[Adm.Lee]

Ashley's war: the untold story of a team of women soldiers on the special ops battlefield / Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

This was really well-written, in that I had trouble putting it down.

The book follows a group of women (already in the Army) who were among the first to compete to be on Cultural Support Teams, women who accompanied spec-ops raids in Afghanistan for intelligence & security tasks. Since women in Afghan culture need to be kept separate and safe from non-family men, American/Western troops would anger the locals by searching or interrogating any women they found, and usually not get any information. By bringing women along to calm the Afghan women, keep them safe from the raiders or the Taliban during a raid, and ask them questions without the eyes of men on them, they could ease tensions and collect information.

From about 2010, Joint Special Operations Command started pushing for such women "enablers", and got a lot of volunteers-- Army women who wanted to do more than sit at desks. They ran them through a quick training course in both Ranger/SF operations, and Afghan culture. (Language was an unfortunate shortfall, so female interpreters who could keep up with the Rangers-- really rare-- had to be picked up once they got there.) The women they got were the ones who were already very physically fit, able to beat the men's PT requirements and very motivated to do something active.

The book follows the "plank-owners" of the CSTs to Afghanistan in 2011, with interviews from many of the participants. Ashley of the title is 1LT Ashley I. Stumpf-White, who was killed by an IED in 2011, so far the only woman lost from the CSTs. The writer spends 2 chapters with her family and husband (active-duty artillery officer), as well as the other CST members and an interpreter in the aftermath of her death. I was very impressed with not just the Army's reaching out to the family, but the Rangers-- both in Afghanistan and in the States-- taking over. They didn't write her off as "not one of us" or "just an enabler", but embraced her as a Ranger.

T2k value? It's something to consider in interrogating locals (especially in the Middle East), that women might more likely talk to non-threatening women, rather than foreign men.