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For female soldiers, last battle is within

They are just a fistful of the 200,000 female troops thrust into battle — intentionally or not — in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Spc. Angela Strittholt, Army Reserve Spc. Jennifer Wells, Lt. Col. Iva Griggs and Spc. Laura Seaman are among those female troops who have came home with problems once reserved for fighting men.

They arrive with physical injuries such as paralysis, lost limbs and bad backs. They develop mental health issues, as seemingly benign as sleeplessness and as potentially debilitating as post-traumatic stress disorder, which the Veterans Affairs Department reports that up to 40 percent of veterans — regardless of gender — have or develop during their lives.

In many cases, they fought in wars with no battle lines and a sense of not knowing who the enemy is.

Strittholt, in two yearlong tours of duty in Iraq as a truck driver, shot at snipers and twice had bombs hit her convoy — once under the Humvee directly in front of her as she hauled an ammunition trailer. Now home, she struggles with anger and has bad dreams that she will be sent to Iraq a third time.

A fellow soldier raped Wells in Iraq. Back from the war, she now struggles to trust people.

Griggs, an Army Reserve nurse working in Baghdad, carried a handgun with her into the shower because she feared she would be raped by one of the Iraqi or Turkish civilian contractors on her base. Fifteen months later and far from the sounds of war, she is over-sensitive to loud noises and wakes without fail at 3 a.m., unable to go back to sleep.

Seaman processed detainees at Baghdad’s infamous Abu Ghraib Prison and defended it when insurgents attacked. Today, she is too busy raising her three children, working and caring for her husband’s combat-related disorder to deal with lingering psychological wounds — what her husband says is his wife’s own case of PTSD.

The emotional baggage these women bring home is no surprise.

“Women have historically played an important role in the military, and their duties increasingly expose them to dangerous situations,” said Kate Chard, director of the PTSD Division at the Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Fort Thomas. “With this willingness to serve comes the risk that they will also develop mental heath disorders similar to men in the military.”

Since opening in January 2007, the division has treated 126 women in its residential program. Another 33 female veterans, reservists and National Guard members are in the outpatient psychotherapy clinic.

The PTSD program at Fort Thomas was the third of 16 established across the country to treat female troops. The therapeutic methods developed there are now copied as a national model.

The treatment centers were established because women increasingly find themselves in harm’s way, although they are prohibited from direct ground combat with infantry, armor and artillery units.

Of the 4,281 deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan through April, 119 have been women. More than 600 have been wounded in combat and non-combat situations.

The Afghanistan and Iraq invasions mark the first wars in which women have been exposed to new military roles opened to them by the Clinton administration immediately after the Gulf War. On Oct. 1, 1994, women became eligible for jobs in combat aviation, aboard combat ships and in ground combat support.

These new wars are without traditional battle lines, fought guerrilla-style in both rural and urban settings.

Women make up 11.3 percent of the nearly 2 million U.S. active duty and National Guard troops and reservists sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The more than 216,000 women who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan dwarf the 7,500 who served in Vietnam and the 40,000 deployed during the War.

In fact, the two soldiers most identified with the Iraq invasion are women.

Pfc. Jessica Lynch was taken prisoner by the Iraqi military during the 2003 invasion and later rescued by U.S. forces.

Pvt. Lynndie England was sentenced to three years in military prison after her 2005 conviction in connection with torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison, including her role in a series of photographed atrocities.

Every U.S. woman serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is issued a weapon. They are drivers, mechanics, engineers, office workers, doctors and nurses, checkpoint guards and military police, performing culturally sensitive body searches of suspected female insurgents.

But female troops face different challenges than their male colleagues.

Aware of their minority status in a traditionally male domain such as the Middle East and Central Asia, women are less likely to seek help for any type of military trauma.

The reason, according to a 2007 Department of Defense Mental Health Task Force report, is because they “their need to show the emotional strength expected” of soldiers.

“The ideal in the military is to blend in like a robot, except when you excel, like being a PT (physical training) machine,” Strittholt said.

“You don’t want to show weakness because if you do you are looked at like a piece of crap. And when you are in the minority (as women), you feel you have to prove yourself a little bit more.”

