Oral history interview with Sherry Lynn Dodson Womack (Part 1)

WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION INTERVIEWEE:Sherry Lynn Dodson Womack INTERVIEWER:Beth Ann Koelsch DATE:12 July 2018 [Begin Interview] BK:Today is July 12, 2018. My name is Beth Ann Koelsch, and I'm here in Sanford, North Carolina, to conduct an oral history interview for the Women Veterans Historical Project at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Sherry, if you could state your name the way you would like it to read on your collection. SW:My name is Sherry Lynn Womack. I would like for it to say Sherry Lynn Dodson Womack, because Dodson is--if that's okay. BK:Okay. Can you spell that? SW:D-O-D-S-O-N. BK:Oh, Dodson, right. A good North Carolina name. Okay. Can you tell me again when and where you were born? SW:I was born [in August 1963] in Reidsville, North Carolina. BK:And about your family, your parents; do you have siblings? SW:Oh, yes. BK:She laughs. [chuckles] SW:Oh, yeah. BK:I'm guessing more than one. SW:Yeah. Let's see. I have five brothers and one sister. BK:Okay. Was your mom a stay at home mom? SW:My mom worked her butt off. She, seriously, was probably the greatest influence of my life. She--We grew up--We were probably--I'd consider us poor, and so she worked a lot, and she actually was--she was married four times because she believed any man she slept with was--she should marry him. BK:Okay. SW:[chuckles] So that being said, four times. But then she was always the stabilizing factor, she was always the one that did--She worked--I remember her sewing, making pocketbooks. I mean, one time the sewing machine needle went right through her finger. BK:Oh, gosh. SW:And I remember we was taking her to the hospital and the police officers thought she was joking; they thought it was a trick or something. But she's always worked as long as I can remember. We had a garden. We had a hog, and so however big the hog got is what you knew you were going to have bacon in the winter. BK:Sure. SW:And what you grew we could can, and so we canned food, and that would be what we would eat during then. And we would go to school, and she made sure that we did what we could there, but she was definitely the hardest-working thing I remember. BK:Okay. Of your mother's husbands, did you have a father figure that was there? SW:Yes. My dad left when I was three years old, and he tried to--I mean, he even denied in court that I was his, etcetera, and so he ends up getting in trouble and stuff, and that's kind of--It's not a funny story, but still, it ends in a good way. He left when I was three, he came back after I had already decided to join the military at seventeen. I joined under the Delayed Entry Program [The Delayed Entry Program (DEP) is designed to give potential recruits time to put their affairs in order, finish school, etc. before shipping out for basic training.]. He showed back up in our lives and--mine and my sister's--we had the same mom and dad. And so, he shows up and I've already signed up for the military. And he came back, and he took my sister to Memphis, Tennessee. At that time, I had already left home; I left home at fourteen and joined the army at seventeen. And then as life progressed and we got older and all that stuff, I still loved my dad. My dad drank more than he probably should have; definitely drank more than he should have. But my mother brought me up to love and respect people regardless, and in the Bible it said to honor your mother and father; it never said they had to be perfect. So I still honored my father. And so, as I was getting ready to retire--I thought I was going to retire at the twenty-year mark--this was right before I went to Afghanistan. We decided to come back to Fort Bragg [North Carolina], and I thought, "I'll retire here." This was before all these tours of combat, and of course, I had thirteen more years after that twenty years, but at the twenty-year mark I thought, "Well, I'm going to go back to Fort Bragg and I'm going to be near my family," etcetera, and all this kind of stuff, and I helped take care of my dad, even though he drank a lot and he went to near the end. Of course, he got saved; he went to a little church called Delta Church. And I remember that day distinctly when they called to tell me about that, and so I still took care of him the entire time until he died. But in my forties, I actually had a paternity test. BK:Right. SW:I was born out of wedlock, so in high school, I says--This is going to sound really crazy, but if you look at all the high school annuals and stuff, my last name was Bullins; B-U-L-L-I-N-S. That was not my father's name, that was who my mom was married to at the time when I was--I mean, before she had married my dad, and the way the laws worked back then--now I think it still might be true, I don't know, but--you have to be separated over a year or so, and then you can get married and whatever. But my last name was the wrong last name for years, and then when I got into high school, my mother and one of my brothers, Charlie Wayne[?], decided that he--they was going to help me get the right last name. They changed my last name to Dodson; D-O-D-S-O-N. BK:Okay. SW:That's why I'm kind of partial to that name. But we did have a paternity test and I was definitely a Dodson. [chuckles] BK:Got it. Did Mr. Bullins raise you with your mom? SW:No, I actually--I, truly, in my--my personal opinion is, in my childhood, I was raised by my mother. My father figure--I sound like a religious fanatic, but my father figure was always God. Even a little girl in bible school, I always felt that way. I loved my dad, but if you really wanted to ask me who had the strongest influence, other than my mother, in raising me, it would have been the United States Army. I've been in since I was seventeen. Thirty-three years is a long time. BK:Yeah, true. It is. SW:Everything I need to know, learning, discipline; things like that. To me, that's where I was raised, and that's why the army is still my family, even people who are retired and get out and still come by, I'd drop anything for them. BK:Where are you in the birth order with your siblings? SW:[chuckles] Well, there is three younger than I am, and my sister's--only ten months between me and my sister. So I guess they call us Irish twins [slang term for siblings born less than twelve months apart] sometimes. BK:Yes. SW:And then I have two more younger brothers, and there's three older brothers. I know people get into this "half" and all that kind of stuff, I don't have step-nothing. You're family, you're family, and I just don't call it that. BK:Okay. Where did you go to high school? SW:I went to high school at [John M.] Morehead High School [Eden, North Carolina]. I graduated in 1981. I was actually their mascot, so I was a panther. So that was pretty cool. I got to do all these cheers. And that was a big deal to be able to be on the cheerleading squad because I was from the poor side of town. Because usually schools got cliques and all that kind of stuff. BK:Sure. All schools have cliques. SW:But, obviously, I had a big mouth and liked to jump around so-- BK:So what clique were you in? SW:Well, actually, since I had left home so early, I had a full-time job and I was in high school, so I can't honestly say that I was--I was not in the cheerleader crowd or the athletic crowd or anything. I kind of can relate to all of them. I'd be in the poor crowd because I wore the high-water pants; my pants--the legs would be too short or something. I remember getting picked on about that in school. Or we just didn't have the right clothes or the style or whatever. But when I got in my senior year, because I had already left home, a lot of people look back at that and they could kind of admire that a little bit. I had a very abusive childhood when I was younger; enough so that it sent my stepfather to jail. And people knew that, and so--particularly the teachers. Students now, if I go back home, when I go back for family reunions and stuff, people will remember that, and so that transition time for me was somewhere around my junior high year. I went back to school and I was kind of like a--almost like a different person. Plus, my last name was different. And so, that made the difference. But a lot of kids go through stuff like that in the South. It doesn't make you--It doesn't define who you are; it's what you do with that in the future. BK:Right. SW:So that actually helped me later as an Emergency Medicine PA [Physician Assistant]. I can walk in the ER, even if the kid looked like nothing at all was wrong with them, I could pick them up and I could sense, I could just tell. So it didn't matter what their parents were--senior-ranking officers, or what kind of background you think the kid come from--I could just tell, and I know that sounds odd. [Speaking Simultaneously] BK:You could tell there was something physically wrong? SW:I could tell if they'd been abused. BK:Abused, right. SW:Yes, ma'am. BK:I just want to make sure. SW:It's not like I could do x-rays through my hands, but I could just tell. A lot of times people will miss things like that, like, if a child's being abused, and if they bring the kids in or something, and you see the kid's always running to one particular parent and not the other parent, it's a common myth that people assume that the one that they run to is the one who's not abusing them. It's actually the other way around, because they actually go to the one who abuses them the most. That's strange, but it happens. So I could just pick up on things like that, it was just--it was strange. From that day forward, when I was in the emergency room one day working and no one could figure anything out, and you couldn't actually--you can't exactly run all these tests and do stuff on kids. BK:Right. SW:Especially on a senior officer because it's 00:05:00 embarrassing if you're wrong. And I would actually have doctors from Duke [University Medical Center] and they'd say, "Take that baby to Sherry. Go take her over to Womack." As soon as I pick the kid up, I could just tell. BK:Wow. SW:It's bad. It's not always a good thing, but I could tell, so I figured God had a purpose and a reason for those things that happened when I was younger. BK:You said you worked full-time and went to high school? SW:Yes, ma'am. I worked at the Circle Drive-In. What I would do, I worked nights. BK:Okay. Oh, wow. SW:And so, as soon as I'd get out of school I'd go work at the Circle Drive-In, where you take food out to cars. BK:Right. SW:And then some mornings we wouldn't get off till, like, 2:00 in the morning, because you'd work all of the weekend, of course, and you get off at 2:00 in the morning, you have to get up and try to get on the bus. And I was living in my own little house, and I had a little, tiny house. This lady had a beauty shop and my mom early on had got me a job there, which was really cool. As a kid it was amazing. Eight, nine years old and you're cleaning up a beauty shop, and she's paying you eight dollars a day. You'd be there all-day scrubbing, cleaning, lining up little bottles, and all this kind of stuff, and she's like, "Wow, this is great. You want to come do my house?" I'm like, "Yeah!" [chuckles] So when I decided I was going to leave home she rented me a house behind her house. A little tiny house where you could do--everything was, like, the kitchen, the living room, dining--whatever you want to call it--they were all together in one little tiny room, it was a real small house, for sixty-five dollars a month. And so, I did that, went on to--did work, went to high school, and then I joined the army at seventeen, and, boy, when I got in the army, well, I thought I was in hog heaven. I thought, "This is amazing. They feed me. They clothe me. Nobody's going to beat you in the middle of the night. Nobody's going to wake you up." You know what I mean? It's just "Wow." I was like, "This is great." BK:I had a friend, not exact situation, but when she joined the military she was just like, "This food is great!" [chuckles] SW:And then I got in basic training, where they throw the trash--back then they throw the trashcans, scream and holler, "Get up, get up, get up!" I got there, and it was so funny because I wore a size two boot, so I didn't have combat boots for two years. And, buddy, let me tell you, when I got them boots, boy, I'd shine them like crazy. I mean, that was when they were black then. [unclear] all different color boots. BK:Right. SW:I remember in basic training they said, "You're too short. We're going to send you home." It was just like that crazy [An] Officer and a Gentleman movie [1982 film starring Richard Gere, Louis Gossett Jr., and Debra Winger]. It was like, "I don't have anywhere to go," kind of deal. BK:Right. SW:I remember the commander calling me, standing outside his office, he said, "You know, you don't meet the height requirement." I'm thinking, "I've got a waiver." Somebody had signed off and they waivered it, it was okay. But once I got in, it's kind of like, "Well, you wear a size two boot, I don't think you're tall enough," blah-blah. And I was--by then, I'm smack dab in the middle of basic training where most people would say, "Hey, I quit. I want to go home." I wanted to stay even more. And so, they would see me at night with my feet up on the steps doing push-ups and stuff like that, and then one of the crazy girls convinced me that--there's something called an incline board where you do sit-ups on, one of the girls--I'll never forget my bunkmate had convinced me that if I would sleep on this incline board I would be taller in the morning. BK:Oh, stretch your spine. SW:So knucklehead here goes in the middle of the night, and I'm back there, and they come in to check for the bunks, and of course, I'm not in my bunk. And so, [laughs] they go and they wake her up. "Where's she at? Where's she at?" And she goes, "Well, she might be in the back of the bay." [laughs] And they found me in the back of the bay sleeping on this incline board. Now, of course, I did not grow any taller, I just had the worst flipping headache you can imagine the next day. But they thought that was funny, and so the commander said, "Okay, we'll let you stay. If you're crazy enough to do that, we'll let you stay." BK:Wow. SW:And so, then I graduated and I just--from the basic training, and it all went well after that. But I remember the boots was the biggest issue. My mom thought that was so cute, that they didn't have shoes to fit me, and they had to tailor-make my special shoes. BK:I've never even heard of size two, so now I have. SW:Now, what's amazing is, when I joined in 1981, it took them two years to get me a pair of boots. And once I'm deployed overseas, and I'm in combat, the very moment that I got blood and stuff on my boots, [United States Army] Special Forces team could make a phone call, and the next thing you know I'd have a new pair of boots. BK:Wow. SW:That's how quick they can turn around and do things, but it was different back then. BK:One more question about high school. Did you have a favorite subject? SW:Actually, I liked history because I liked studying all the different religions. Now, I am--beyond the shadow of a doubt, I am a Christian, and I love studying the women in the Bible and their leadership roles. It's probably one of my favorite pastimes. But I loved history, but I also enjoyed English, but only because of one teacher. Her name was Miss Sweat, she changed my life forever, because kids now, if they have attention deficit [disorder], they give them drugs and do all that kind of stuff. She knew there was something going on in the family. She didn't know what it was, but she knew something was making me fidgety, and when my grandmother was having--when my grandmother--One of my