want to do," says Jeter, who made history that night in the desert when she became the first and only woman to shoot down a Scud.

Like Lt. Jeter, thousands of Black women earned their place in history when the United States led 25 countries in the largest military alliance since the Korean War. Because the Pentagon has not released total figures, the precise number of Black women who served in the Persian Gulf isn't known. It has been estimated, however, that as many as 40 percent of the 35,000 female soldiers who went to war were Black women, Black women whose stories--and successes--have gone virtually unsung, unknown, uncelebrated.

But little-known or not, Black women were at the very center of the great guts stories of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. There were numerous Black heroines, like Capt. Cynthia Mosley, the 30-year-old commander of Alpha Company, the 24th Support Battalion Forward, 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), who received the Bronze Star for meritorious service in combat. A 1984 summa cum laude graduate of Alabama A&M, mosley spent seven months in the gulf supervising a 100-person unit that supplied tropps with everything from fuel to water to ammunition. In fact, when all of the forward brigades ran out of fuel Mosley's company, which was closest to the front lines, resupplied them all. "We were supporting not only the brigade we were assigned," Mosley recalls, "but everybody forward during hat particular time in the war."

Capt. Mosley is back in the states now at Ft. Stewart, Ga. But sometimes, when she's drifting off to sleep or when she sees a story about sick or deprived children, it's as if she were back in the Gulf, back in her Jeep on Highway 8.

"That was the highway where we actually went into Iraq," she remembers. "All of the bodies I saw--that will stay with me the rest of my life. I've never witnessed such a large amount of dead bodies just . . . scattered everywhere. We came up just six hours after the fighting so we were relatively close behind the maneuver. There were civilians, but most of [the bodies] were Iraqi soldiers. We saw some children and some infants as well that were dismembered, a lot of their body parts . . . I don't think it's anything you ever forget. You just learn to live with it and continue on."

Not that it's easy. How could it be when, like Army 1st Lt. Carla Reed, you're 25 years old and you come within a whisper of death. The ground war was barely 24 hours old when Reed, who spent much of her six months in the Gulf as an MP escort for units carrying ammunition to the front lines, realized how horrifyingly close she came to being one the 13 women soldiers killed during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. While on a reconnaissance mission close to the Iraqi border, Reed made a brief rest stop. "I was half way down the road when I realized [I'd stopped in] an anti-tank ditch which means it probably had mines in it. I probably should have been killed," says 1st Lt. Reed.

Tragically, some Black women were not as lucky as Reed. During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, three Black women soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice: their life.

But even those Black women warriors who made it home put it all--everything--on the line for their country. They left jobs, families, husbands and children when their country called them to war. Maj. Marilyn Bridgette, 34, and Staff Sgt. Betty Brown, 42, Washington, D.c., Army National Guard members, got word they were being called to the Gulf on Christmas Eve. "They said, 'You've got 72 hours,'" recalls Sgt. Brown. "I had to make a will and execute a power-of-attorney," says Maj. Bridgette whose unit provided all of the military police support for the 7th Corp. But preparing their families, said many Black women soldiers, was by far the most difficult task. When Army Maj. Carrie Kendrick, 35, learned she was being sent to the Gulf, she and her husband had just been separated an entire year for Army training. "My biggest challenge was alleviating the concerns he had [about my safety] . . . That was very hard," says Maj. Kendrick, whose husband is also in the Army but was not called up.

To deal with their own apprenhensions, numerous black women warriors said they turned to their religious faith. "Our chaplain had a service before we shipped out and he told us, 'No matter how many bombs fall, no matter how many bullets fly, unless your name is on one of them, it's not your time,'" says Maj. Bridgette. "After that, it didn't faze me." Nor did it faze Sgt. Brown whose tentmates nicknamed her "covergirl" because she insisted on wearing lipstick despite the heat and filth of the desert. "I have a very strong spiritual background so my thing was to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord," she says.

Ordinarily, Sgt. Brown's lipstick wouldn't be a big deal. But this was hardly an ordinary circumstance. In the Gulf, Black women soldiers lived like grunts. They slept in coed tents on cots in the sand. They ate, slept, worked and sweated right alongside men. They endured blistering heat ("One day it was 136," says Brown) and primitive conditions: no electricity, no running water, no bathrooms. "The worst was sanitation detail," says Sgt. Brown, who wore her lipstick while cleaning the 10 gallon trash cans that served as toilets.

