The war in Afghanistan has claimed a milestone victim:
The older soldiers called themselves the Gray Brigade, but Sgt. 1st Class Merideth Howard never talked about her age. Soon, no one asked.
In training, the Waukesha, Wis., resident ran as hard as men much younger. She became a gunner on a Humvee at the small military base in Mehtarlam, building a wooden box to stand on so she could see over the turret.
Her last night, Howard and Staff Sgt. Robert Paul sat on the back stoop of their barracks with the base cook, as usual.
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The next day, Howard and Paul made a supply run to a U.S. military base near the Afghan capital. They never made it back, dying in a fiery suicide bombing in Kabul on Sept. 8.
At 52, Howard, who had gray hair and an infectious smile, became the oldest known U.S. woman to die in combat.
This is complicated.
From what the
article says, Howard enjoyed her civil affairs work in Afghanistan. I'm glad she could find purpose in her life. But her death is also an indicator:
That she was in Afghanistan, serving as a gunner on a Humvee, shows the drain two wars have put on an all-volunteer military. She was the new face of the military's civil-affairs units, which do reconstruction and relief work. Constant deployments have tapped out the regular Army Reservists who most often filled those jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Howard had never been deployed before, not since joining the Reserves on a whim in 1988. After her medical unit was disbanded in 1996, she was assigned to the Individual Ready Reserves, for soldiers without a unit.
She went to monthly drills but mainly handled paperwork, biding her time, putting in her 20 years before earning retirement benefits.
But as a stopgap -- and in a first for the U.S. military -- provincial-reconstruction teams in Afghanistan were being filled by a mix of Navy, Air Force, Army, National Guard and Reserve soldiers.
Bush's insane war in Iraq is a contributing factor to this woman's death in service to her country. It may be melodramatic, but I can't help but think that if our military had stayed focussed on Afghanistan, we might have had a chance to rout the Taliban by now, regardless of any help they may be getting from Musharaff. Meredith Howard wouldn't have been a target of a suicide bomber, a tactic imported to Afghanistan from Iraq.
RIP SFC Howard.