grandparents had a heart attack and I stayed in the hospital with her. She had taught me how to crochet, probably, almost before I could walk, so I could sit and crochet and not even look down. BK:Right. SW:So, Show and Tell, I had this ball of yarn and I was showing them how to learn how to crochet. This teacher was--It was just amazing. She picked it up immediately that I could pay attention, as long as my hands were busy. BK:Oh, wow. SW:So during a lecture in a classroom--When I was in middle school, during--right in the middle of her lectures, she just very casually reaches down and picks up the ball of yarn, and the crochet needle's stuck in the ball, and she hands it to me and she says--and she just done her hand like that for me to go ahead and crochet. And my grades went from a "D" to an "A," and she even gave me a little--and I still have it to this day--it was a little "Most Improved." [chuckles] I wore it for English. Now, you wouldn't think that now, as much as I say "ain't" and "y'all" [unclear], whatever, all these country words, but my--it greatly improved, so that was why I loved that. So I couldn't really say definitely a favorite, but I can tell you my least favorite was math. But I loved the history and I liked the science and the English and, of course, auto mechanics. I was the first female to go through auto mechanics in my high school. BK:I don't want to lose this; how do you spell your English teacher's name? SW:Sweat. S-W-E-A-T. Yes, ma'am. BK:All right. And auto mechanics. SW:That was Mr. Harder. Oh my gosh, he was funny. They had--They didn't have a female--What it is, is we had two boys in our--we had some young men in our--I think it was at least two of them with the last name of Dodson; you remember my name was changed to Dodson. I think when they were enrolling students they initially thought that I was one of the Dodson boys. BK:Oh, got it. SW:Mr. Harder about died when he saw me come in, and then he thought, "Well, surely she won't last a year." Well, I lasted all three years. BK:Wow. Why did you want to take--I mean, it's useful. SW:At one point in time I actually wanted to do--I thought that I would want to do auto mechanics in some way to get closer to my dad--my dad was a truck driver--even though I didn't know him. And then I took ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps], and the only reason I took ROTC was because the guy that came to talk about it, his last name was Dodson, and I found out he was a distant cousin, and I said, "Hey, that's my dad's name." BK:Right. SW:He's like, "What?" I said, "Yeah, my name's supposed to be Dodson." And that's how we got to know each other. Then I went all the way through the ROTC thing. I liked it. And I thought, "I think I'm going to like this." BK:And this was in high school. SW:Yes, ma'am. BK:Okay. SW:I remember my mom cried all the way to the recruiting station. BK:Alright, we're going to get that. What was the name of the high school? SW:[John M.] Morehead [High School, Eden, NC]. BK:Morehead, okay. SW:M-O-R-E-H-E-A-D. BK:Okay. When did you decide that you wanted to join the military? SW:When I was about sixteen. At first, I had a little boyfriend, like everybody does in high school, and the first time I saw him--and I thought--I actually did--I thought I was going to get married and stay in my own hometown and everything, but the first time I saw him do drugs I'm like, "I don't need this. I'm out of here. This whole town needs to just go away, or I don't need to be in this town." BK:All right, so first time you saw your boyfriend do drugs you're like, 00:10:00 "This is not for me." Then what happened? SW:I signed up to join the army. BK:But how did you-- SW:Because I knew I loved doing all the stuff that was in ROTC. BK:Okay. SW:I liked wearing the uniform, I was on the drill team, I was with the Ranger program that they had, and so I knew I liked the military stuff. BK:Got it. SW:But I knew I didn't want to stay in that small town, because in my impression, in my little limited view there--of course, and that's not all of the town, because I grew up in--the town was called Eden; E-D-E-N. And it just blew my mind the first time, because I never would have thought that. I thought, "Well, this town is probably not where I want to be." And I had a strong calling. I loved ROTC, I want to do something outside of just being here. BK:And why did you take ROTC? What inspired you? SW:Because that guy's name was Dodson. BK:Oh, okay. SW:And I said, "Oh, yeah. My dad's name is Dodson. I want to do that." So then I got in there, and next thing I know you're in uniform, so you know what you're going to wear. BK:Right. SW:And nobody's going to make fun that you're poor and your clothes don't look like everybody else's because you're all in the same uniform. Does that make sense? BK:That makes a lot of sense. Did you ever consider joining another branch? SW:No. BK:Nope? Okay. SW:No doubt. There is another branch? BK:[chuckles] Okay, that answers my question quite well. When you joined, you said your mother was upset. SW:Well, [chuckles] she didn't actually realize that she had signed me up for the military. Because remember I had left home so young? BK:Right. SW:So once in a while I would go home to have her sign papers. BK:She just signed without looking? SW:She kind of signed without realizing what she had done. BK:I noticed you were very careful to read all the "Deed of Gifts," so you won't be making that mistake. SW:No. [chuckles] Maybe I'll learn from her. I don't want to lose--No, I'm just kidding. But I thought that was pretty sweet. She's like, "You can't go, you're not old enough." Because I was seventeen. BK:Right. SW:She says, "I'll go tell them you're not old enough." I said, "Mom, you're going to tell them you didn't realize you signed the paper?" And that made her--after that--she's very proud of me, though. She really was the biggest support, I think, ever, in combat. Ever. I don't know--She didn't just support me, she supported all the soldiers. She'd send stuff all the time. BK:What about your friends? SW:My friends from my hometown? BK:Yes. SW:I didn't keep up with a lot of them until after I'd been in for a while, and they knew I had went through something, they just didn't know what; traumatic thing in high school--or middle school. But we still stayed where--I didn't communicate with them as much the time I was active duty, the first twenty years, and then once I came back to North Carolina, to Fort Bragg, at the twenty-year mark, then we've had reunions and we do things like that, and I go back home, and they're really, really sweet. I mean, they're really priceless. They were like, "Oh, you're the most successful of all of us." I'm like, "I don't see that. I don't see that at all." But it's really--It's nice; they're very supportive. They even showed up to my retirement ceremony and stuff. BK:Did you have a general sense, because you're a woman, people in the towns, did they have any opinions about that, negative or positive? SW:In which town? This town or my hometown? BK:Your hometown. SW:My hometown was--Actually, I think my hometown was much better about it than the county I live in right now. BK:Really? SW:Yes, absolutely. BK:Why do you think that is? SW:Well, I don't know. I think that particularly in the county that I live in right now-- BK:Which is Lee County, just for the record. SW:Okay. In Lee County, it appears that there is a lot of the good ol' boy system going down. BK:Okay. SW:For instance, even on our school board. I mean, we had a very, very--We are Democrat dominant, okay? We had a very well-qualified minority female that should have been the chairman of the board, but I don't think they're ready for that. I think they've only had, like, one female chairman, ever, in the history of Lee County for the Board of Education. I only know of one, ever. But, this is different; very different. And the respect is not the same. If you have a man, particularly in the coun--they retired or something from the military, they would call them--Like, I retired as a lieutenant colonel. They'd call them, "Hey, Colonel. Hey, Colonel. We have a Senator--" "Hey, Colonel," when they see him. "Hey, Colonel. Hey, Colonel." But they won't do that with a woman. BK:Wow. SW:"Oh, that's Jim's wife." Even in the paper, everything's, "Well, her husband does this; her husband does that." We had the youngest candidate ever running for county commissioner, and they talk about her father. BK:Wow. SW:So that's a huge thing, for me, anyway. In this area it's different. But, now, back where I grew up, in Eden, they are just tickled to death. I'm their little success story, they love me; they come in the country store all the time asking my mom how I'm doing; "We're praying for her." And my mom, she had no money. These people--Like I said, I came from a poor family, and my mom would take whatever she had in her Country Corner and send it to us in combat. BK:Wow. SW:Whatever she could. BK:And this is her store? SW:Yeah, she had a little country store, it's called the Country Corner. And she would send us stuff. Crazy stuff like air fresheners. One time she sent me candles saying, "Can you burn stuff in Afghanistan?" Now, let me help you with this picture. When you go to take a crap, it goes in a big barrel, and then you pour JP fuel [JP-8, jet propellent fuel] in it and you stir it up, right? She's sending me scented candles and asking me, "Is it okay to light a candle?" We laughed our heads off. It was hilarious. It was the funniest thing ever. But she sent whatever she had in the country store. So one time she sent diaper rash medicine, and you're thinking, "What in the world?" We always felt like--Remember I told you I could pick up kids and tell, we thought, boy--everybody was waiting to see what was going to be in the next box, because we're trying to figure out what's going to happen next in our lives in the combat zone. Sure enough, she sent this diaper rash medicine, and she's like, "You might want to keep this. You just never know." And, I kid you not, we'd go out on a mission, the guys have to drink whatever they're served in war, because you don't want to be insulting to the people who invite you in, and they all got diarrhea. BK:[chuckles] Wow. SW:Like crazy. And guess what? They needed that diaper rash medicine. We're like, "Oh, my God. What's your mama sending today?" [laughs] It was sweet. That was pretty cool. But, yeah, so here it's a little bit different. I think they're much more respectful in Rockingham County versus Lee County, and Stokes County versus--because Stokes County is where my dad lived--all the Dodsons lived at, and now Rockingham County's where my mom lives, so Stokes County and Rockingham County is much more respectful than, say, particularly, Lee County. BK:Okay. When you enlisted in 1981, how long did you enlist for? SW:My initial enlistment, I believe, was for, like, two years, but when I signed I knew I was going to stay. I didn't expect to go two years and get out. I knew I wanted to do it. BK:Where were you sent to basic? SW:I went to Fort Rucker, Alabama. BK:So it was the first time you were that far away from home. SW:Yes, absolutely. BK:Were you homesick? SW:Everybody who ever goes through any kind of basic or anything like that, they will lie to you, whatever they want to, but there's at least--you have at least one day that you go, "I want to go home." BK:Right. SW:And, quite frankly, that's all I had; just one day. I did not--After that I didn't. No. I knew that for me, personally, the army was going to be my life, my home, and my family. I still loved my family, and I sent money home, but I knew that was the best thing I could do for my family, was to be able to work, make something of myself, and further my own education. And serve, and be able to serve my family, because we were kind of poor. I sent my mother money up until the day I gave birth to my first child, and she contacted me almost immediately and said, "You need to look after your own now." Because I still had younger [siblings] at home. I just--I can't honestly say I was really all that homesick. Home was where I lay my head or my heart or whatever. My home now is in Lee County. BK:Got it. When you enlisted, you signed up as a medic, or they promised you medic? SW:Actually, I thought I was--I wanted to be an MP [military police]. And so, I guess MP isn't[?] the same as medical personnel, but I wasn't tall enough; I'm four foot, eight [inches]. You can't go in somewhere at four foot, eight, about a hundred and five, a hundred and ten pounds, and the military says, "Oh, yeah. You can go do that." You don't hear that kind of stuff anymore. But I have no regrets because I actually love medicine. It's my favorite thing ever. BK:They just assigned you to that? SW:Yeah, they asked me what I wanted, and I said, "Yeah, I'll be a combat medic. That'll be fine." BK:Okay. Can you tell me anything you remember significant or memorable about basic training? SW:Well, the fact that I had to wear a size two combat boot, and then hanging like an idiot on one of those boards to get a headache. And my mom came to graduation; I thought that was awesome; that was really sweet to see my mom. My mom is a beautiful woman, and so, needless to say, I--the one thing that was the biggest memory for me was graduation when we're trying to get all dressed up and everybody's getting their uniforms, and we're getting ready to line up to walk out and go to formation and stuff. My biggest memory was the drill sergeants and the men screaming and hollering out the window, whistling, and I look out the window at who they're whistling and screaming at, and it's my mother. That cracked me up. I thought that was so funny. But that's probably the biggest thing I remember. And I did like the fact that--this part is going to sound kind of strange, but I have eczema, which is dry skin, the whole time I was little. So much so, my stepfather made me sit on my hands so I wouldn't scratch, and stuff like that. You're supposed to be highly allergic to wool, but when I got in the military, we had wool blankets and I slept just fine. And that's the best sleep I ever had, was even in basic training. BK:Wow. SW:On a bunk bed. Except when I'm on the incline board. BK:Head down, huh? [chuckles] SW:Yes, ma'am. BK:Wow. Where did you go to AIT [Advanced Individual Training]? SW:My AIT was at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. And so, I went there, and I went--there was 00:15:00 something called a 91 Bravo, which is the Combat Medic, and then there was a 91 C [Charlie] Short[?], and that was something--It was a little bit more than the combat medic. But about the time I'm graduating from the class was when they were eliminating that class, so that was kind of fun because you have Phase 2. [During Phase 1of the U.S. Army Interservice Physician Assistant Program, students learn the basic medical sciences and clinical medicine courses during a 16-month program at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Phase 2 training lasts approximately 13 months and consists of supervised clinical rotations where students rotate through about 20 primary care settings and specialty services, like dermatology, internal medicine, and behavioral health in order to gain knowledge and experience] And you asked me if I was homesick, so most people get homesick, so by the time they get to AIT, the very first thing they do is they try to get to the top of their class so they can pick their next duty assignment, where their training is at, and they get close to home; as close as possible. Well, kind of let you know where my head was at that time, because I did well, but I did not choose to come back to North Carolina, I chose to go for my training in Hawaii. BK:Oh. SW: And people were--some of them would actually prefer to go home. Now, I can tell you this, once I got to Hawaii--because you're only there for, like, ninety days, I had enough. I would not want to be assigned there for years and years, you know what I mean? You can only see so much of an island. But I just took it all in. I learned the pottery and the culture and the hula [dance] and how they snap the pineapples and stuff, and [dated one of those Hawaiian-French guys?]