Episode Transcript
[00:00:20] Welcome to 45. Left to right podcast.
[00:00:24] I asked my friend Trisha what she would like to see in a podcast episode, and she actually surprised me. She said she wanted to learn more about what my experience was as a woman in the military. So today, that's what I'm going to talk about, my personal experience in the seven years that I served in the army.
[00:00:56] I'm going to start from the beginning.
[00:01:00] I promise I won't talk about all seven years, but I'm going to start from the beginning. The only way that I could afford Davidson was through an army ROTC scholarship. Without that scholarship, I probably would have gone somewhere else or would have had just crippling debt if I decided to go. It didn't. The scholarship didn't cover everything, but it paid enough.
[00:01:31] So that was really a big part of why I joined ROTC and eventually the army.
[00:01:40] But, you know, there are other reasons. Of course, I was interested in the adventure of it, which I certainly got, and certainly I had a sense of patriotism. And the army really boasted on you being able to learn about leadership and learn how to be a leader. And that really appealed to me and I definitely got that, but in ways I maybe wasn't expecting. So when I went to Davidson, I was there for four years, and alongside all my other classes, I took military science classes, which included just honestly going to class every day and learning about the army. And also we did field training exercises. I can't remember how often it was, you know, over the weekend, and I early morning pt or physical training. Now, attendance was usually very low at PT, not because really we were partying. Davidson's definitely not a partying school, but it's hard to wake up at 545 when you went to bed at 445 because you were studying. So we tried, but I'll admit I did not go as much as I should have.
[00:03:13] So part of ROTC, you know, you learn about the army, and then between your junior and senior year, you go to a six week sort of training evaluation called advanced camp. Now, um, advanced camp is basically sort of like basic training and that you learn the basics of the military, you know, how to shoot, how to navigate, those sort of things, but definitely not as much yelling. It's not what you would consider.
[00:03:52] And I have to say, if you go, if you're a lieutenant and you go to your first unit and you start telling soldiers stories about advanced camp, you will immediately lose credibility and also be mocked. So I cringe a little bit talking about advance camp, but you know what? It's part of my story. So this was my experience.
[00:04:22] So advanced camp is basically evaluates your leadership skills through infantry tactics.
[00:04:32] So, you know, going on the ground with your. With your weapon and. And everything and attacking and setting up ambushes, that's how they evaluate your leadership skills. So we would go against, you know, pretend enemies. And honestly, that was really fun because you got to shoot blanks, and it was, you know, pop, pop, pop and all of that. But it wasn't fun when you were the one in charge and being evaluated because you were under extreme pressure.
[00:05:08] So during my evaluation, one of my fellow cadets in my squad, cadet Waddle, he tried to take over my mission.
[00:05:23] This guy was a dumpy know it all with a high and tight, and he was the embodiment of insecurity hidden by faux masculinity. You can tell I don't love the guy. So we tried to take over my mission. I guess he thought I wasn't doing it right. Right. And I had to put him in his place. I said, shut up, get back in line, and let me do my thing.
[00:05:57] He did not like that at all. But the evaluator thought it was great. He thought it was great that I put him in his place. And I got an excellent, which was the highest rating you could get. And I would say I got the last laugh, but I remember overhearing some of the other male cadets talking, and they were like, oh, the only reason she got that excellent rating is because she's a woman. And if any of us, you know, did that maneuver that way, we wouldn't have gotten the excellent rating. And, you know, I just.
[00:06:40] It stung for sure because I'm thinking, you know, what am I supposed to do?
[00:06:48] And also, we weren't being evaluated for having perfect infantry tactics. We were being evaluated for our leadership, and that is what I did. And later, actually, a couple years later, when I was in flight school, I saw one of these guys who were. Who was griping, and first lieutenant Fletcher, and I thought we got along great overall in advance camp. But when I saw him at flight school, he pretended that he didn't know me at all. And I just thought, wow, that's quite a grudge. And my success did not take away from either of them. I mean, Lieutenant Fletcher branched aviation, which is probably the hardest one to get. So he did fine. And I know Cadet Waddle, you know, he did well in his evaluation. So, you know, it just 20 years later, I'm still a little salty about it.