Ironically, many Black servicewomen say there were times when the punishing conditions of the desert paled in comparison to the punishment they endured from some fellow soldiers who pposed their very presence in the Gulf and made no secret of their deep-rooted belief that war is a man's business. Scudbuster Lt. Jeter, for instance, had to call a meeting with her fellow lieutenants to put an end to the ugly and sexist comments they were continually making about her.

"They said things like, 'She doesn't belong in the Army, she's fat . . .'," recalls Lt. Jeter. "I had to confront them and then it stoped. I basically told them I didn't appreciate all the things they were saying behind my back. . . . If they had a problem with me they should come straight to me. . . ." Even though she's proven herself in the clutch and has the Army Commendation Medal to prove it, she still hears the nasty echo of sexism from those who doubt she has the right stuff simply because she's a woman.

Many Black women soldiers also express deep hurt and frustration about the racism pervading their own country--a country which, many pointed out, had no qualms asking them to put their lives on the line for the rights of others. "A lot of us are willing to risk our lives again for our country, and for them to tell me, 'Oh, yes, you're willing to give your last measure of devotion. However, when it comes to protecting your rights when you return, we're going to debate that," says Bronze Star recipient Capt. Mosley, referring to the civil rights debate on Capitol Hill. "They did not debate whether or not I would go [to war]."

While Air Force Senior airman Theresa Collier, 23, was in the Gulf, someone scratched KKK on the hood of her car. "And it happened on the naval base," says Collier, whose husband is a sonar technician in the Navy. Sadly, the first thing she saw when she flew into Germany from Saudi Arabia was the now infamous tape of Los Angeles policemen beating Rodney King. "I couldn't believe it. I'm like, here I am, spent eight months over here to protect my country, yet people are getting beat . . . for no apparent reason at home," says Collier.

FOR Black women warriors, the war also brought intensely personal heartaches. For many, the substantial stress and lengthy separations wreaked havoc on marriages and relationships. "I was wondering what is he doing at home? Is he messing around? And he wuld ask me the same thing," confides Senior Airman Collier. Happily, Collier's marriage was not a casualty of the war. "When we finally did get back together, we appreciated each other so much more," she says.

Many other Black women soliders, however, weren't so lucky. Under the strain of separation, numerous marriages disintegrated like Scuds hit by a Patriot. "The relationships that were kind of shaky before we deployed fell apart altogether and a few of the stable ones fell apart as well," says Capt. Mosley. Statistics seem to bear Mosley out. This summer, for example, court officials in Clarksville, Tenn., near Fort Campbell, Ky., reported the number of divorce cases there had reached a record high. "You've got to attribute it to this Persian Gulf crisis--the separation and stress of being away from your wife or husband," Tennessee lawyer Kevin Kennedy has said.

Still, while many relationships ended in the Gulf, Black women soldiers report many were also begun. "There were several romances started," says Sgt. Brown, though they were usually not, she says, with male tentmates. "They were very protective of us," says Brown of her eight male tentmates. "When we wanted to date people from other battalions, they were like 'No, No, No! Not him.' They became like big brothers."

But even without the romance factor, didn't coed tents generate a host of problems? "At first I was a little skeptical," Brown says. "But the guys gave me time to adjust . . . we talked about everything from religion to sex. You'd be surprised. In living with eight men everyday you learn a lot."

Clearly, this war changed a lot of minds--and myths--about the role of women in the military. By the formal cease fire on April 11, Black women soldiers had made an indispensable difference. They'd shot down Scuds, escorted convoys, endured enemy fire. And died for their country.

And while the sacrifices Black women soldiers made in the Gulf were enormous, they were also ennobling. As Congress debates the military's exclusion laws that bar women from combat, many believe Black women in the Gulf served with such courage, skill and distinction, they have forever demolished the myth that women have neither the physical ability nor the emotional strength for combat.

"I feel we have proven without a doubt that we can . . . accomplish any mission given in combat," says Capt. Mosley. Lt. Jeter agrees. "If you're a woman, whatever you're doing, believe in yourself because there are a lot of people out thre who don't care about you or what you're doing," she says. But it is 1st Lt. Carla Reed, 25, who put it most directly: "No matter how significant or insignificant our contributions were, they couldn't have done it without us."

COPYRIGHT 1991 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group