Veteran’s Day

November 11, 2008

Memories of service — Marion Crawford remembers being in Vietnam.

“Tribute past due” black veterans.

Honoring those who served.

Plans in place to relocate Ordnance Museum to Fort Lee.

Married Fort Drum colonels proud of their decades in Army together.

Female vet seeks others for group.

Female baseball pro marks women’s history.

Women serve today on battlefield.

Women in the Army: Today’s Soldiers a long way from the WAC

by Melissa Bower

Retired and current women Soldiers at Fort Leavenworth say there’s much to be proud about women who have served the Army.

This year, the Army promoted its first woman to four-star general and celebrated 30 years of women serving in the integrated Army.
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Ground-breaking senior NCO shares her experiences

by Jessica Obermeyer

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Nov. 3, 2008) — When Command Sgt. Maj. Cynthia Pritchett entered the service on July 2, 1973, it was into the Women’s Army Corps and she recently shared her memories of what it was like to transition from an all-female force into an integrated Army.

“I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would serve as the command sergeant major of a sub-unified command in a time of war,” said Pritchett.
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When Janey Comes Marching Home

Laura Browder / Sascha Pflaeging, Photographer

The first time I heard a woman describe her time in Iraq in glowing terms, I was taken aback. Marine Colonel Jenny Holbert told me that being in charge of public affairs for the second battle of Fallujah was “probably one of the biggest events of my life, other than birthing two children.” Colonel Holbert’s enthusiasm for deployment was only one of many surprises I encountered over the course of conducting forty-six interviews with women soldiers, sailors, and marines across the eastern seaboard—a small portion of which are presented here.

Photographer Sascha Pflaeging and I conceived of our collaboration as a way of hearing the stories and showing the faces of some of the first large cohort of women—over 180,000 as of this writing—who had served in the American military in combat zones.
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Anniversary Honors Achievements of Women Warriors

ARMY.MIL/NEWS

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Oct. 24, 2008) Beginning this week and through mid-November, the Army will honor the achievements of its women warriors as part of a three-week “Celebration of Women in the Army.”
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A Comet, a Chick, a star

Richmond native played girls baseball in the 1940s

Hand Helen “Gig” Smith a baseball, and her face lights up like a scoreboard.

“Oh, boy!” she beams, taking a firm grip and simulating a throw in her comfortable studio apartment at Westminster Canterbury Richmond.

It may have been awhile, years perhaps, since Smith wrapped her fingers around the laces. But it’s springtime. Time for baseball.

And at 86, Smith — a retired Richmond art teacher, World War II Army veteran and board member of the foundation that supports the Army Women’s Museum in Fort Lee — is still in a league of her own.
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President Bush nominates LTG Ann E. Dunwoody for promotion to general.

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, July 24, 2008)

The U.S. Senate confirmed Wednesday the appointment of Lt. Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody to the grade of four-star general.

Dunwoody, who will be the first woman to serve as a four-star general in the U.S. military, was also confirmed for assignment as commanding general, U.S. Army Materiel Command, headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Va.
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Retired Brigadier General Elizabeth Paschel Hoisington, seventh director of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), and one of the first two female Army generals, died Aug. 21, 2007. [more...]