[00:07:59] But this is, unfortunately, this experience like that, you know, you do well or you have to put someone in their place.
[00:08:09] That experience is not uncommon for women in a male dominated field. If you do well, it's because you're a woman and you didn't earn it. If you mess up, it's because you're a woman and you don't belong there. So I learned that. And I think it's taken me a long time to realize, to not let that get to me. And it does still sometimes. But if you're not gonna win in their eyes, then win in your own eyes, you know?
[00:08:47] All right, so, yeah, I am salty about that, and I don't love that that happened that way. But I have to make sure everyone who's listening to this knows. My time in the army was really great, and it shaped who I am today.
[00:09:12] And I think I'm okay. I think I'm a good person. And it made me strong, it made me confident, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. But that doesn't mean it was perfect.
[00:09:24] You know, I deserved my excellent rating because I showed leadership, not because I was perfect.
[00:09:33] Later in my career, in 2005, I deployed to Iraq, and I had a very unusual experience there. Um, but I believe being a woman was an asset in the job that I was given. So I deployed as an individual augmentee, which basically means that I deployed by myself without a unit. And I had no idea what I was going to be doing there. I got on a plane and I landed, and I had no. No job. I just didn't know. It was a little unnerving. So finally, when I got to Baghdad, I was living in a tent for a couple of days and not like a, you know, camping tent, a big old military tent.
[00:10:32] And I got a knock on the door and this guy said, be ready in ten minutes. Colonel Gallimore wants to see you. And I had no idea who Colonel Gallimore was, but I knew that colonels were very intimidating. So I'm like, what is this about?
[00:10:51] So I think I've told this story before, but I got there and he said, okay, have you ever done logistics? And I said, no. And he said, okay, well, have you ever, like, do you know how to speak Hangul? You know, Korean? He said, no. And he's like, well, you're a captain. You're an aviator. You graduated from Davidson. He was North Carolina boy. So he knew Davidson. You'll figure it out. And if you don't, you're fired. I'm like, all right. So my job was to go to Erbil, Iraq, which is in the northern part of, of the country, the kurdish region, which was a lot more stable than the rest of the country. The Kurds have the KRG, their kurdish regional government and were pretty much governing themselves well up. There was 3000 south korean soldiers and they were there doing a humanitarian mission, building hospitals and schools.
[00:12:02] There were 3000 Koreans and eleven american soldiers. And that is a very unusual experience for your standard american soldier. We generally are the occupying force and we create these big bases. And basically soldiers have a lot of the luxuries that they have at home. They have big dining facilities serving all this great food, gyms, movie theaters.
[00:12:37] There's like Subway and McDonald's and all of these things. So imagine going to Iraq and kind of expecting that and then being placed on a camp where you don't know the language, where you, you're in the minority by a lot. You're eating in the korean dining facility every day. You're eating kimchi for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I mean, they love their kimchi. Fish. Lots of fish. And it's very isolating. And these soldiers weren't getting mail, weren't able to cash checks to buy things. Just morale was very low. So my job was to bring in some of those things, maybe bring in some more american food, bring in their ability to get, you know, get cash. And then getting mail was a really big thing because these guys hadn't gotten any mail for a long time or they would have to drive to Tikrete, which honestly, they were not equipped for. You know, you needed like an armored Humvee to go to Tikrit. They didn't really have that. Just, it was really hard.
[00:13:57] And so morale was low. And I've got to sort of talk about these soldiers are usually very young, 18 to 25 years old, married.
[00:14:12] Some of them had babies that were just born. And then they had to go. Some of them had to go through a divorce while they were deployed. You know, it's, it's really hard and not necessarily in all the ways you would expect.