. Well, I just thought it was funny, because the pink hospital, Tripler hospital [Tripler Army Medical Center], and I worked on the cancer ward there; learned a whole lot from cancer patients. You learned so much more from people who are--It sounds morbid, but when people are dying--and I'm very young then, I'm eighteen years old--and I learned a whole lot then, just by listening. Just because people are mean and grouchy and hollering and screaming stuff at you, that's not that individual. And so, I got a lot of perspective as a very young soldier working on the cancer ward in Hawaii. That was one of my biggest memories in Hawaii, was that. And then, of course, we had one incident with a child abuse situation where the mother had actually burnt the child, but when the father came in to visit--he had long hair, he was on a motorcycle, tattoos and stuff, everybody just assumed it was the father, and that's when I started realizing, medicine, this is what I need to do. Because whatever I do in my lifetime, whatever it is, I know it's got to be something where I can be with people and let them know that somebody cares. No matter what my job is, no matter what I do, to the day I die, that's what I feel like is my purpose. So being on the cancer ward I would always get the worst patients. The nurses would assign me to the worst patients, the ones that are going to scream and holler and throw food at you and all this kind of stuff, because I'd just laugh at them and smile. Or I'd go get flowers and bring them in. I remember this Thomas[?], one of the patients, "Get the hell out of here!" He'd scream and holler and throw trays and everything, and I'd come in the next day bringing him flowers. "What are you doing with those in here?!" It was so funny because I just could see right through it. That was just an act. There's good in everybody. I hope and pray, anyway. BK:Is that longer training? SW:Yeah. Oh, for the medical training? Yeah, you just had to add another, maybe--I think it was four to six months. And so, we'd do the training, and the same day that we graduated was the same day they eliminated that MOS [Military Occupation Specialty]. BK:The one that you had signed up for. SW:Yes, ma'am. And I think I've got some of those writings and stuff, but I always like to write poems or songs or something when I finish the training, but I remember I was talking about--I stood up at graduation and read a poem about being a 91 Charlie, and talking about how we no longer have this MOS but it's not going to stop me from doing what I do and-- BK:So you became 91 Bravo? SW:And then it went from--yeah, they went from the 91C Short[?], they made it just the 91 Bravos. Then from there I decided I wanted to--I went and I got assigned from Alabama--I mean, from Tripler Hospital in Hawaii, then I went back to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and once I got to Fort Campbell, as years progressed, of course, I wanted to be--I kept--every time there would be a promotion I'd say, "What do I got to do to get the next promotion?" I went from private to E-4, to E-5. "What do I got to do to get the next promotion?" And there'd be some sergeant major and he'd say, "Well, go max your PT [physical training] test, go do this, STT [Sergeant's Time Training?]; do all these kinds of testings and stuff. Oh, and do a little bit of college here and--Well, the next thing you need to do is--Well, honestly, we can't think of anything else; now you've got to have time." And that made me mad, so once I got promoted--I even went to Soldier of the Year. I was Soldier of the Year, Soldier of the Quarter, entered all these competitions and stuff, but then when it got to a point when they said, "Well, now you've just got to wait on time," that didn't suit me very well. So here I am a staff sergeant, an E-6 in the military, and the sergeant major says, "Well, now it's time. You can't do anything else than what you've already done." And that made me mad. So I said, "Well, then maybe that's not what I want to do." So then I went and talked to an education counselor and I said, "I'm going to be a warrant officer. I'm going to PA [Physician's Assistant] school." So I've got to go to college, and went on to PA school, and the sergeant major was pissed. Oh my God, he was so mad. His name was Command Sergeant Major Love. Loved him to death. Big old huge broad shoulder, bald-headed, black man. And here I am, look at me, four foot eight [inches], blonde hair, blue eyes, and he'd say, "That's my girl." Nobody--It was funny; it was so funny. So he was--I'd done everything he had told me to do, but when I said I was going to Warrant [Officer Candidate] School he was pissed, because I had just made Soldier of the Quarter, he got me my size two combat boots, you know what I mean? Oh my gosh. "I'll never salute you!" He was so angry. He said, "I can't believe you. You were going to be a command sergeant major in the United States Army. I even wrote a song about command sergeant majors in the army." But I said, "No," because I just didn't feel like I could sit still, just waiting on time. So I went ahead and I went to warrant, and I had to fly out from Kentucky to Alabama, but I had to come back to Kentucky, and it was so funny, because when I got off the plane, there he stood, and he called the troops to attention when I come off the plane. BK:Oh, wow. SW:He said, "I'll never salute you." He was so mad. He did not want me to do it. But he wanted me to do what was going to make me happy, but he really did think I was going to be a command sergeant major in the army, because that's what I intended to do. BK:He didn't want you to be an officer? SW:No. BK:Okay. SW:Well, my dad was okay with me being a warrant officer, but he was not okay when I went to second lieutenant. Second lieutenant--oh, gosh--because my dad was in the war, and my dad--back then you could--if you were at Fort Bragg, if you brought your platoon sergeant a pint of whiskey--you could take a four-day pass if you brought back a quart of moonshine, I mean. So you brought them back a quart of moonshine, you could take a four-day pass whenever you wanted to. But he did not like lieutenants; particularly lieutenants. Second lieutenants to be exact. Because he made sergeant three times and it was all because of a second lieutenant; like, if they got in a bar fight or something. BK:Right. SW:So he did not like second lieutenants. BK:Got it. SW:And so, whenever I'd go visit at Delta Church, where his church is at, because he was so proud of me, he'd say, "Oh, wear your uniform. Make sure you wear your uniform. Come on home. Come to church, wear your uniform." When I went from warrant to second lieutenant, he's like, "You know your mama's making you a pretty dress." BK:[chuckles] Wow. SW:Did not want me in that uniform at all. But as I got promoted, he was tickled to death. But he did not like it at all, and the only way I got him to calm down was I sent him a copy of my LES [Leave and Earnings Statement]; my earning statement. I sent him a copy when I was staff sergeant versus a warrant officer, and that shut him up right there. But I still didn't wear my uniform, though, until I at least got up to captain. [chuckles] BK:Wow. SW:Because he just did not like that; he's a country boy. But that was pretty good, though. But from the AIT I went from--once I left and decided that I was going to be warrant, then that meant--unfortunately, it meant I had to go back to Alabama again. Remember I took basic training there? BK:Yes. SW:So I had to go back to Alabama [chuckles] to get through warrant officer school. And then, as I'm graduating warrant officer school, I got--you're talking like you're a warrant officer candidate, then you're a warrant officer, one, then they commission them to--the PAs to lieutenants, so that's how I ended up going from that rank. BK:Before you became a PA, did you have a typical day? When you were a medic, you said you were assigned to the cancer ward. SW:A typical--As medic, honestly, when I--my typical day--because I was just single and all that kind of stuff, my typical day before all that was, I would--we would get up, we would have our PT. I actually had a bicycle for years going back and forth to college, because I would go do PT in the morning, we had the army day, you'd get done about 3:30 [p.m.] or 4:00 if you're lucky, and then my classes would start at four o'clock until ten o'clock at the university. I'd have classes Monday through Friday and half a day on Saturday. BK:Is this to get your undergraduate degree? SW:Yes. My specialty is in law enforcement. BK:Okay. SW:I wanted to get that done, so I would ride a bicycle back and forth. And later on, I eventually got my first vehicle, which was a 1950 Chevy pickup truck. BK:Nice. SW:Now I've got a 1963, so I moved up, right? [both chuckle] And so, I got that, and that was my typical day. It was just the college, and then, of course, I joined the sky-diving team at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and things like that. BK:Of course. [chuckles] But just in terms of your job duties. SW:Oh, my job duties. Oh gosh, as a medic, you'd be surprised, the closest--at one time I thought, "Wow, the closest I'm going to get to checking the temperature is going to be the dipstick in the--because we were doing maintenance on vehicles all the time, you know what I mean? I thought, "This is just crazy." I remember checking oil levels and stuff--because you were in a combat support hospital, so you had to put up tents, take down tents, and all that kind of stuff. Or there would be times--one time the mud and rain would come in all around the tents, and we were actually shoveling mud just to move mud over. And one of the pictures--I think I showed you earlier--where you have to put the big old red cross--I would be the one they would throw up there because I was little, so just throw me up there so I can put the cross over the big tents and stuff. And there would be big bubbles. And so, I remember holding onto a rope and coming down and burnt my hand all up and stuff like that with rope burns. That part was funny. Well, it's funny now, it probably wasn't funny then. But that was the typical good day, you'd do your PT, you'd go down, you'd work in the motor pool, you'd do different things. Once in a while you'd have training back and forth, but most of it had to do with things that wasn't necessarily medical. But once you got in the PA field, wow. Then it was [unclear]. BK:Tell me a little bit about that. Was there a typical day? SW:Oh, yeah. There was--Oh, I loved it; it was my favorite thing in the world. Matter of fact, I was the president of the Society of Army PAs for a few years, different times, and so that was--I loved being a PA. That was--You go in early in the morning, you see a lot of patients, but for me, I had--a lot of 00:20:00 the times I would have evening and night shift in the emergency room, once you became an ER [Emergency Room] PA, because I loved that. That was the great part. Before you become an emergency medicine PA, your typical day would be like everybody else's. You have--except for you go in a little bit earlier because you have sick call and you're seeing patients and all this stuff, and you're training, and you go in and out of the field, and you go to the [Fort Irwin] National Training Center [San Bernardino, California], and you do things like that. Then I became an ER PA, and not only did that, I also came back again to Fort Bragg to be their residency director, and that's on your little sheet as well. But I came back and then you could teach PA students. And so, then, at Fort Bragg, probably one of the best parts I liked, of course, is you have all these students and you would train students, and then you would also work in the emergency room, and as the residency program director you would help assist them as well. BK:What are the differences between a physician's assistant's responsibilities and what they can do and a physician? SW: Well, when you're in combat, that's a total different world. BK:Right. SW:In a combat situation, you may--you'd be the only one out there. BK:But you were able to be a combat medic even though women weren't allowed in combat? SW:Yes. It was still called combat medic. BK:How did that work? SW:Well, I wouldn't know because I didn't actually go to combat while I was a combat medic. I went as an emergency medicine PA. BK:Right. Okay. SW:I was an ER PA. But yeah, they were called that, but they would do medical stuff. I guess they'd call them medical specialists, I don't know. Because the army actually had specialists before--Well, I was actually an E-4 Specialist, which I think is funny. It seems like everything that I do, then they get rid of. BK:[chuckles] SW:E-4, boom, it's gone. Okay, 91C Short[?], boom, it's gone. Now all PAs are not warrants anymore, that kind of stuff. And that's okay. It means it's progressively getting better. BK:Right. Not in a combat situation, were your responsibilities very different? SW:Yes, because if you're--well, I won't say responsibilities as much so as your-- BK:What you're allowed to do? SW:Yeah, what you would be allowed to do. For instance, in the United States--Well, I don't know if that's the proper way to say it, because when I ran the Acute Care Clinic at Fort Bragg, North Carolina--and you always had doctors that would go over your paperwork and sign off on it and all that kind of stuff. You had a little bit more, as far as someone that would be over you, but there really wasn't; it's not like they stand over you and watch everything you're doing, they just sign off on your records. They do audits and stuff like that. So I honestly did not see a huge difference. As a matter of fact, many of my friends who were doctors and had all these huge loans and stuff, they said, "Man, I really wish I'd have been a PA instead." BK:What is the difference between a PA and an MD? SW:Well, the doctors--Well, we write prescriptions and we can do all that, but supposing--or the way it's worded is, the PAs work under the doctor's license. BK:Okay. SW:However, we have many PAs out here that have clinics and do stuff like that, and there's just some doctor that goes back and looks over the paperwork and makes sure they've done the right thing. They call them supervising physicians, but that doesn't mean they necessarily supervise them. I could have a supervising physician that I never see, or has not been around, but he would know that if I did something wrong, he could be in trouble for it, or they could say something to him about it. But the reality is, the standards for the credentialing department within the military facilities is such that that's usually not--I won't say it never, ever, happens, but chances are that if that happens are not very high because they make sure--you have to have national certifications, all your licenses are up-to-date. You have to do your CPR [Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation]. You have all this certain training and manhours of stuff, and then you have audits where they review your records; so-many-percentage of your records. So you have a whole lot of the--a lot of accountability going through there. If I was the doctor and someone was a PA, and I was considered the supervising physician, that should not be that big of an issue because I would know