I haven't yet quite figured out why Merideth Howard's death strikes such a chord in me.
Is it her youthful-looking, outdoorsy, far-too-much-life-in-her-to-die-yet photograph?
Maybe.
Is it the fact that at age 52 she would have been not much older than I am my brother? (in other words, she could have been my big sister).
Possibly.
Is it that her death at age 52 is tragic and unnecessary?
Not any more so than the first person to die or the others with and near her when she died.
Does it upset me that because of the protracted situation resulting from our invasion and occupation of Iraq that Sgt. Howard, who was getting ready to retire, would never in a million years have been in the circumstances she found herself in?
Well yes, I'm probably as upset as the next person about the sheer ludicrousness of putting so many good people in harm's way for reasons purely political.
But none of these reasons really seem to answer the question of why her death gets under my skin--why I come back around to wondering why? Why?
There's no more point in playing the blame game. It's too late for that. I guess the question to focus on now is When? When will we get the frak out of Iraq so that the US military is not stretched so thin that a woman who most probably had many good years left with her newly wedded husband is now forever gone.
Link to her obit guest book:
http://obits.cleveland.com/Cleveland/GB/GuestbookView.aspx?PersonId=19200928&PageNo=1
Army Sgt. 1st Class Merideth L. Howard
52,
of Alameda, Calif.; assigned to the 405th Civil Affairs Battalion, Army
Reserve, Fort Bragg, N.C.; killed Sept. 8 when a vehicle-borne
improvised explosive device detonated near her Humvee in Kabul,
Afghanistan. Also killed was Staff Sgt. Robert J. Paul.
Howard, the oldest known woman to die in combat, was behind the gun of a Humvee
She was 52 when Afghan bomb struck
By Kim Barker and James Janega, Tribune staff
reporters. Kim Barker reported from Mehtarlam and James Janega from
Waukesha
September 24, 2006
MEHTARLAM, Afghanistan --
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 this small military base,
building a wooden box to stand on so she could see over the turret.
Her last night here, Howard and Staff Sgt. Robert Paul sat on the back
stoop of their barracks with the base cook, as usual.
"We
started talking about the time she got shot at," said Air Force Tech.
Sgt. Marlin McDaniel, 42, the cook. "I said I'd probably duck. I
wouldn't know what to do. But they both basically said at the same
time, `When it's your time to go, it's your time to go.'"
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 American woman to die in combat.
The fact that she was even here, serving as a gunner on a Humvee, shows
the drain that 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 never had 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 still 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. And many in the Reserves were like
Howard, in the Individual Ready Reserves, home also to retired soldiers
who had recently left the Army. A few regular reservists, such as Paul,
volunteered for civil affairs. The rest, such as Howard, were called up
last December.
"We were a little surprised," said Master Sgt.
Robyn Fees, 50, who became a close friend of Howard's after the two
were called up. "We didn't even know what `civil affairs' was, to be
honest with you."
Howard was a no-frills woman, more
comfortable pounding a hammer than wearing a dress, those who served
with her said. In Afghanistan, she often visited the base area known as
Home Depot, where the wood was stored, and built herself a rudimentary
armoire and a side table. Her hammer still sits in her room on base. An
unfinished picture frame, made from Afghan carved wood she bought at a
local bazaar, waits on her desk
She was used to challenges.
Born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, Howard wanted to be a
firefighter, but her hometown did not hire women. So in 1978 she joined
the department in Bryan, Texas, as its first female firefighter. She
later became a fire risk-management specialist with insurance
companies, eventually helping set up a consulting company in California.
In 1991, Howard started dating Hugh Hvolboll, who made fireworks for a
living. "You set them off, and I'll decide how much damage they cause,"
Howard would joke. In 2004 the couple moved to Waukesha for his job.
They never felt the need to get married, not until she was called up in
December. Slightly nervous, Howard wanted to make their relationship
official.
"As a boyfriend, I would have no status with the Army," Hvolboll said. "As a husband, I did."
In late April, the nine members of Howard's civil affairs team arrived
at the Mehtarlam base in eastern Laghman province. They formed the core
of the provincial reconstruction team.
Paul, 43, of Hammond,
Ind., had more experience than the rest. An urban planner and a Peace
Corps veteran, he had volunteered to spend all of 2004 in Iraq on a
provincial reconstruction team.