[00:14:29] So I believe being a woman in this role, doing this was an asset. And I'm not saying that men are not capable of serving soldiers needs. Without a doubt they can. But I feel like women are conditioned as we grow up to be more sensitive to others feelings and needs.
[00:15:00] You know, that's kind of what I thought. So thanksgiving, we again, like, didn't have. I mean, I had brought in food by that point, but Thanksgiving is a uniquely american holiday. And I really was like, we need to have a Thanksgiving dinner. So I ordered and got all the provisions for Thanksgiving dinner. And I looked at it and I thought, these are just ingredients. Like, somebody has to cook this dinner. And I was really the only candidate for that.
[00:15:40] Again, I do. I think that men are absolutely fully capable of making Thanksgiving dinner.
[00:15:49] But think about growing up and think about your thanksgivings. Who did the cooking, the women, you know, probably in your family, the, your mom, your grandma, your aunts, you know, generally. And I was 27, and I had already cooked a few Thanksgiving dinners, not on this scale, but, you know, I had helpers. And we made a Thanksgiving dinner for about 100 people because it included our soldiers. And then there were a lot of Americans in Erbil in different jobs, like some special force guys, some civilian contractors. So they all came. And we also invited a few Koreans so they could experience a Thanksgiving dinner. So it was about 100 people. And I just believe that being a woman was an absolute asset in this very weird assignment. And I love, I won't say I loved it, but I am happy I had the experience of that. And my efforts were recognized by good old Colonel Gallimore, who became my buddy mentor while I was there. And he actually ranked me the number one captain that he had ever had in his career, which was such an honor and a little surprising, too. But he, he gave me confidence, and he really made me feel like, yeah, you earned this and you deserve this. And actually, later, several years later, he wrote me an email.
[00:17:38] I think he was checking in on us because of some wildfires that were happening near us. And this is what he wrote.
[00:17:46] Reci serving with you in Iraq was truly an honor in my life and career. I asked you to do some terribly hard and difficult things, and you never back down. Rob Balderson and I talk about you every time we are together. Hug your husband and son for me and tell some tall, tall war stories about our time together. Battle buddy, climb to glory.
[00:18:36] Welcome back to 45 left and right podcast.
[00:18:40] I cannot do an episode about women in the military without talking about the history of women in the military. There is a very common misconception that women have not been serving in the military for very long, like maybe just in the 19 hundreds or modern, you know, 1940s on. But women have actually served in the military in some capacity, whether officially or unofficially, since the beginning of the United States military.
[00:19:17] The US military has basically existed since before we were a country, since to become a country, we needed to have a military. So the army, navy and marines were all founded in 1775, five, with the coast guard, air force and space force being founded much later. Although the air force was part of the army up until the 1940s, so they've been around since. Airplanes have been somewhat reliable in flying.
[00:19:55] Women have been involved in the military since the Revolutionary War.
[00:20:02] Mostly they served as nurses, cooks, but some of them actually pretended to be men so they could fight.
[00:20:14] They would obviously just wear men's clothing, bind their boobs, and try to pass off as a man, which is pretty gutsy.
[00:20:28] One woman that did this, her name was Deborah Sampson, and she actually enlisted into the army as Robert Shirtliff. And she ended up being a scout in a light infantry unit, which is a really hard job because you go way ahead and, you know, gather intelligence on the enemy. She didn't even get found out until she got hurt, and I believe she was thrown in jail, but eventually she was given veterans benefits, but it took a long time.
[00:21:03] Another woman, Nancy Morgan Hart, would take care of her children and family during the day, and then at night, she would sneak out and be a spy and gather intelligence. The british military, she would infiltrate them, and then, you know, go back and take care of her family the next day.