they got to have this, this, this, and this, or they would never get where they're at right now. But the supervising physician role has always been up for discussion and debate, and PAs, we write prescriptions, we write narcotics, things like that. We do surgical procedures. I mean, I did innovations [clinical procedure that requires a combination of special skills as well as drugs and/or devices], chest tubes, all that kind of stuff. It's not like some doctor's standing over you telling you how to do it, or checking on you, but most--particularly army PAs, military PAs, you take that very seriously. That's somebody's life. So they don't have to worry about people saying I'm incompetent or you don't know what you're doing. They really--My experience was, they really want to know what they're doing. BK:In the army, your PAs sort of-- SW:That's why they call the PAs "docs," like, in the clinics and stuff. BK:Right. SW:Because that's the highest most people get in the army [unclear]. BK:Is it sort of emergency and sort of GP [General Practitioner]? SW:Yeah, now, emergency medicine field is different. I worked in the emergency room with trauma and all that kind of stuff. BK:Right, but it's not like there's--a doctor may be a specialty like endocrinologist, radiologist. SW:But now PAs have specialties too. BK:Oh, they do. SW:Like pediatric PAs, dermatologist PAs and stuff. BK:Apparently, I need to do some research. SW:That's okay. Now, in the combat situation, when you're out there on the ground, that's all you got, oh my gosh, it's just-- BK:You do everything. SW:I remember the kid, the one I was showing you the picture of that shot himself in the face, it was [unclear], had I been back in the States, I may have done things a little bit different. I did a-whole-lot more different kinds of tests or procedures, I'd have called an ENT [Ear, Nose, Throat Specialist] doctor, I could have had plastic surgeons sew up his face, or whatever. You got what you got. BK:Okay. Jumping ahead a little bit, when you were an ER PA, what kind of work did you do? SW:Well, anything that would come into the emergency room I would have, and you would have anything from the cold or the really, really bad trauma. One case I remember, to me it was the funniest because I have kids, and so--the one child--and sometimes when people get so many degrees--seriously, sometimes I think they lose common sense. And I'm not saying it because I know you're in academia and all that stuff, but they just don't think, or maybe there's just some people that just always thinks different than the other people, like, they'd always say, "You think outside the box," you'd think outside the box. My most--One of the funniest cases I remember, for me anyway, was the young kid that came in that had the marble shoved up his nose. And I am the residency director for the PA students, so I'm on the other side of the Acute Care Clinic, and there's this young kid, he'd come in and he had shoved a marble up his nose. And so, they can't get it out, so I walk in there and there's this kid in this chair and [chuckles] blood coming out of his nose, they had these metal instruments over to the side, you see all--you see the little metal trays out there, and you got people wrapped in their gowns and their hats and stuff, and they're going to take him to the operating room because they've got to surgically remove this dadgum marble up his nose. But I'm looking at the tray and I can see they got all those instruments out there, they're going to spread open his nostrils, and they even had this little piece of equipment in there like a straw. And, I mean, just to keep this non-medical, but--and they've got this chemical, it's kind of like crazy glue a little bit. They're going to take the straw and they stick it in the marble and they're trying to get it out. They're doing all this stuff, and this poor little kid is just sitting there, and the mom's standing in the corner; she's scared to death. And she's signing the paperwork for him to go up to the OR [operating room]. I walked in and I saw the little kid and all I thought was, "Oh, man. What if it was one of my kids?" Because I always think, "Treat every patient like it was my own family." So I walked over to this little kid and I looked over at his momma, and it was so funny because I said, "How you doing, son?" And I sit down beside him because I'm little, so I could sit right beside him in this big ol' chair--big--I mean, this little bitty boy in this great big chair--the ENT chair--surgeons around, the OR's already been called, they've already signed the paperwork and everything. BK:Right, right. SW:So I sat beside the little boy and I said, "You know girls have cooties, right?" And he said, "Yeah." I said, "But do you want me to make all these go away?" And he said--and I'm pointing to all the medical people standing around--and he's shaking his head, "Yeah," little tears coming out of his eyes. I said, "I tell you what. Just give me one big kiss and I'll make them go away." And this kid leans his head back, opens his mouth, I grab his nose right here, and I blow as hard as I can; that marble shot across the room. And, I mean, it was so funny because now they're not going to the OR, not going to have the surgery. BK:You blew in his mouth? SW:Yeah, I blew in his mouth. As he tilts his head back--he tilts his head like that and I was acting like I was going to give him a kiss. I reached over and grabbed his nose and I blew in his--I grabbed his nose like this. BK:Right. SW:If you do it like that. And then, so I got his nose like that, I was going to blow real hard, so when I blow real hard it just sort of let go. All the pressure that's in here blew it out. BK:Oh, wow. SW:The marble goes flying across the room, and [chuckles] I didn't want to embarrass anybody who's in the room, so I just reached down and I picked up the marble and I walked over to the sink and I washed the marble off and I handed it to the mom, I said, "Here, you can put that in his scrapbook." I said, "Just don't let him put it back up his nose." And then I turned around to all the medical staff, and medical students that was in there, too, I said, "By the way, they always call me in. I'm their last resort." So they wouldn't be embarrassed, I said, "I'm always their last resort." Because they couldn't be bothered with that kind of stuff. "But in case you ever have something like that in the future with a kid, it just kind of blows out the nose. But it was--poor little baby. He was a little sweetie. BK:And where are you again in this? SW:Oh, we were going down through assignments. BK:Oh, I was just trying to get a sense of--also, were you married to your husband then? Get to bring him into the story. SW: Bring him in eventually, huh? Let's see, we got through basic training, and we went to warrant [school], and then to be a PA, and when I went to PA school--in my Phase 2 of PA school--is when I met my husband; in '92. BK:Ninety-two, 00:25:00 okay. SW:And we didn't date long at all, we just knew. We've been married over twenty-five years now. BK:Wow. And he was in the army also? SW:Yes. He was a cavalry officer. BK:How did you all meet? SW:Of all things, I won him in a singing contest. BK:That's a first for us. [chuckles] SW:Yeah, we were at the Officers' Club, and I would sing--and there was a two-hundred-dollar prize and, see, I needed medical books. Remember, I'm in PA school, so I--and I am a warrant officer candidate. BK:Yes. SW:So I went to the Officers' Club and was singing karaoke. And the guy goes, "Oh, this is great." And he said--And everybody was laughing in the bar because I can sing like Loretta Lynn [American country music singer-songwriter]. That's before all my neck surgeries. And so, they [chuckles] thought it was so funny, they said--so I went to go, and when--and my husband actually sang too. He sang "Cat's in the Cradle" [1974 folk rock song by Harry Chapin], and I sang, "Coal Miner's Daughter" [1970 country music song by Loretta Lynn], and when I went up, the guy goes, "This is great. We all know what Sherry's going to do with her money. And somebody said, "Oh, yeah, because--probably that emergency book, or that book, or orthopedics, or whatever," because I loved medicine. And I said, "Yeah." He said, "Now, you can't think of a better prize than this, now can you?" Because they gave me two hundred dollars. BK:Right. SW:That was a big prize for me. Because I was not a field grade officer [term for having the rank of major, lieutenant colonel, or colonel] or anything, I was a warrant officer in training. And so, the guy said, "I can't think of any better prize than that, can you?" And I said, "Yeah, how about that cowboy in the back of the room? BK:Wow. SW:And that was my husband. BK:Wow. SW:And we dated probably less than a month or two, and next thing you know we were engaged, and been married twenty-five years now. BK:Wow. Okay. That's a very good story. Then you had your first kid. What was it like being active duty and pregnant? SW:Well, it's--I absolutely--It did not faze anything that I did. I still worked [unclear]. However, my--one of my kids, I actually ended up taking to the National Training Center with me; I was pregnant and I didn't tell them. And the only reason they found out was because I went into a vehicle to save--I was in this vehicle with these girls--this all-terrain vehicle--and there were some soldiers in there, and I had told someone before I left. I told one doctor, "Just in case something happens, just so you know, I'm pregnant." Well, lo and behold, the vehicle caught on fire, and the girl--one of the girls that was in there--the driver got hurt with her back and stuff, but one of the girls that was in there was somebody up in the compartments, and for some reason they froze when it caught on fire, and so they pulled something--I think it's called a [unclear] or whatever, they pull this cord down, and then this chemical goes through the entire vehicle so it won't catch on fire. BK:Right. SW:But it also sucks up all the oxygen out of it; that's how it makes you not have a fire. So unbeknownst to me, that's probably not a good idea when you're pregnant, to be in that environment. But the girl froze and she wouldn't get out of the vehicle; it was with her and another girl. I'm in the vehicle, so I had to grab them and throw them out of the vehicle. By the time I get there, by the time ambulances and helicopters and everything's coming in, the one doctor of all people that I had told I was pregnant says, "Holy crap. We got to do something." So immediately, the next thing I know, I'm being med-evaced [medical evacuation] out because I was pregnant and they were worried about the baby. BK:Right. SW:But he was the only one who knew I was pregnant. So then by the time I get to the hospital, and it comes across the radio, and they're telling people, when they're trying to tell my commander that I am on that side of the training site where you're never supposed to go if you're pregnant--There's a certain line you don't cross. BK:Because of the chemicals? SW:Because of the training in the field. It was just very-- BK:Stressful, physically. SW:Yeah. And so--you just don't--and I forgot what they called that line, but, anyways, a certain part of the National Training Center where you don't cross--the berm [an artificial ridge or embankment] or whatever--but nobody knew I was pregnant except that one doctor. BK:Right. SW:So when they come across the radio and they're asking about me, my sergeant major was asking about me because--legitimately so, the army truly cares about their soldiers--and he's like, "Is everything okay?" And over the radio, it was funny, the doc said something about, "Well, we only brought her in because we were trying to do the right thing and just make sure everything's okay, but just so you know, the baby's fine." The sergeant major starts cussing the guy out on the radio; cussing him up one side and down the other. "You don't ever call one of my goddamn soldiers a baby. What the hell is wrong with you? What year were you born in?" He's got a strong Hispanic accent. He's just blessing him out. And the next thing, one of the most memorable moments of my life, was when the sergeant major finally got to the hospital and he realized what was going on. And it was cold, and as we were coming out, he pulls off his coat and he puts it on me. But he chewed that guy up one side and down the other, because he didn't understand. BK:Right. SW:And he was like, "What were you thinking?" I was like, "Sir, I'm thinking you had no other medical officer trained and ready to go." BK:And so, what is this training center called? SW:It's called the National Training Center, it was at Fort Irwin, California. You would go out and you would have to train as if you're going to combat, and you get tested on it, and graded on it. And if you don't go and you're that PA who's assigned to that unit, they have to pull one from somewhere else. BK:Right. SW:And nobody else would know my soldiers, and there was no way. And you train, and you know that you're going, you plan six, seven months, at least, in advance before you go to the training center. BK:So this was right before Iraq? SW:Well, it was definitely before Afghanistan. BK:Right. I'm just saying, you were training for it because you knew you were going. SW:See, you have to train--you go out there to train as if you're going to go to war anytime. You've got to be ready. BK:You've got to be ready, okay. SW:You've got to be ready anytime. And so, I go out there because I was not going to leave my soldiers, and I would--I didn't think it was no big deal because I'd done--It's strange, I have this saying, it's like people would say, "Do you think being a soldier makes you--Do you think the fact that you're a woman makes you a different soldier?" And I always come back with a thing that says, "The fact that I'm a woman does not make me a different soldier. However, the fact that I'm a soldier sure as hell makes me a different woman," because of the way it's done. Now, I do believe we all have distinct roles. My personal belief, just my own personal belief, watching--going through different things in the military, I may not feel, my own personal belief, that they should be doing, like, [United States Army] Rangers and SF [United States Army Special Forces] and all that kind of stuff, but there's a method to my madness. I think that we are built different and we have certain limitations [unclear], and some women there are no limitations. They're stronger than men or whatever. But for the typical average female, there's certain jobs that I think that may not be the best thing for them. I think God makes us all different for a reason, and we have to be able to real--it doesn't mean one's weaker or one's stronger. Actually, we'd have probably lost quite a few men in Afghanistan if they didn't have a woman forward[?] doing what I specialized in doing. Men can't do the exact same thing a woman does, and a woman--and this isn't typical, I'm not trying to be stereotypical here--but there's certain roles that is more specific, or that I felt like that you could do as a soldier, regardless of what sex you are. But there are certain things, and I'm not saying 00:30:00 it's necessarily Rangers and Special Forces and all this stuff, but in thirty-three years of active duty, being enlisted, and warrant, and a field grade officer--and very few women on this Earth can tell you they've done that--watching it, I can tell the difference. It's just, like, I can go into Afghanistan and Iraq, I can treat a child, and it's not just different in the military, it's the same here. I'd go out here to the projects. I can get out of my car, and I can hop out of my car, my little jeans, tee shirt, and my ponytail, these