Physical wounds aren’t the only ones female troops bring home.As many as one in seven women (15 percent) seek treatment for military sexual trauma, which includes everything from harassment to rape. Up to 70 percent of women being treated for PTSD are there because of sexual trauma.

Wells’ PTSD and sexual assault became intertwined in December 2007 when she learned she had contracted a sexually transmitted disease after being raped.

“I did everything,” she said. “I bought a gun. I had an attic in my apartment, which connected to the other apartment, and I nailed it shut. I added bolts to my door. I slept in the living room and watched the door.”

Once back in the U.S., women experience a more difficult transition than men to family life, psychologists say.

In Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, where there are no regular Army bases, the majority of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are reservists and National Guard. They leave combat areas and return directly to their families, without benefit of a cooling-off period at a stateside base.

Once home, in families with children, more is expected of a returning female veteran than a man, experts say.

“It’s a big problem for younger females, who left a young child at home, or single mothers who had to leave children with grandparents or an estranged spouse,” said Karen Cutright, a social worker and manager of the Cincinnati VA’s comprehensive care program for veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, which has treated 4,000 veterans, more than 400 of them women.

Word among female troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is they are more likely to be raped by fellow soldiers than killed by the enemy. One statistic — the 9-to-1 ratio of men to women in the military — works against women’s safety, Wells said.

“To be a semi-attractive female (in the military), it’s like being a cigarette to a nicotine addict,” said the 24-year-old Connersville, Ind., native now living and working in Greater Cincinnati.

The barrage of unwanted physical attention forced Wells – within weeks of her arrival – to eat meals in her room instead of the mess hall.

“You have these men who leave their families and their lifestyles, and let’s face it a lot of people today are promiscuous,” she said. “Women were like that, too."

Reports of sexual assault continue to rise in the military, jumping about 24 percent — to 2,400 — in 2006 compared to 2005, according to the Defense Department. One reason, said Lt. Col. Nate Galbreath, was the Pentagon’s 2005 creation of a restricted reporting option that does not involve a criminal investigation and affords victims some anonymity. The victim can access medical and psychological care and get counseling with an advocate. A victim has one year to request a full investigation.

“We had 1,800 people come forward [who otherwise wouldn’t],” said Galbreath, deputy director of the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.

An additional wound to military women is the idea that a brother-in-arms would attack them.

“To think that one of your fellow soldiers, or somebody the U.S. government is paying (a foreign contractor) could hurt you while you are over there serving your country, it makes me angry,” said Griggs, 53, who was warned of the danger but not harmed during her 365-day deployment in Baghdad. “I took my weapon with me everywhere, and I would have used it if I had to.”

The propositions also were non-stop.

“[Fellow U.S. soldiers] saw the blonde hair,” said Strittholt, who took other precautions to ensure her safety. “They knocked on the door in the middle of the night. They tried to force their way in. I told them to ‘F--- off. Get the f--- out.’"

The transition to civilian life is challenging for mothers. They are susceptible to what psychologist Chard refers to as the 100-50-100-125 rule.

“Women go over (to war) at 100 percent,” she said. “They come home 50 percent, not 100 percent. And their husbands and children want 125 percent of them. The expectation for women is that they should come home to their families and pick up where they left off; (12 or) 15 months developmentally is a lot when you are away from a child.”

Anger is common.

“They’re not used to their kids,” Chard said. “Children are not precise like the military.”

Then, there is a societal message.

“It’s a little more permissive for men to check out temporarily from their families than it is for women,” she said.

Seaman, 30, was divorced with a young son at home in Maine with her parents when she went overseas in October 2004. She served 10 months at Abu Ghraib prison, where she met her husband, Jonathan Seaman of Newtown, a combat medic. He receives military disability pay because of back and facial injuries sustained during two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

Laura Seaman works as a cashier at a fast-food restaurant. Her children, ages 7, 3 and 1, are constant demands on her time. She is also her husband’s confidant in his battle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It’s a struggle, but we get by,” she said.

Laura Seaman talks some to her husband about her war experiences. Mostly, though, she listens. “I guess I’ve held a lot of stuff in,” she said.