[00:21:30] During the civil war, over 400 women, and this is as much as we know about, they disguised themselves as men, and they fought in both the Union and confederate armies. And all of this is according to the army website, which is reliable information, though it does make the army look really good. So, you know, there's a little bit of propaganda in there.
[00:22:00] So women officially joined the military in 1917 and 1918, even though we know they had been serving long before then, they were more official. And then in World War one, women were allowed to wear army uniforms for the first time, and over 35,000 served in World War two.
[00:22:28] I mean, generally in this country, women, their roles change. You know, while the men went to war, the women had to do all the jobs the men were doing. Well, this also happened in the military. So World war 2400,000 women served in non combat roles, although I'll get into this in a sec. They had these women called wasps, women Air force service pilots. And they actually became the first women to fly military aircraft. Aircraft. What the wasp would do, they had to be rated pilots already. And then they went to sort of a version of flight school where they learned about the very, like, many different types of airplanes to fly. And they would do these ferrying missions, so they would take the airplanes where they needed to go. It was really dangerous. They got shot at a lot and actually had to pay their own way to get back. So they would take this airplane to wherever they needed it, and then they would have to find their way back.
[00:23:49] Another thing they did, this was by volunteer. They would volunteer for this. They would tow targets behind the airplane for the men who were training to shoot anti aircraft artillery at them.
[00:24:09] I can't even imagine that. And sometimes the men actually misunderstood the mission, and they would try to shoot the women's aircraft down. So they got shot, shot through the feet, shot through all kinds of things.
[00:24:25] I've actually read a lot about them, which is why I get really fired up about it, because they were not recognized for what they did. They weren't given benefits for what they did. But obviously their role was very important.
[00:24:42] In 1948, Congress passed the Women's Armed Services Integration act, giving women veteran benefits and permanent status in the armed forces.
[00:24:58] I don't think that's accurate. They never. They didn't get equal pay or equal benefits, but they got something.
[00:25:07] So this basically that 1948 also created the WAC, the Women's Army Corps. And in 1965, these women became the first to serve in Vietnam. Or they became the first women to serve in Vietnam, officially, mostly as nurses, but they had other roles as well. And being a nurse was really dangerous, too, because where do they need nurses? Near the front lines where the men were getting injured. In 1975, women were allowed to go to the military academies. They had a really rough. It wasn't like, rah rah, women are here. They had excessive hazing and just had a really hard time. But many of them made it through.
[00:26:06] By the by, in 1983, women actually were flying in armed conflict for the first time, although the WASP would disagree.
[00:26:18] That was in 1983. They flew in Grenada. And then in the 1990s, women were officially allowed to fly combat missions and be on navy ships. Now, I am grateful for that, because in 2003, I was able to fly the Kiowa warrior, which was certainly a combat helicopter. And I wouldn't, you know, have been able to do that without other women paving the way.
[00:26:51] In 2005, which was actually when I was in Iraq, Sergeant Leanne Hester became the first woman to earn the Silver Star.
[00:27:02] And she was a military police in a military police unit. And at the time, the military police units would help escort large supply convoys who were going through a particularly active zone and also some infantry units. So at this time, they were guarding a 30 vehicle supply convoy, so a big one. And the convoy came under attack by 50 insurgents. And Sergeant Hester and her squad leader was sergeant first class nine.
[00:27:44] They actually led their unit through the kill zone, which is exactly what it sounds like around the insurgents and attacked the insurgents, you know, basically suppressing them. And it was a 25 minutes firefight. So can you imagine having to make decisions and control the panic that your body's gonna go through for 25 minutes?
[00:28:18] That's a long time. That's like running on a treadmill and, you know, having to solve a Rubik's cube for 25 minutes, I would be done.
[00:28:32] Now, at the time that sergeant Hester was getting the Silver Star and the time we were in Iraq and Afghanistan, women were serving in combat. It just wasn't officially recognized or authorized that women were serving in combat. Any woman in a military police unit was in these armed Humvees as gunners, as whatever. They're serving in combat. But Congress was debating, and I think they still are, whether women should serve in combat. And it was ridiculous. But in 2013, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta officially removed the restriction of women serving in direct ground combat. Oh, thank you. They've been doing it all along. And I want to say, this was really.