kids come running around right over to you. But let my husband get out of the car, he's a six-foot, four [inches] man. There's some six-foot, four white man getting out of this car in the projects. Probably not going to do so well. And the difference--and it's all about perception as well. BK:Yes. SW:And you can't change the entire world's perception, no matter how good you think you are, and how equal you think the whole world is; you can never change the entire world's perception. Today was a perfect example for me. I go out with the sheriff's office to give out food today for the backpack program. The fact that we even pulled up in a patrol car. She thought she gave probably--maybe thirty, forty bags out today. Give out over a hundred. The difference is she's coming in a patrol car, versus I go in a community where there's minorities or people where they're all--I don't know if they think they're illegal immigrations, or whatever. Whatever perception they have, it's the difference between the patrol car and this four-foot, eight [inches] woman jumping out of the car and laughing and hugging everybody and singing and [unclear], and they all show up and it was packed. In less than five minutes I'd given out twice than what she had done this morning, because they're more receptive to it. BK:Right. SW:That doesn't make me special, it means I'm different. And, by the way, if somebody was getting ready to haul or to lift something real heavy, they're not going to say, "Oh, she's the one that needs to do that." It's perceptions. You can't fight that kind of stuff. BK:You're talking about perceptions with the civilians, or are you also talking about you can do different things with soldiers. SW:I think it's both; whether you're in the military, not in the military. Society as a whole, regardless, that's something that I'm not sure if it wa--if I will ever see that change in my lifetime, and I'm an old woman. But I remember even now--I mean, you think about how--you think, "Well, this is going to change, and women got all these roles." I told you about when I landed in Afghanistan. BK:Right. SW:You remember what that commander said to me? Could you imagine that. BK:Well, the tape doesn't know that. SW:Oh, okay. So here I am, let me paint a picture for you. You tuck in your babies like you're never going to see them again. And then the aircraft lands, and you are there--and, seriously, already you feel like you're never going to go home anyway, and I'm looking across and I'm seeing--now, I taught Sunday School, so here you've got this four-foot, eight [inches] woman on the plane, getting in there, she's tucked her kids, and I couldn't even turn around and look on the plane because I didn't want to turn around and look as I was getting on the plane to see my kids. It torn me up that much. And so, as soon as I get off the plane, any other guy, anybody else, nobody would ever have said anything, but I get off the plane and the first thing that's said to me is, "Excuse me, darling, we don't allow cunts [derogatory word for a woman] this far forward." BK:And this is the commanding officer. SW:Yeah. And so, I turned around and I said, "That's fine, sir. Obviously, you allow assholes, so let's see if we can get along." Now, in the typical civilian world they may come back and say, "Oh, that's sexual harassment. They're going to do this; they're going to do that." BK:Right. SW: That didn't bother me; didn't bother me at all. It really didn't. And it was--and I'm not a weak woman because I let him say that to me; "Oh, I'm going to go write charges against you." We're in a fricking war zone. I don't care. I would rather know what he thinks, than for him to think it and not say it. BK:And what was his reaction again after your retort? SW:Oh, it was funny, because then he asked me--then he went to grab my bag--he was going to pick up my bag--and I was like, "No, sir, that's fine. I packed it and I'll carry it." And I did. And right then and there he thought, "Oh, crap. What the hell we got ourselves into?" And then as time progressed, he knew. I mean, we had a lot of respect. But I didn't sweat the little stuff. Like today, that's the huge difference for me, for me to accept coming back, because everybody's got to be so politically correct all the time that, quite frankly, I don't think that they're correct anymore. There's a difference between being respectful and talking to each other, versus you're just scared to say whatever it is you're going to say. For instance, we had--even today, we had a sixteen-year-old boy that when I went to go take him the food, he had got shot last week. I was like, "What in the hell is wrong with you?" And I popped him upside the head. I said, "What were you thinking, you little gang thug wannabe." And everybody just turned around and looked at me. The kid loved it. The kid loved it because he knew I cared about him. BK:Right. SW:He didn't care what it was said--I mean, not necessarily what was said, but how it was said. He knew with every fiber of his being I cared enough to be there and do something, and he sees me every week to bring food and stuff. But I could fuss at him and talk to him like that. But now, when you get--for some reason, nothing gets done when people are like, "Oh, this is going to hurt everybody's feelings," or this touchy feely stuff, then--like I said, there's a line where I understand you're supposed to be respectful, but sometimes you spend so much time just saying, "Did I say that the right way," that they don't say or do anything, that they're so worried about that. The other incident we had which I thought was--because everybody thinks in the military, well, it's got--It's all the same, everybody's equal. Well, I can tell you in thirty-three years of active duty, that is complete bullshit. Probably one of the more memorable--other than that one that I told you about, what we don't allow forward--was I worked in the detainee camp and I had a-- BK:This is Afghanistan also. SW:Afghanistan. I'm in Afghanistan--Afghanistan, Kandahar--and I am taking care of detainees, and I remember they brought in a prisoner, and that prisoner had already been interrogated by multiple sources I'd prefer not to say. He did not talk to them, and they brought him in to me, and he is on a litter. You know what a Foley catheter is? It's a long tube, it goes inside your penis, and you blow up a bubble inside there with a syringe. BK:Right. SW:And it stays so they urinate in a bag. BK:Got it. SW:Okay. So they went in and they had brought this patient over to me, and they said, "Ma'am, we really believe he can speak English but none of us could get him to speak." I said, "Fine, not a problem." So I've got to watch him all night. BK:And this is in the detainee camp? SW:This is in a--Yeah, in a tent, in the middle of a detainee camp. BK:Okay. SW:And oh, gosh, it smelled horrible. So, anyway, we're in there and I'm taking care of this patient. And they warned me that, "Yeah, he should be able to speak English, we all think he can speak English, don't even--but we got the guards out here." So they had two guards outside the tent, and I'm taking care of this detainee and he's laid down on the litter. BK:What is he being treated for? SW:Well, he was--I'm trying to remember what he had. I can't remember what the medical condition was, but for whatever reason, he had an IV going--he wasn't hurt, he wasn't shot or anything like that, but he had an IV going on so he may have been dehydrated. And he had the Foley cath because they probably suspected he had something else as well, but by the time I got him he already had the Foley cath in; the thing that goes in your penis so you can pee in a bag. So he's on this gurney, and they had already told me that they thought he could speak English, so I walk over there and I'm thinking it's time to take out the Foley cath because he was able to pass urine on his own and all this stuff. That's what it was, he had appendicitis or something. So his surgery was over and I thought, "Well, it's no big deal. Maybe I can get the Foley cath out." And then I thought, "Oh, man, if I do take out the Foley cath and he's not ready for me to take it out, he's going to pee on this gurney and we're going to be in a world of hurt." In the hot summer, in the sand, etcetera. So I walk over to him very casually, and I 00:35:00 said, "Look, I have been told that you can probably speak English. So I'll tell you what, I will take that Foley catheter out if you promise me you are not going to piss on my litter." Total silence; he didn't respond or nothing. The guards are right outside the door. Then the guards kind of--I guess he thought they went to take a smoke break or something, but they stepped over to the side, and then I said, "You just let me know if you need anything," and then I just walked away. I didn't pretend anything, I didn't say anything, I didn't expect anything. So I said, "Just let me know if you need anything." And I turned around to go back to this little makeshift--if you could call it a desk. It's like a trunk that opens up and it's a desk; a field desk. And so, I went back over there to finish writing some medical notes, but as I'm walking back, I hear him say, "I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." Needless to say, the guards heard that part very clear because it's my voice versus a guy's voice. BK:Right. SW:The next day, as I am coming down through morning briefing--they have the morning briefing where all the men would sit in this room and there'd be a big screen up and the commander talk about all the events that happened the day before and what's going to happen next--as I'm walking by, I hear one of the officer's say, talking to the audience and stuff--I mean, the group that's there. BK:Are you still a captain? SW:Yes, I'm still a captain. And he's talking to all these men in the room, and he's being briefed, and he goes, "Let me see if I got this shit straight." BK:[chuckles] SW:"You mother-fuckers. You couldn't get him to talk. You couldn't get him to talk." I'm careful not[?] to tell you what agencies where there. "You couldn't get him to talk. You couldn't get him to talk, and, goddammit, Captain Womack got him to fucking talk. What the hell is wrong with you people?" And I kid you not, an officer in the back of the room--and remember, I'm at the back, only the commander can see me--nobody else could see me in the room--and I'm going by the door, and I kid you not, this officer from the back of the room says, "Yeah, he probably gave her a fucking blowjob." [perhaps she met, "Yeah, she probably gave him a fucking blowjob"?] And I thought, "Hmm. I could keep walking or I could not keep walking." So I walked straight in. The room got silent. The guy didn't see me behind him. Everybody else was seeing me as I was walking in. I walked straight in there and put my hand on his shoulder, and when I did, and he could feel my hand--all he had to do was feel it, he didn't even have to turn around and look--he knew who it was. BK:Yes. SW:And he was cringing. I thought he was going to piss himself right there. And I said, "Son, let me tell you something." BK:What rank is he? SW:He was same rank as me. But I was mad, so that's why I called him "son." BK:Right. SW:I said, "Son, let me tell you something. If I would have fucked the man, he wouldn't have been speaking English, he would have got up and started singing God Bless Fucking America." The room stopped. They clapped, cheered, carried on. But I was so mad, I was like, "How could you say that? I have five children, I tuck them in just like everybody else here. I've given up my life to be here, and you want to sit in here and accuse me of something because you think it's funny?" I didn't think it was funny, but I was probably having a bad day. But the way he did that, I was like, "I was doing my job." BK:Right. SW:And I'm the one up all night with the patient because my loyalty, of course, is to the United States and American soldiers constantly; always come first; always come first. But they're really equal, the same, when you have patients. Patient care, you have--that's what you're dedicated to doing. And I can't judge them, I'm not--when they're detainees and stuff, I don't know if they're guilty, innocent, or whatever; I treat them like I would want one of my family members to be treated. Of course, I'm not going to help break them out or do anything like that, but, I mean, I treat them with the same medical care. So I've spent all night with this patient, and for him to sit in there and say that, oh, I was livid. I think that was probably the maddest I ever was. BK:Wow. SW:And then after that everybody got a big laugh out of it and they never done that again. That never happened. BK:Did he apologize? SW:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, they ragged him so bad it was so funny. But he thought it was funny; he just thought that was a good thing to say. But I found no humor in it. Not that day. Any other day, maybe. I probably would have just laughed it off. But those kind of things, that's the difference between civilian and the military, and that's one of those things where you have to readjust from. You could actually--You could tell people off or whatever in those type of combat zones or whatever. BK:Yeah. SW:When you get back to the States, though, they got all this, "You can't do this, you can't do that." I mean, you can hug somebody and get in trouble for it. "No, don't touch me," or whatever; be accused of something that's inappropriate. So what's appropriate there versus what's appropriate here is probably different. BK:Sure. SW:And people can get--"I can't believe they said that," or, "I can't believe that happened." The truth is, they would have took a bullet for me, in a heartbeat. That's the difference when you're downrange, and you just don't look at that kind of stuff. But that's okay. BK:Right. When you're a medic, you talk about "my guys." How many medical personnel are assigned? Are you assigned to a unit? [Speaking Simultaneously] SW:Whatever unit that you're assigned with is usually what you call, like, "your guys," or "your team," because you're all in the same unit; unit cohesiveness. The army [trains you?] for that. BK:Right. How often do you change that? Is this only when you're deployed? SW:Oh, your units can change--most people in the military, you change units, probably, every two years, is about average. BK:Right. SW:Every two to four years. And so--And I probably should explain it, but when you say "your guys," you'll say like thousands or whatever; like Facebook, Twitter, for instance, whatever. By that you can say "your guys," but just the fact that you're not with that unit, you change units, you're always bonded; you're always bonded. A guy can come from Afghanistan deployment, or deployment I had in Iraq, or a unit that I'm with, somebody could call me in a heartbeat, they're there. BK:Right. SW:You'll see people that say, "Well, that's--" They'll call me Mom and I'm not their mom, or that's my sister and it's not my sister. As a matter of fact, I lost one that was closer than a brother in Iraq and it about killed me; I thought it was going to kill me. His name was Chuck Fortenberry. I thought I was going to die when he got shot down. [Army WO3 Wesley Charles "Chuck" Fortenberry, a nineteen-year army veteran, was killed 11 April 2004, when his AH-64 Apache helicopter was shot down by insurgents just west of Baghdad, Iraq, while providing protection to a fuel convoy headed toward the city of Fallujah] BK:How do you spell his last name? SW:Fortenberry. BK:F-O-R-T-E-N-B-E-- SW:--R-R-Y. Yeah. We sang together, I have videos, and I introduced him to his wife, I was there when the first baby was born. BK:Wow. SW:We used to go sing at weddings together, we country