American Veteran

(ominous tones) In both Iraq and Afghanistan, it's culturally taboo for a male American service member to try to talk with any of the local women, much less trying to question them or to search them. It was just females and children. I didn't want to rip their house apart. So starting in 2010, cultural support teams, female soldiers were attached to special operations units to help them with cultural interactions. At the time that I was doing the cultural support team program, the ground combat ban was still in effect. Technically women weren't allowed to be in ground combat, but here we are alongside male soldiers who were on the ground combat missions. We asked the military lawyer, "doesn't that violate the ground combat ban?" Her lawyer answer was, "Oh, you're not with the ground combat forces. You're ten feet back." (helicopter blades whirring) As a pilot. My first love was air assault missions. We have an expression that when you put on your safety harness, you are strapping the bird on your back. And there is nothing like the exhilaration, the speed and the precision of flying in formation with your unit, but our assault helicopters, aren't toys. And war isn't a game. In Iraq, you had to be patient with the children. There was one that just sticks in my head. He was like walking, but he was walking like he had hate in his eyes and he had a purpose, and that, you know, he was not like the other kids. When he sometimes crowded around us, I was afraid. Would he be strapped? Suicide bombers would sometimes strap their kids. I was scared cause in my mind, I kept looking and I was like, he looked just like my son. And my reaction was like, you know, if I had to, I'd have to shoot. Then he just like turned away. He turned a different direction. Then that's when I knew, I don't think I could ever do it. Even though we were trained at that given time. My soldier left me, the mom kicked in.