[00:29:29] This really kind of got me upset, because while I didn't serve in active combat, I was in a convoy that was attacked and, you know, had a lot of mortars coming in, and so. So I do have PTSD. And when I got back, Jeff was like, you need to. You need to get checked out for this, but also, you need to get a VA disability rating for this. So I went in for help, and the guy was like, well, you're a woman. You didn't serve in combat. And I was like, well, I beg to differ. But it was, you know, and he said, oh, you have to have at least, you know, three free, three times where you were attacked, and you have to have documentation. And just. They made it really difficult. But I just remember him saying, well, no, you were a woman. You didn't serve in combat. I'm like, well, I. The mortars and ieds that I experienced would beg to differ.
[00:30:37] So I think it's better now. But you still face it in 2015. I don't know if y'all remember Captain Kristen Grease and first Lieutenant Shay Haver. They were the first women to ever graduate from Army Ranger School.
[00:31:00] That was a big deal. I remember that they were following. The media was following them, and, oh, where are they now? And, like, they had such intense scrutiny and commentary about whether they should be doing it and whether women are up to the challenge and just all that. They finished. They did it on their own. It was the same standards as the Mendez. I just. That was so cool.
[00:31:28] But they graduated, and they were not they were not allowed still to serve in a ranger unit. Now, I want to say this. Most guys who graduate from ranger school do not serve in a ranger unit, but they didn't even have the opportunity. But they did. Later in their career, they did. They really, truly paved the way.
[00:31:56] Both Haver and Greased Greece, they each became one of the first female commanders of an infantry unit in 2023. Or as of 2023, Haver was assigned to the old guard, which is one of the most prestigious units you can be a part of. It is these are the soldiers who guard the tomb of the unknown Soldier. It is a very big deal. And then greased, she's actually a major now.
[00:32:34] She went to Columbia University and she got a master's degree in socio organizational psychology, and she ended up going to West Point as a tactical officer, which is really cool.
[00:32:52] So another role of women that women have had in combat, I have not heard that much about, but it's called the female engagement teams. And I believe this was spearheaded by the Marines. What they are was a group of women in these units who were just women. And they would go usually with the infantry units in Afghanistan, in Iraq, I think mostly Afghanistan, to talk to the women in the village. Now, according to the army website, it was for, you know, to make nice with the villages. Look, this is what we can do. Here's some candy. And I, you know, you women need to stick up for yourselves kind of thing. But the way I had heard it back then is that these engagement teens were also to gain intelligence, because the women knew a lot and also had a lot of influence over their husbands and obviously their children and the, you know, infantry guys who, where men could not talk to the women. That was a big no no. So the female engagement teams would go in. Now, I also have heard that they were not set up for success. They didn't really receive great training or education on what they were going to be doing.
[00:34:27] But women did that. And let me tell you, they were in direct combat.
[00:34:50] Welcome back to 45 Left to right podcast. So I talked about the history of women in the military, but I wanted to talk about two research studies that show that women are an asset to any team, especially like, in business and the military, for sure, anywhere where there's team building and making decisions. The first research study is from the Harvard Business Review in June 2011 by Anita Woolley and Thomas W. Malone. And the title is what makes a team smarter, more women.
[00:35:37] So what they found is that there is little correlation between a group's collective intelligence and the iqs of its individual members. So basically, if a group has, generally has members who have higher iqs, they do not do necessarily do better.
[00:36:08] But if a group has more women, they definitely do better, and their collective intelligence rises.
[00:36:19] So what they did, professors Wooley and Malone, and then they had research assistants, Christopher Shabri, Sandy Pentland in Nada Hashme.