danced together. This was before my husband, and we were--and he'd tell everybody, "That's my sister," and he was a pilot out of Fort Hood, Texas, where I had my Phase 2 at medical school. He was there when I got married to Jim. BK:You met him in Fort Hood? SW:Yes. And we just instantly--he was short like me, and we just did so much things together. It was fun things like--it was just so bizarre. And then when--and I was tickled to death he married a schoolteacher. Then when he got shot down that just--oh, my gosh, I thought I was going to die. And you kind of lose contact with people sometimes in the military that you kind of wish you'd stayed with all the time. Well, I got married, I had a baby, I went to emergency medicine school, I come back, etcetera. The way I found out was because a little tiny square picture from the front page of the paper-- BK:Oh, gosh. SW:--of a whole bunch of soldiers that had died that year. And that was rough. I mean, my husband picked up the paper and I think he was going to pass out, he just didn't want to tell me. He said, "You probably need to sit down." And I had no idea. None. I didn't get to go to the funeral, didn't do anything. But it was rough. My mom took it really hard. He gave my mom a shirt that says "Recycled Teenager." [chuckles] And she kept the shirt, and she still keeps his picture up in her house. BK:Oh, wow. SW:The military does that sometimes. You make relationships that you keep forever. BK:Right. But the fact that your mother had a relationship with him. SW:Yes, that's how close it was. She still has a tee shirt that says "Recycled Teenager," and in the Country Corner she has his picture up there. He made handmade knives, and he just--and I still carry the knife. It's just one of those things that happen. Like, Mike took us, and then that one that got killed from the PSYOPS [Psychological Operations] team, he was the huge part of my security team, and that was a big deal. And then he got killed as well. When you see that many loses--And like I said, there are people that you still come back and you always stay friends with forever. BK:Right. SW:And in the military, as far as medicine's concerned, I remember I had one of the first AIDS [Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome] cases as a PA student. BK:Oh, wow. SW:I had the first AIDS, and they were scared to touch him. I would go in and hug his neck, and his wife would stand in the corner and cry, and I remember turning around and asking her why she was crying, and she goes, "That's the first human contact he's had in six months." He had Kaposi Sarcoma with the AIDS thing. And she said, "No one's touched him in six months." BK:Including her? SW:Yeah. And I was like, "Well, I just did and I didn't die. You might want to try it." This was long before AIDS was ever--anybody explained it or anything about it. And I probably had one of the very first--I suspect, I don't know, unless it was very well hid--but I probably had one of the first 00:40:00 transgenders as a medic. BK:Want to talk about that a little bit? SW:And didn't tell people. Well, I don't know if you want to call it a "she." I don't like calling people "it"--she, he, it, whatever--but I can tell you that I had an outstanding fricking medic. Outstanding. And I truly believe the medic was a male, but it was a female. And I remember-- BK:This is a person born as a female but transitioned to male, or the other way around? SW:Born as a female, transitioned to male, so much so that I thought that it was a male. BK:When you met? SW:When I met him. My vehicle got messed up at [United States Military Academy] West Point [New York], and we had to move some stuff around, and I remember he was helping move stuff, and I turned around and I said, "This is funny. Too bad you're not a--Too bad you're not a female because I'll be telling everybody you're so hardcore you roll your own tampons." The company started laughing and I didn't catch it. I didn't even know what was going on. I didn't know why they were laughing. I just knew this was a guy. And so, then one night I had duty at the clinic and the guy comes up, and I says, "Well, I've got to have someone here at night," I said--and he was, like--and I still call him "he"--I said, "But I need a female in case I have to have somebody to chaperone." BK:Right. SW:And they all started laughing again. I said, "What in the hell is so damn funny? Why are you all laughing?" And they said, "Ma'am, he is a she." I'm like, "No way." And he's standing right there laughing. We've been dear friends ever since. We're still friends to this day. But I was like, "What the crap? Are you kidding me?" And sure enough, the next thing I know--and I turned around because I thought it was funny. I said, "Are you serious?" And everybody just busted out laughing, and I don't know if they expected me to look like I was in shock or whatever, I just turned around, I said, "So you could have been my chaperone." And they thought that was so funny, because I didn't give a crap as long as he could do his job. And so, the next day the first sergeant came down and he said, "Just so you know, you can't be picking or saying things like that because, well, you can get in some kind of trouble." I said, "What do you mean I'm going to get in any trouble? I had no idea that this guy is really a girl. I mean, had short hair, looks like it, took testosterone and everything. And I said, "Frankly, I don't give a shit and I don't think they do either." And he goes, "Yes, ma'am." I mean, what could he say? I outranked him. But he said, "I just want to tell you because we'd kind of get in trouble." I said, "Well, it's different if you say it and I say it." It really is. It truly is different because they know I care, and I could care less. BK:Right. SW:And I know that sounds--some people disagree about that, and they're entitled to their opinions, and quite frankly, I gave thirty-three years of my fricking life for you to have your opinions, your First Amendment rights, your Second Amendment rights, everything that you're entitled to, you have a free country that you can do it in. So if I have an opinion, then I don't expect people to agree with me, but I think I still have the right to have that opinion. I served with him. You can call "her," you can go so low as to call it a "it," or whatever--which I find offensive, personally--but you don't know the person that I know, who's a great father, who has children, and he worked their butt off--served their country, served their family, and does all this, so I've got different opinions there. And then I also know that, for me personally, I can't honestly say that I had a better medic, ever, in my entire career. That tells you a lot right there. BK:Yes, it does. SW:And I promise you that when I had duty at night I never once sat there and thought, "Hmm, I wonder what body parts he, she, it, or whatever's got." I didn't think of that. I'd just hope they were on duty with me tomorrow. And it would be nice if the world could see things that way. BK:This is at West Point. SW:Yes, ma'am. BK:I'm just trying to get a sense of what year we're talking about. SW:Yeah, it was at West Point, and it was when I had clinical duties, and I was assigned there when I was with the 261st [Multifunction Medical Battalion], so when you see that on there. BK:We're up at the 2006 to 2009. SW:I have been friends with that person since 2006. BK:I can't even imagine how many temporary duty assignments you must have had. SW:Yeah, thirty-three is a long time. I had that--those things, when they talk about societal changes and stuff, that one and the AIDS patient kind of stood out to me a lot, because that AIDS--when his wife said, "No one has touched him in six months." BK:Wow. SW:That just blew my mind. She said he'd not had a human touch. She meant, like, with gloves or anything on and stuff. And I just gave him a hug back. I said, "Patient care." I mean, everybody does medicine different, and I guess if I was a six foot, four [inch] man, big brawling man, I'm not going to go in to hug my patients back[?], but when you're my size and you genuinely, genuinely care for people--I mean, you can tell when people are faking and not faking. He was my first patient I had on a rotation, and I was told that he was dying, and I made a point every day--I wanted to go say "hi" and try and cheer him up a little bit. But that one I remembered. And then later on, only then after that did I start learning about AIDS and stuff like that. But it didn't stop me as far as patient care. BK:Right. SW:I take precautions, do whatever. But that was kind of hard because I'd never seen anything like that before. That one I remember. I'm trying to think if there was anything distinctly in the military that was huge. And I do know there was, during deployments and stuff, we've had people that had--where women felt like they had--was sexually assaulted--I won't say "felt like"--that they were, but they also had men as well. BK:You were saying only in deployments you experienced that? SW:Yeah, I didn't experience too much of it in the States. [Extraneous conversation redacted] BK:Can you talk a little bit about that? You would come across them because of medical help? SW:Well, yeah, and I do know some of the training thing that people don't--these are things that people don't like to talk about, but I do know of a commander that had a crush on a girl--remember the National Training Center? BK:Yes. SW:Okay. There was a training center one[?], and it was some clerk I guess the guy liked and she didn't like him back, so he told them to tie her up to a tree and leave her out there. BK:Oh, gosh. SW:Somebody found her. Then I actually had a case where-- BK:Was he charged? Did she die? SW:No, she didn't die. The medical team found her, but--and I don't know the outcome and how that went. And then I do know there was an increase of assaults and craziness after the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." And this is something you're never going to hear, I don't think. Very few people, anyway, that would be willing to tell you. I told you earlier that my daughter's gay, my brother's gay, and I have friends regardless of their sexuality. But I can also tell you that when the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" came about-- ["Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was the official U.S. policy on military service by gays, bisexuals, and lesbians. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members, while barring openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual person from military service. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed 20 September 2011] BK:When it came about or when it ended? It was '92, '93. SW:When it ended. BK:When it ended. SW:When it allegedly ended. That was not what the majority of soldiers wanted. BK:Yes. SW:We're not talking about straight soldiers. BK:Okay. SW:You've got to hear both sides of the story. Some of them, if they went in, and it was because of medical benefits, or they wanted to get medical benefits for their spouse or whatever, that's a different story. But the soldiers who were there to do their job saw a total different view. If you heard they--participating--Because, see, in the medical field, people tell you a lot more because you've got patient confidentiality, whatever. But they wasn't happy with that because then it made them different. They liked--Some of them, like, is that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the outside community looks like, "Oh, wow, they got to hide their 00:45:00 secret." No, quite frankly, they don't think it's anybody's business what the hell they do in their bedroom. But when you single them out and say, "Oh, this person's lesbian, this guy's gay, or this guy--" and all the negative names and all that kind of stuff, then all of a sudden it became something different. It became that--and it wasn't like they hid it out--we all know they're there. We always did, we didn't care. We honestly did not. And there was more things that occurred after that, that's the thing they don't talk about; that happened once the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was lifted. BK:What do you mean by "things?" SW:Because the homosexuals in the military, all of a sudden they felt like they had--no longer it was not--they became an oddity, or just a different thing to be talking about doing, versus where they wanted to be just soldiers. And by different things, I mean, I know, once a guy's, like, boom, "I'm going to come out," and blah, blah, blah, and act like that, and then the next thing you know, he is assaulted. BK:You're saying that once soldiers came out the assaults on them increased? SW:Yes. BK:Okay. SW:And some of them didn't even want to. And some of them just didn't care. It's just when the--because you're going to have different--somebody explained it to me this way, and this makes a lot of sense, and I didn't quite get it before. Because our family is--if you went to one of our family reunions or something, it would just blow your mind. Our family's interracial, so being in the military for thirty-three years it's like I don't see color the same way everybody else does. I want to know if you can shoot your damn gun. That's what I care about. BK:Right. [chuckles] SW:Seriously. And so, you just don't see it the same way. So after the shooting happened, somebody sent me a tape and I thought--at first I thought, "I'm not even going to open it." BK:The shooting that just happened here? SW:Yeah, that just happened here. It says blacks versus niggers [correction: "Niggas vs. Black People;" controversial stand-up comedy routine by Chris Rock]. And it was a guy named--I think his name is Mark; it's a comedian. And I thought, "What the--" BK:Chris Rock. SW:Chris Rock; that's who it was. And I thought, "I'm not going to open that. That's got to be the stupidest thing." And then when he started talking, he sounded just like every grandmother out here in the community; the projects where I'm taking food to. So no--And it was so funny, some of the words were the same one. BK:Yes. SW:"Blacks ain't niggers too. Yeah, yeah--" and it was so funny, but it was true. There's a difference; you can't say if you choose homosexuality as a lifestyle versus being a flaming queer, whatever word you want to use--which I don't know what's politically correct anymore with--since I've been in the army thirty-three years. The ones that were homosexual, had homosexual lifestyles, they went to work, they did their jobs, they worked their butts off. Matter of fact, even more so because they just--I don't know, it's kind of like I was telling you about the transgender I had. He worked his butt off, he worked twice as hard as any other medic that I had. BK:Maybe it's the same with women feeling like they have to work twice as hard. SW:And he wanted to be just a soldier. "I am a soldier; I am not a queer soldier, I'm not a transgender soldier, I'm not a gay soldier, I'm not a homosexual--I am a soldier serving my country." So then it just added another segment. They just didn't like it, and it blew my mind because I thought everybody'd be happy about it. I thought, "Yeah! Let's go celebrate!" But everybody didn't have that perception. And then they said all you've done then, is you bring out the flaming ones that makes us all look bad. Just like Chris Rock talks about there's certain--if you get in a certain community, certain ones will make us all look bad. And that just blew my mind, I was like, "Wow," because I just thought everybody would be happy. They'd all get medical benefits or whatever, and then--No. Now they're just like, "Wow, this is more like a three-ring circus. I don't want to be a circus animal. I'm normal." In their minds, they're