Family and friends are in Maine. Although she gets along well with her husband’s family, Seaman said she has no one beside her husband to confide in.

Jonathan Seaman tries to get her to talk more. “She’s handling it (her stress) the best she can,” he said. “She remembers the day of getting attacked. That will stay with her for a lifetime.”

When her base was attacked, Laura Seaman was stationed at a door. She was told to shoot to kill any person wearing yellow; some detainees — who were dressed in yellow — had escaped.

She was alone from dinner to 2:30 a.m., except when someone brought her water. She wondered what would become of her son, in Maine with her parents, if she were killed.

She said there is no time for her to see a therapist because her husband goes to group therapy.

Laura Seaman cried without interruption when recounting her military experience. “It was the first time I opened up to anyone beside my husband,” she said.

Maj. Terri Ohlinger, 42, a nurse who worked with the 256th Combat Support Hospital based out of Sharonville in Mosul and Al Sad, Iraq, had a more typical homecoming experience. She had to re-acclimate to her family after more than a year away.

The middle child of her three children, a daughter, now 15, had taken over as the mother figure in Ohlinger’s absence.

“My husband and I had long talks about me not treating the family like they were my subordinates,” she said. “It was a difficult transition for me. I think with mom being the mom and coming in and saying ‘Do this’ and ‘Do that’ all the time, you expect it to be done. It was a shocker for the kids.”

A friend saw it in Ohlinger when she returned from Iraq, where she ran an operating room at an Army hospital.

“She couldn’t believe how I looked like I was going to jump out of my skin at any time,” Ohlinger said. “I didn’t recognize that in myself, but other people did. It was anxiety, nervousness. It’s hard to be around people again, always wondering who’s behind me.”

Leaving is tough, too. Ohlinger will find out in June if she has to return to Iraq. Her son Colin was 8 when she went over the first time.

“Colin said, 'Will you get hurt or will you die?'" she said. “And instead of saying, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll be home,’ I was pretty frank with him. I said, `There was always that possibility. But I’ll do everything I can to come back to you.’

“And then he asked me, ‘Why do (you) have to go?’" And I said, `Because somebody else’s mommy has to come home.’”

Female officers often equate their roles as a mother stateside with their job as a military supervisor.

Sgt. Kendra Taylor, 30, of Forest Park went to Iraq earlier this spring with the 961st Engineer Company of Sharonville. She left two daughters, ages 18 months and 8 years, with her parents in Pennsylvania.

“If you look at it,” said Taylor, a mechanic, “you’re either keeping two children or an entire squad on their Ps and Qs.”

A downside: The female troops who struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder for more than three months may begin to feel the absence of soft emotions.

“A common reaction for a female combat veteran is, 'I am a horrible mother because I can’t feel love for my children,’” psychologist Chard said. “Men are more likely to be in a state of constant anger.”

As a group, female veterans insist their work is important and distinguished. It’s as if the emotional price they pay equals the risk they face in making greater contributions in war.

“Women have come a long way in their roles in the military,” said Lt. Col. Sherrie Lakes, 55, of Loveland and a registered nurse in the Army Reserve. “I am proud to be a part of this exclusive group; we have risen to the challenge and proven our worth.”

For one year, she was in charge of the operating room at a military hospital in Tikrit, Iraq. The first patient she treated as a 3-month-old Iraqi child with shrapnel wounds.

“I know some of the stuff I saw over there I never want to see again,” said Lakes, who is more emotional and quick to tears since her overseas experience. “I saw a body that was 95 percent burned, and the soldier was still alive.”

Still, the women bring home a sense of accomplishment, a sense that the time they spent in Iraq or Afghanistan served a greater good.

Strittholt’s eyes light up and she speaks enthusiastically about her service. She proudly recalled how she took energy pills to stay awake during her first year in Iraq as she hauled troops and supplies to every corner of the country.

“It was a 24-hour mission followed by a 48-hour mission and a 72-hour mission. We constantly were going. We got shot at. They tried to blow us up. They threw everything they had at us.

“But we kicked ass.”