[00:36:31] They gave several subjects who were, from the age of 18 to 60, your standard intelligence tests. And then after that, they very randomly assigned them to teams.
[00:36:48] Each team was asked to complete several tasks, like brainstorming tasks, decision making tasks, and then visual puzzles to solve one complex problem, sort of like an escape room idea.
[00:37:08] So the teams were given intelligence scores based on how well they did. Though the teams that had individual members with higher iqs didn't earn higher scores, those teams that had more women did have higher scores. So that's pretty interesting.
[00:37:35] I don't know if it is. Well, I just think it's women. All that says is women can add to your intelligence as a group. And this same article talked about how women should be included more in the decision making because they're more collaborative, I guess, and can be more team oriented.
[00:38:01] All right, so the second research study is about how women can be or are calm under pressure. So this is a very famous neurobiologist called Rud van den Boss. And what he found is that men under stress experience a huge spike in cortisol. And that spike in cortisol makes it more difficult for them to make solid decisions. Women actually experience a smaller spike under similar stress, and that gives them some urgency to get things done, but it doesn't impede their decision making.
[00:38:53] And this was actually quoted or kind of talked about in an article, Inc.com. and that's where I found it. But it's a separate study. But honestly, I couldn't understand it. So I'm just going with theinc.com.
[00:39:10] so basically, they did separate neuroscience studies. One was conducted at the University of Southern California, and one was, this was done at Duke University.
[00:39:24] And basically they said women make less risky decisions under high stress situations. So what they're finding, this was quoted in this article, and it says, under low stress situations, men and women make decisions about, about equally well. But men took more risks when they were stressed. They became more focused on big wins, even when they were costly and less likely.
[00:40:02] So another words, when everything's going smoothly and going well, men and women are even as far as decision making goes. But when things get hairy and there's more stress involved, men tend to play the long shots while women tend to think things through. This is science. Okay, so what they're concluding is that women's brains handle the stress hormone of cortisol better than men's brains handle it, which is really interesting.
[00:40:45] So I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't discount women.
[00:40:55] And just because a woman does something better than a man doesn't take away from the man's success. I see that so often.
[00:41:06] You know, I go on these, I go on Instagram or Facebook, and I really should stay off of that. But if there is ever an article posted about a women, a woman having success in a male dominated field, there are always these guys. And if there, it's a veteran, I call them vet bros. That have to undercut that woman's success. It's like, oh, well, they've lowered the standards, or, oh, well, this is diversity at its finest or whatever, or, you know, diversity quotas at their finest.
[00:41:45] Just because this woman does well and has success doesn't mean that you as a man isn't having success. You know, I mean, it just baffles me. The insecurity in women can do a lot of things really, really well.
[00:42:23] Welcome back to 45. Left to right podcasts. Gonna end with a couple of short stories. And the first one, I think, you know, I don't want my audience to get the wrong impression, because I've had a couple of, you know, rants on here about some negative experiences that I've had in the military. But I want to talk about my experience as at my first unit.
[00:42:56] So here I, you know, did really well at advanced camp and got through flight school. I was doing my dream, flying helicopters in the army. And I. Jeff and I were stationed at Fort Drum, New York, with the 10th Mountain Division. By the way, Burr, it's cold up there.
[00:43:21] I was assigned to Alpha Company, first attack Battalion, 10th Aviation Brigade, and my first unit was amazing. I had really smart, hard working crew chiefs, and they are the ones that do the maintenance on the helicopters. I had a. A group of just expert willing to teach me warrant officers, and then my company commander was great about mentoring me and giving me feedback and guidance. I just. I had a wonderful experience, especially for a first unit. And so I was there for. I served in that unit for a year. And I remember this was several months in.