like, "It just doesn't make sense." But nobody ever got that story. The army, the news media, nobody ever got that side of the story. They never got how the people who were there, and quite frankly--because the one that I was telling you about before, the transgender, he had medical benefits, his wife had medical benefits, so did his kid. But, all of a sudden, now it was just, like, wow. It's just really hard to explain, but I know for me, in my thirty-three years in the military, that was probably--near the end, that was probably the only time--I probably would have stayed on years and years, but I--you have to respect your chain of command. BK:Yes. SW:The President of the United States is also your Commander-in-Chief. BK:Right. SW:And many, many--almost too many senior officers to count lost respect when [44th President of the United States Barack Hussein] Obama was our Commander-in-Chief. BK:Because of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" or just [unclear]? SW:No, all kinds of stuff. BK:Because we went from-- SW:Yeah, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was one of them. BK:One of them, okay. SW:But that was just one of them. But then it became things, like, to have a church service, you can't have church in a church without allowing Wiccans [contemporary Pagan new religious movement] to serve in the same church. You could be having a church service and Wiccans could come in right behind you; that never happened before. Crosses were taken down from the steeples. Just one thing--It's just one thing after another and you're like, "What in the world?" Not just [unclear]--Maybe it's not a big deal to some people, but for a country which was built and [unclear]--and I challenge them just to go back and--remember I told you I loved the history and stuff--it's founded--our forefathers and stuff coming over here, and its founded on particular--not--it doesn't have to be any specific one, but with a belief of God, and, all of a sudden, you don't--we're going to take the crosses off the church? And this is--even the Atheists in the army were like, "What the heck?" Because they didn't know what to expect. You could run around, and when they would run PT they'd see the cross up there, they didn't take offense to that stuff. All these people who take offense to things like that, there's something else going on that's not necessarily that particular thing that they're upset over, because that's what blows my mind. And look at our school system. People don't like history. And here's the thing is, people are entitled to their opinions, but they're not entitled to change facts, and you cannot change history. The bottom line is, we have always been--have always been since we have been here--where it says "One Nation Under God," whether you believe in that god or not, it's totally relevant. You cannot change that history. You can try to change it. It's in the White House, it's over all the monuments. You can't even go where the [U.S.] Congress meets. It's inscribed in the walls and stuff. It's always been a part of our foundation. Now, the transgender I told you about--you're not going to believe this, and that's okay, you don't have to believe me--but this transgender is a strong, God-fearing individual, beyond a shadow of a doubt. And people will get--they're like, "You've got to be kidding me." Well, yes, because you know what? I'm not saying God makes mistakes, I'm saying that we as human beings, we shouldn't be judging each other and we shouldn't be doing things like that, but when you are in the military--when we were in the military, this was the first time we have ever had a Commander-In-Chief--we started noticing things were changing, and it was not for the better. You cannot tell me our army is better now than it was before. You cannot tell me our society is better than it was before. And that's not anything at all to be--and that's not to be made out to be anything more than what I just said. We have a president that--When we put a president in, that's the first time in history--which, by the way, if you think about it, [45th President of the United States Donald John] Trump has done crazy stuff that Presidents haven't done before--but we've never had a President before--here's a black man gets in office, and a police officer comes after somebody, and he makes a comment about it. We had more racism problems than we've ever had; it started with the Obama Administration, and that's a hard thing to watch. I, as a field grade officer, who has gone to multiple countries, and witnesses other dictatorships. I've seen the stuff that [5th President of Iraq] Saddam [Hussein] did, I've seen all kinds of stuff. From Noriega--all kinds of influence on people. But when that got in there--and you can watch it; you watch it. When you're at the top, and you're looking down and you see it, it's a difference when you live it versus people just hearing about it. [Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno was a Panamanian politician, military officer, and longtime CIA informant. He was military dictator of Panama from 1983-1989] BK:You're saying that racist incidents increased in the military? SW:Absolutely. Oh, worldwide. Absolute--No doubt in my mind that's when it started, from that point on. Because it became--Well, if it was something as simple as somebody trying to get in our house. If 00:50:00 you remember all the Obama stories before, things that were said or done, we have never witnessed that kind of stuff. Soldiers now--I mean, taking a knee, that kind of thing. You talk about shocking people. Imagine--Remember I showed you all the pictures of all the people I lost in combat? Imagine I picked up a soldier, I picked up an arm, leg, body parts; every little bit has to be picked up when a soldier dies. If it's blown up on the side of the mountain, like the EOD [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] guys, I don't care what it is--hair follicles--you put it all in one body bag and you send it home. I don't care what you think, and I don't care about--that's your perception and whatever, then you have to deal with that because then when somebody says, "Well, I'm going to take a knee." Okay. At the sa--Soldiers look at that and they say, "Now, wait a minute. We picked up this body, we spent--in a hundred and ten degrees or a hundred twenty degrees, we got on a forty-pound ruck, we're picking up remains, we're putting them in a body bag. Have you ever picked up a body bag? BK:I imagine it's very heavy. SW:I promise if you picked it up, even without the body in it, you wouldn't walk around this block more than twice in this heat, because they're heavy and they're thick. So you're doing all this stuff, and then you get back to the States and somebody says they want to take a knee, it's not like, oh, yeah, we understand where they're coming from. Soldiers don't understand that. They may not say nothing to you, but they don't understand that, and they're never going to understand it, because that flag is what has carried him--and then when the soldiers die, you go to the funeral homes and you go to the funeral ceremonies and you actually--the flag is what you give to their child, their widows, and all that kind of stuff. BK:Right. SW:Now, do I think the other thing exists--not the other thing, I'll just call it what it is. Do I think that blacks are treated unfairly? Absolutely. BK:In the military or everywhere? SW:Not in the military. BK:Not in the military. SW:Not in the military. Maybe that's where the problem is. But when most people are in the military for so long, we really don't--I think you have less racism in the military than you do, and you have less sexism, I think, too. BK:Really? Okay. SW:Since I've been out of the military, yes. I take that back; in this community and where I live at now, so I can't say the whole world. I do travel and I go different places. Because I go places to guest speak and they find out you've been in the military thirty-three years, or you got a Legion of Merit or Bronze Star, "Wow, that's great." But that's different. So every state might be different, just like different countries. But we didn't have--I have not seen as much racism as I have seen until I got out of the military, so I really don't want to blame it all--I'm not saying it's all the Obama era, and it's not--and I just don't--I don't know if it's the media, I don't know what it is, but it just seems so much different. Even when I was younger, and I'm an old woman, I just don't--because I'd grow up, run, play, do everything together, and now it's like--it just seems like there was more, and it started a lot with things as simple as if there was a shooting, or lack of support with the police department. Then you've got to turn around, if you're on this side of the fence where I do a lot of work now, in the project areas and stuff, and I see that it takes them longer to respond if it's a black on black shooting. We didn't have that in the military. The military, you just didn't. And if you had to ask me, "What is the hardest transition," that would be it. Every time you turn around, now, since I've been a civilian here, you're racist. You can't even say, "That school cost thirteen million dollars more than it needs to," before somebody says, "Oh, well, you don't want it there, that's not a safe neighborhood," and you know you don't mean safe. They accuse you of being racist and all this stuff. Just didn't have that in the military. That, to me, has been the hardest thing. And then the shooting, and maybe that's why I'm passionate about it now, shooting right outside my door. Thirty-eight shots go off. Eight people are shot. How many ambulances you think showed up for eight people that got shot? BK:I believe you told me zero. SW:Yeah. That's probably why. But as far as the military goes, that's probably one of the things that I probably liked the best. And, yeah, there's the comments like I told you about and all that kind of stuff, but you don't--I did not see--In all the ranks and all the different positions that I held, I'm sure there's sexual harassment from everybody in all directions, and all that kind of stuff, but when everything's kind of done up in a nutshell, I can tell you I have served with trans--as a matter of fact, I didn't tell you that part too. One of my medics, actually, was one of the first ones that had AIDS that was active-duty soldier. BK:Yes. SW:And so, those things. We just did not respond the same way that we're seeing now, and I don't know why. Maybe somebody can fill me in. I just feel like--almost like a time warp when you get out. BK:Not respond to what? SW:To respond to, like, the racism or the--where people are always accusing each other, "You're a racist. You're a bigot," all this kind of stuff. I go to the funeral home to help out with this guy that got killed. The woman there, literally, looks me straight in the face and says, "You know, I want to hate you so bad and I can't." And the other lady just starts to cry. It's like they didn't expect me to do the right thing. So where is this coming from, did I miss something? The things--And you do miss a lot. When you're in the army you don't pay--I won't say you don't pay attention, but you're so focused on doing your mission in the military that you don't watch what's going on in society. I never dreamed in my life that people would--you'd get out of the army and you would find out transgenders are being assaulted. That blows my mind. Or that somebody, because of their sexuality, or their color, that you're just going to hate them for no reason. That's hard for me. I don't take that very well. BK:Right. But I think in society that's always been the case. SW:Well, maybe we were just blinded by it, but I know I'm not the only person that retired and we're just like, "Wow." You just don't. Even when we knew we had them in our units we did not treat them the way the civilian community treats each other. We didn't; no one did. That's why--That would--And I know that's not one of your questions, but if you asked me, "What was the hardest thing after getting out," that's it. BK:That is one of our questions, actually. SW:Because how can you do that to each other? And you can't say, "Well, you're--" And people do say that when you're in the military, they say, "Well, you've been brainwashed by the military." I told you about a board that told me, "Your ethics are too high." BK:This is the Board of Education? SW:Yeah, it's the Board of Education. [unclear] "Your ethics are way too high. The military has messed you up. You have thirty-three years and that's why." But then I get out and I'm like, "Wow." I mean--and people are just--I'm just glad to know that when I go and talk to the veterans, and they come in here a lot--you see the Veterans Wall here in my office and stuff--but they have the same perceptions. It's kind of good to know that I'm not losing my mind or anything. BK:Right. SW:I don't know. Maybe you can fill them in or something. When you do all these studies, hopefully it will get people in there where they do research, and they can look and see, and it will help other veterans. I don't think it will help me, I'm too old, I'll be dead by then. But maybe it will help other veterans when they transition out of the military, and you can tell them that this is what--You were in the military, and this is the real world. For instance, if you were in the military, they'd say, "This is your job, this is your description," and you do it. BK:Right. SW:You get out in the civilian sector, it's like, "This is your job, this is what you're supposed to do," and you do it however. If you fall in this category, this category, this category, then there's different sets of rules. So maybe that would kind of help. And once again, I don't want to sound like I'm blaming Obama for anything, or Trump--and God knows I wanted to--somebody--and I know you got this tape and I'll get in trouble for this, but, reality is, there's days I'm just like somebody needs to just--I'm not saying chop off the president's fingers or anything, but take the phone away or the twitter or something, they say and do stupid stuff. There's a fine line between being genuine and honest--Actually, no, there's not a fine line. There's a point where you can be genuine and honest with people, and he keeps calling it being politically correct, but you can also be respectful. If that makes sense. Some of the things that's reported that he said and done, and he was not the president and we were downrange or something, I don't know, I'd have probably beat the crap out of him or something. But it's not the right thing to do, particularly for the President of the United States. But I also like to look at what he's actually getting accomplished. We have more blacks employed than we had before. That, to me, with my background and my passion in the community and stuff, I think that's a big deal. And I would like to see more things happen, but I don't--I think that we're having so many changes, it's just a hard thing to accept. I'm just glad that I stayed in thirty-three years. I really am. BK:Because? SW:Because obviously I've missed a lot of things that I would-- BK:[chuckles] SW:I mean, maybe you could tell me something different when you get done with all your studies and stuff, but obviously I have missed a lot. I enjoyed not having to--I enjoyed the fact that they were all accepted, regardless. BK:Okay. SW:And I'm a four foot, 00:55:00 eight [inches] woman in a job that was predominantly men, and I only could tell you three or four really bad stories. Other than that, thirty-three years were a long time. I get more crap than that out here in one month. So that tells me a lot. I definitely love what I did. BK:One thing I was hoping you could kind of clarify