THREE GUNNERS

Women in the Army, Serving Outside the Wire

"Hey!" Lewi shouted from the Humvee gunner's hatch, prodding midday Baghdad traffic out of the way of her convoy. Lewi is short for Spc. Amanda Godlewski. "Hey! Move over!" she yelled at a car, waving it to the side of the highway. She barked warnings a couple of hundred times during a day's mission for Civil Affairs Team 2 (CAT-2) of Company A, 403rd Civil Affairs Battalion, a U.S. Army Reserve unit from Syracuse, N.Y., which supported the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) 4th Brigade in southern Baghdad.

"Hey, stupid! Get out of the way!" Iraqi drivers might not understand Spc. Godlewski's words, but they got the tone. And she backed it up with an M249 squad automatic weapon on the mount and, as lead gunner, a bad attitude toward anybody who might pose a threat to her team, which means everybody who isn't wearing an American uniform. A don't-mess-with-me attitude is necessary for a gunner.

Standing in the gunners' hatches of the two Humvees behind Spc. Godlewski were Lilly and Charlie, Spc. Lillian Withers and Spc. Robynn Murray, respectively. They've got a bad attitude on the road, too.

"Nobody messes with the guys in my truck," Spc. Murray said. "It's like a mother lion protecting her den."

Spc. Withers has been called Lilly from childhood. She tagged Spc. Murray as Charlie. "It's an Army name," Spc. Withers explained. "She doesn't look like a Robynn. I tried calling her by her last name, but that's so impersonal... she just looks like a Charlie."

Until their redeployment this summer, the three served as CAT-2's gunners. They did their job; they got their team back home, safe and sound. I met them about three weeks before the end of their tour in Iraq.

They carried themselves with the swagger of combat veterans-self-assured, young, fit, armed to the teeth and controllably dangerous. Okay, maybe they decorated their rooms with a few frilly things, but they also pumped iron in the gym and didn't take crap from anybody.

"I'm a bad-assed machine gunner," Spc. Godlewski told me.

A three-Humvee team with all female gunners was unique at Forward Operating Base Falcon, where they had spent their Iraq deployment.

Lewi, Lilly and Charlie took pride in being "the girl gunners"-a term that could have been taken as a jab from men on the FOB, however, it carried a level of respect. Anybody who cranks a round into the chamber and rolls out the gate day after day gets credit for guts.

"It's not a gimmick," noted Spc. Murray. "It's not as if our team looked around for all-female gunners. It's because we were the best and most experienced, and our team leader (Capt. Tim Wright) gave us the opportunity and stood by us."

The three of them saw themselves as just another set of gunners, hooking it up and operating in some of the most dangerous territory in the world-the roads of Baghdad, the literal 360-degree battlefield where the front lines are the left and right sides of the road and the next car in front and behind.

Arguably, gunners hold the most important positions in a convoy. They are the only crew members who can see all around the vehicle, helping the driver navigate and giving the vehicle commander information to make decisions. Obviously, gunners are the line of defense against suicide bombers. They try to maintain a 50- to 100-meter bubble of space around moving Humvees. Meanwhile, they scan rooftops, alleys and sidewalks for snipers and cover soldiers when they dismount. They stand in the open, halfway out of the protection that an armored Humvee affords. And they love it.

"I feel free, not trapped inside the vehicle," Spc. Godlewski explained. "You're in control."

"I like being in control, too, seeing what's around you," Spc. Withers said. "It's hard for me to rely on people. So when I'm out there I don't have to."

"Yeah, it's dangerous, but it becomes a self-preservation thing after a while," Spc. Murray added. "You just don't think about it. What gets to you is hearing a shot and not knowing where it came from because you want to shoot back. For the first two months here, though, I didn't tell my mom what I was doing."

"I'm proud of being a gunner," Spc. Godlewski said. "I really was such a girlie-girl, and I never thought when I signed up that I'd end up being a lead gunner in Baghdad. It makes my family proud. They think I'm high-speed."

Each had a different reason for joining the Army Reserve, but all have been changed by their combat experience.