[00:44:16] We would always have these pilots meetings on Fridays and pilots meeting. Sometimes they were fun. They were always educational. Like before gunnery, we would learn different things about our weapons, but sometimes they were an absolute grilling, like if someone made a mistake that week, we would question them. They would have to answer, you know, I mean, sometimes there'd be a little bit of a dressing down, but it was all the pilots and the battalion would go. And I remember looking around one day, and I realized I'm the only female pilot in this entire battalion.
[00:45:03] And, you know, that's okay. That's great, Therese. But what it told me was I was being treated the same as everyone else. It did not occur to me that I, you know, that I was the only woman because I was just being treated like everyone else. No special treatment, no extra criticism, just equal treatment. And women don't join the military to stand out or have an easy time or fill some kind of diversity quota. We just wanted. We just want to be treated the same. And I was grateful I actually got to experience that.
[00:45:54] So despite this wonderful experience I had, sometimes I will go to the va, and, you know, there's a lot of older, grumpier veterans there, and they'll be wearing their hats about when they served, like what, you know, what war they served in or what unit they served in, and they should be proud of that. And I'm not. I think it's great that they do that, but we'll be waiting, you know, in the waiting room or whatever, and they're all talking to each other and telling war stories, you know, that sort of thing.
[00:46:35] But they never ask me where I serve. They never ask me what I do in service.
[00:46:40] And it's really isolating, you know, it's just an experience you have. There's usually a woman or two, but not, you know, not that many understand we're in the minority, but it's like, wow, I can't really bond with anybody here. And it's just.
[00:47:02] It's hard, you know, it's just, I think being a woman in the military, or any male dominated field, it can feel very isolating.
[00:47:14] So another time, I kind of experienced this. Every year I go to Fontana middle school because they have a day around Veterans Day, where veterans go into the different classes of middle schoolers and talk about the military and what our experience was. And I think Gen. Alpha, a lot of people think, oh, we're doomed. Gen. Alpha does this or that, we're going to be fine. They were, they're always very interesting or interested, and they ask a lot of really good questions. It's a long day, but I love doing that. And every, you know, around lunchtime, the veterans go in and the teachers do a potluck for us, and it's really nice when we have lunche. And last year, I sat down at a table with two other older veterans, I'd say Vietnam era. And I sat down and they were talking to each other, talking about, I was. I served here, and this is what I did. And several minutes went by before one of them asked me, you know, oh, hi, you know, what branch did you serve in? And all of that. And I don't normally lead with, I flew helicopters. I just wait for it naturally to come into conversation. But I could tell he was just kind of like, okay. And then he asked me what I did in the military, and I was like, oh, I flew helicopters. And, oh, boy, did his tune change. He was like, oh, well, you know, and I appreciate that he was interested, but I also was like, oh, now you're interested. Okay.
[00:49:12] And like, I understand at the time, they were serving, women weren't, you know, as active or prominent in the military. But, you know, I'm just saying, it's hard sometimes when you're just not able to, you know, to bond with other veterans like they can with each other.
[00:49:35] So despite all of this, you know, wow, duries. Um, poor you.
[00:49:43] Um, overall, I felt like I was treated with respect generally in the army, and was giving. I mean, obviously, I wasn't discriminated against because I branched aviation and I got the hardest branch to get in the army. And I cannot over er, I cannot state enough how much my army experience made me and shaped me and gave me a unique view of the world.
[00:50:20] But it was also a very complicated experience.
[00:50:24] It was fun, it was challenging, it was scary, it was invigorating, and it was lonely all at once.
[00:50:59] Thank you for listening to 45 left to right podcast. And I want to thank my friend Trisha for giving me this episode idea. If you're in contact with me and you have an episode idea, I would love to hear it. Just a reminder that I'm on Facebook and Instagram both have similar handles. Facebook is 45 left or right podcast. Instagram is 45 left or right podcast. And I do have a website, 45 left or right podcast.com, where I share extra pictures, extra stories, and all of that usually takes me a few days to post, but please check that out. And as always, thank you so much for listening, and bye for now.