Paul embraced civil affairs and
all that it meant. He died with about $800 in his pocket, a sum that
was to have bought a set of false teeth for the mayor of Mehtarlam.
Civil affairs is not a new concept for the U.S. military, but
provincial reconstruction teams are. The first team began its work in
Afghanistan in 2003, a calculated attempt to try to fight the Taliban
by helping Afghans rebuild. Almost immediately, the teams became
controversial. Aid agencies accused the teams of blurring the line
between the military and aid, possibly endangering traditional relief
workers.
But the teams spread to Iraq, and throughout
Afghanistan. There are now 24 provincial reconstruction teams here, and
a 25th is being set up in eastern Nuristan province.
It is not
easy work. Almost 30 years of war have destroyed any professional class
in Afghanistan. There are few engineers, architects, doctors or
teachers. Achieving anything here takes many attempts. Hospital Road in
Mehtarlam, for example, will soon have to be redone for the third time.
On a mission by Howard's unit here last week--the first since she and
Paul were killed--Capt. Walter Christian, 36, visited the town's power
plant project. Once finished, 800 of the 2,000 homes in town should
have power. But the director of the plant mistakenly planned to install
the wrong kind of wire. And the old engineer had suddenly left.
"That's pretty much a problem," said Christian, an Army Reservist, shaking his head.
At the new public-safety building, workers did not put enough mortar between the bricks. The stairs were a mess.
The soldiers tried to visit the orphanage, their third attempt. But
again, no one showed up at the governor's office to help them find it.
In May, Howard was filmed for a U.S. military video highlighting
reconstruction work. She is serious, with no evidence of her normal
laugh. She stands in a village near the Mehtarlam base, the wind
blowing through her hair, her face pink from the hot sun, just after
handing out backpacks to kids.
"We have a good relationship
with the people here in the village," she says. "And of course, as
[with] everybody in Afghanistan, they are in need."
At first,
Howard handled paperwork at the base, tracking projects and applying
for money. She was good but longed to be off the base, to go on
missions, to be out with the Afghan people. She wanted to be a gunner.
"She wanted to do everything," said Air Force Tech. Sgt. Felicia Mason,
37, who later became Howard's roommate. "She wanted to be able to excel
in everything. Because she didn't want anyone to say she couldn't do it
because she was a woman.
Howard got her chance. The civil
affairs team of nine shrank. One soldier went home after a non-combat
injury, another was sent to Nuristan, and the gunner to Jalalabad.
One video shows Howard training on an automatic grenade launcher. She
stands on a box inside the turret, trying to squeeze the triggers. "See
what you mean, ma'am," she says to 1st Lt. Bernice Logan, an Army
Reservist, who had told her the triggers were tough. The trainer tells
Howard she might want to put the gun on "fire" and remove the safety.
Howard laughs. "That could be the problem."
Howard told a
cousin back home she was surprised at what she was doing. She told her
husband that one day she realized she enjoyed it. In August, she told
Christian she was thinking of extending her tour.
"Merideth liked to live life as an adventure," her husband said.
According to Pentagon policy, women are excluded from serving in combat
units, though in the chaotic realities of Iraq and Afghanistan, their
support roles have grown ever closer to the front lines.
Howard's death makes her the oldest U.S. servicewoman known to have
died in combat, said Judy Bellafaire, chief historian at the Women in
Military Service for America Memorial Foundation near Arlington
National Cemetery. A 52-year-old nurse died in Vietnam, but from a
stroke, she said. Even so, there still was some uncertainty. Records
for World War II and earlier conflicts often omit ages
On
missions in Afghanistan, Paul was the driver and Howard was the gunner,
standing on the box to make up for her height, about 5-foot-4. For
Afghans in this conservative tribal area, where most women wear burqas
that cover everything, it must have been a bizarre sight: a gray-haired
woman in a helmet on top of a Humvee.
"That's why Sgt. Howard
loved the turret," said Air Force Senior Airman Brenda Patterson, 26.
"She wanted to give little girls dreams of their own."
The
supply run to Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, happened every month or
two. On this trip, the soldiers picked up mail, ammunition, supplies
and three new Humvees, with adjustable platforms for the gunner.
For the first time, Howard would not need her wooden box.