From Cortland, N.Y., Spc. Withers joined in 2002 at the age of 17 as a mechanic.

"My mom was in the Navy, and my dad was in the Army, and I swore that I'd never join the Army, but my sister joined and liked it. At first, I wanted to be a marine, but when I talked to a Marine recruiter he told me I could be a cook, and I said, 'see you later.' I chose to be a mechanic in the Army because I'd been ripped off so many times by mechanics. I wanted to learn how to do it myself. I think this deployment has given me the motivation to get on with my life-to stop having dead-end jobs and start a career. (She plans to attend college after she gets back.) I was really misguided and reckless before, and now I think I've learned discipline and respect for others. I used to have a really smart mouth, and that made people think that 1 wouldn't make it in the Army, but I have. I'm proud of being a gunner here because I think that I can look back on this someday and say that I made a difference: I was in Iraq when it started improving."

From West Monroe, N.Y., Spc. Godlewski joined in 2002 at the age of 20 as a chemical specialist, and she also trained in communications.

"I think I came in because I needed some self-guidance. I really didn't know what I was going to do," Spc. Godlewski said. "I needed discipline."

(She currently plans to attend the Onondaga School to learn therapeutic massage and the Phillips Cosmetology School toward the goal of someday owning a health spa.)

"I don't think I would recognize myself two years ago," Spc. Godlewski said. "I think I've learned to be more responsible, and I've also learned how much my family and dog mean to me. I miss my dog, a pit bull named Rex. He's my pride and joy."

She also has a cat named Tiger II. While deployed, she talked to Rex on the phone, but not the cat.

Spc. Withers also had phone contact with her dog, Sapphire-"a pit bull-chow mix with an attitude problem, and when I say her name over the phone, she barks."

(Rounding out the pet list because I promised the three gunners that I would try to get all their pets into this story somehow, and 1 don't like to let down a soldier who's watched my six, Spc. Murray's Rottweiller's name is Spike. She has a parakeet "left over from childhood" that apparently has the livinglonger-than-it-should-have gene, a "fat and spoiled" cat named Kittus and two pythons that are "beautiful, graceful and quiet, and they cuddle." I didn't ask whether she phoned the snakes.)

From Niagara Falls, N.Y., Spc. Murray joined in 2003 at the age of 18 as a civil affairs specialist.

"A friend talked me into coming into the Reserve," she said. "We were in ROTC, and he said it would be a good idea to get some leadership experience. I deployed; he did not."

Spc. Murray's military interest started when she was 12 years old and saw a movie called "Tank Girl," which was based on a comic book character. She's still an avid comic book fan.

"After seeing the movie, I wanted to drive a tank, but somebody told me that I couldn't do that because I was a girl. Girls could, however, fly planes, so I spent five years in the Civil Air Patrol," she said.

"I'm happy about this deployment because I got the chance to be with other female gunners-be around other women who aren't afraid to get dirty and be gunners. And, I think that we are helping to pave the way so if I have a little girl someday and she wants to be a tank driver that maybe she can because of us."

(She plans to attend the State University of Buffalo to study political science with the long-term goal of becoming a lawyer.)

Talking about women in combat, Spc. Murray said, "There are many closed doors, but being here with Lilly and Lewi, I can't see any reason to ban female soldiers from combat-and I say that knowing I could get shot tomorrow."

"One of my drill sergeants in basic training said something about women in combat that I didn't like then and don't agree with now," Spc. Withers added. "He said that if females were in combat and got wounded that a male would unnecessarily put himself at risk to save her because of the male's natural urge to protect a female. I'm a female. I'm in combat. I think I would risk my life to save any soldier, male or female, and that a male soldier would just do the same for any other soldier because that's what soldiers do."

In Iraq, she learned that a soldier's a soldier, and the three of them helped prove that gunners are gunners if they have desire, dedication, skill and a don't-mess-with-me attitude while they're in the hatch.

[Author Affiliation]

Text and Photographs

By Dennis Steele

Senior Staff Writer