a little bit. You said that after "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ended, the assaults against the now openly gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender soldiers increased? SW:I think it did, yeah. BK:Do you have an idea why? SW:Well, because--remember I was telling you about Chris Rock's joke? BK:Right. SW:The difference between that--And maybe I'm wrong, but I can just tell you between my family and experiences, like, my brother's gay and my daughter's gay. You have some people that are--that have chosen a lifestyle, and there's some people who that lifestyle's chosen them. And that being said, then there's some that just want to be, or pretend like they are, or think they are, or act like they are, or whatever. What my brother would call the "flaming gays" [flamboyant] or whatever, that's what was coming out. Soon as they said they come out, they wanted to be, "Oh, I want to be on the TV," or, "I'm going to do this." Kind of like show themselves. I saw that happen. Remember I did emergency medicine, and so I saw some things that was bizarre. BK:You would say the more "flaming" soldiers were the ones that were assaulted? SW:Yes. BK:Okay. SW:And I'm not saying they provoked it, I hate that. Just like if somebody says, well, if a girl wears a certain thing she deserves to be hurt or raped. No. That's bullcrap. You don't have a right to mess with anybody, regardless. But, I did, I noticed it, and it just bothered me. It's just one of those things. You talk about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," that's one of those things that you--that, to me, when I hear "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," that's what I think of. You pray that nobody asks, and you don't tell the increases of assaults and stuff. BK:Okay. You were in Iraq in 2002 and Afghanistan in two thousand--When you were in Iraq it had just started, there was no infrastructure for the army, and when you were in Afghanistan, was it-- SW:Afghanistan's the one where it wasn't made up. It was like blown up buildings and stuff. BK:Okay. SW:And Iraq was different. It was more established. BK:More established, okay. I have it the opposite. SW:And I do have just one of the--And remember, I'm giving you a viewpoint as a medical officer, and so it's a little bit different, but my personal opinion, again, is--and I keep saying that because I don't want you to think--it's not my opinion--the military is not endorsing anything I'm telling you--but I felt like--that we definitely needed to go into Afghanistan, but we did not need to go into Iraq. BK:Why is that? SW:As a matter of fact, when I found out we were going into Iraq, I was pretty pissed off. BK:Okay. SW:Because I was still in Afghanistan. I'm like, "What the crap? This doesn't make any sense whatsoever." Then you say, "Well, what do you base that on?" Well, let me help you out a little bit. Because you know I've had my own theory about freedoms, and America--not just in America, but just human rights freedoms. In Afghanistan, I saw so many atrocities and stuff, you can't even imagine. I can't even talk to you tonight, but I'd be able to do it later, it's just we shouldn't have went through the books first because it's just too much in one day. But you saw so much in Afghanistan. You're like, "God, this needs to change." BK:The brutality? SW:The brutality, the way they--just all kinds of stuff. And then in Iraq, yes, they were under the regime, but here's the difference. A big major difference that I noticed was, my interpreter that I had on a medical mission, we would go back and forth to the Red Zone [unsecured areas outside official military posts], and one day she told me about her brother that got killed. They went to church. During Saddam's regime they could go back and forth, religious belief, and it was okay. But they killed him after that. There was nobody in control. Once Saddam was gone, then it was like a free-for-all. BK:Right. Okay. SW:So order--Good organization is actually a good thing. I'm not saying controlling people; that's not what I'm saying. It's like in the military, you knew what you had to do, you knew what's expected. Transition over to the civilian sector, you get into anything that's political, you expect, let's do the right thing. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Well, maybe she's right. Thirty-three years, my ethics is [too high?]. I doubt that. But then when you've got--when you go to the--versus Afghanistan, when you see all this stuff around you, and then you go to Iraq and you're like, "What? Why are we here?" Not that he wasn't a bad person, I'm not saying he--I won't say a bad person, maybe he did do bad stuff, but they had some type of control where this interpreter, when she gave me her story--now, this is one person's story, but--Well, it wasn't just one, but it was my one story from the medical field. It was horrible, horrible. She was like, "At least when he was here, everybody knew who was in control of the place," and she said, "We did, we had the freedom. We could go--religious freedom," whatever, and you could do it. Now, granted, [you're going to be?] in the middle of the street and doing things different, and she was the one that related that to me as well, because in Iraq--and there's all kinds of myths out there that's not true. Like they'll say, for instance, "Afghanistan. All the women are beaten. They've all got to wear burkas," and all this kind of stuff, and "Oh, they're ugly underneath." No. I've worked with the women, I've been there with them. It's not--These myths is just ridiculous. And so, she kind of gave the same analogy that we discussed before about homosexuals in the military versus--out versus in--when Saddam was there, actually, they had freedom of religion, they knew who was in control. And all the things that you hear--"Well, they were going to do this, and they're going to do that"--she's like, if you were really here, there may have been this, but sometimes there's more good than bad. That's how she lost her brother. They saw him coming back from a prayer meeting and they murdered him. BK:Oh, wow. "They" being the Taliban? SW:Yeah. And so, she said that at least they were under control then. And then it just got a little bit worse--not a little, but a lot worse. To hear her side of it, because I'd never heard that before, and I was like, "Wow." And it took a lot for her to tell me that too. People confide a lot in the medical staff. BK:Yes. SW:Like the guys, they get raped, or whatever I was telling you about before, most people are not going to walk in and--no soldier's going to come up to you and say, "Hey, I came out and somebody shoved a broom up my butt." They're not going to tell you that. BK:Right. SW:But--And maybe it's risking a lot, but I figure at my age it's better to have the truth out there. But it did, and a lot of them, it was funny because I never expected the reaction that I was telling--a lot of them were coming out and saying, "You know what? It's one thing that if it's--it's my sexuality, it's still my personal business." And he was honest, he was right in my face. He said, "Quite frankly, ma'am, I don't ask you what you do in your bedroom. I don't know why the government wants to do this." It was a political move. It was all a political move. Now, should they have still had health care for their spouses? Hell, yeah, should have. What you don't want to happen is, to come out where--kind of like Affirmative Action or Equal Opportunities [Equal Employment Opportunities Act] and all that kind of stuff. I mean, this is just like a three-ring circus; that's not our job. In the military, our job is to know our job, do what we've got to do and do it. BK:Yes. SW:I just wanted to clarify that so you kind of understood that point. But I took that pretty hard, because when you see it firsthand it's different than when you hear about it. BK:Sure. That's true for anything. SW:And I distinctly remember a case where they said the guy committed suicide, but yet his body's found [unclear] and drug behind a dumpster and stuff. Yeah, he committed suicide. Yeah, sure. BK:That was the official report? SW:Yeah. BK:Wow. Where was this? Was it overseas? SW:No, it was here, United States. They said he committed suicide, and you know that's not true. BK:Right. Just because they didn't want to go with the investigation? SW:Because they didn't want people to know. It was kind of like the girl that was raped and killed over in--overseas in Taji [Iraq]. You know about it? The young black girl that was raped by the--they suspect--by a contractor. And he poured gasoline on her. [LaVena Lynn Johnson (27 July 1985 -- 19 July 2005) was a Private First Class in the U.S. Army whose death was officially ruled a suicide. The autopsy report and photographs, however, revealed Johnson had a broken nose, black eye, loose teeth, burns from a corrosive chemical on her genitals, and a gunshot wound that seemed inconsistent with suicide. Several reporters have suspected that the chemical burns were meant to destroy evidence of a rape] BK:Yeah, I vaguely remember. SW:Yeah, stories like that. That stuff's kind of rough. And they're not in a huge habit of--and that's what blows my mind the most, is, you hear a couple things like 01:00:00 this from the military, but then you get out of the army, and then you see this--for lack of a better word, you see this corruption and cover up. Because, remember, now I'm in--your state commissioner for social services for the state of North Carolina [Womack is a member of the North Carolina Social Services Commission] and I am on Lee County Board of Education, and you just watch all this stuff and you're like, "Wow." And you can see how certain things are done, corruption's only--I know it's a horrible word to say, so I--it just--it's not exactly--everything's not done where in the military things are done, like, in a certain order and things like this are few and far between, but when you get--I call it a different battlefield in the United States. Now that we're back home I just call it a different battlefield because you're seeing more stuff now than you never--I never dreamed. I remember my mom used to tell me, "I can't wait till you get home. Honey, there's battles that need to be fought in the United States." I was like, "What? You've got to be kidding me." And then--I don't know. And then when I get here, you hear about the bullying in the schools, and kids are being picked on, and things that in the military we might think is common sense. Like, I could care less about the transgender medic. Just know that if I'm going to have a female patient, I'm going to have another female be the chaperone because I still think you're a "he" and they're going to think you're a "he." To me, that's common sense. Did I need an Act of Congress to tell me to do the right thing? Hell, no. If I go to a school and somebody says, "Well, I think I'm a boy. I've felt like a boy my whole life. I'm very uncomfortable going into the girls' restroom," or whatever, common sense would think, "Go to the bathroom. Go to this[?] bathroom." But, no, we have to make it into a big thing, you know what I mean? The bathroom issue. I don't know if you remember that part. BK:Yes. SW:That was a little bit--For me, I was like, "What? Are you kidding me? Who cares? Seriously, who cares?" If any child, I don't care what sex you think you are, or what sex God give you, or you think you're born with and you have to have--what the heck? Why can't you go where you feel safe? To me, that's common sense. That's the hard thing, for me anyway. When you get--Everything is like a major thing, so we needed an Act of Congress to do the right thing? It shouldn't be that way. Does that make any sense to you? BK:Yeah. SW:So dealing with all that in the military with the homosexuality, if I had somebody, and I knew they were gay--like the medic I suspected before AIDS ever came out, I suspected one of my medics had AIDS, and I didn't even know what it was that much. That's how much I loved medicine. I would study, and research, and I just noticed he kept getting sick and sick. So I said to him, "Let's go do this HIV [Human Immunodeficiency Virus] test," and I said--because the army was having him do it anyway--I said, "I just want you to do it again." And then finally he came positive, he said, "How did you know?" I said, "I don't know. I just did." He said, "Did you suspect my sexuality?" "No, I didn't. And quite frankly, I didn't care. I just want you to do your job and you were sick. You were sick a lot." He said, "Please don't tell." You don't have to tell me that twice, I'm a healthcare provider, so it wasn't an issue for me. So I see all this kind of stuff, it's just--I don't know. But that's what I did notice right after that happened. I just noticed there was more, and it wasn't the typical--and I don't want to stereotype either--but it's the ones that were--the ones that I seen where--got harassed more, it was kind of like bullying in school and stuff. I know it's a different theory[?], but it would be the ones that's really flamboyant, or the ones that says, "Oh, well, now I am now." And one of them even went and--because they want to be cool, or be different, or say, "Well, I'm going to say this because then they won't do anything," or, "They can't force me to do this." What are you talking about? One of them said--One of them had a theory that supposedly if he became a--if he said he was a girl, they would let him do female PT standards. BK:Wow. SW:Stuff like that. Soldiers are funny sometimes. BK:Was he serious? SW:I don't know. But people would twist[?] and do things anyway. And that's why the die--the really, truly ones that have been serving for years, and that had chose whatever lifestyle they wanted, they didn't want it changed. They want healthcare; they wanted healthcare. But all this other stuff, it just felt like it was all political. BK:Interesting. SW:But I can understand that too. Now, imagine if you will, because remember my daughter, [unclear], if she was--if her and Sarah[?] were in a relationship for a long time or whatever, and most of the times--that was another thing they brought about, too, was--most of the time when they're very young, when you join the military you're so young, and you move every two years. Now, think about how often do you already have divorces in the military from heterosexuals. And you know the rate is a lot higher for homosexuals. You take that into play, and they get medical care, and you're doing all this paperwork, all this stuff, someone says, "Oh, I'm just going to get married, or we're going to say we're married," so they get more money, and all this kind of stuff. I ran into all kinds of problems and things that people did not even think about. But, yet, why couldn't they just do the right thing the first time. If you were in comma--if you were me--and some people may judge me when they see this interview--that, how dare I allow a transgender to be a medic, or why didn't I tell on the guy that's got AIDS, and all this stuff. First of all, there's multiple reasons why you don't, and you would have to tell me why I would have to. You know what I'm saying? But that will not be very popular for people to know that these things happened. Especially that age, because, I mean, I've been in thirty-three years. That's a long time. BK:Right. SW:Back then they said, "Oh, you should have had them kicked out by then. You should have done this, you should have done that." You don't know, you're not in my shoes, and each one's an individual and each one's a different case. I got to hear a lot of it in the counseling sessions. When you're in PA school and stuff, you get to go to the counseling, and you go to--because you have site rotations and stuff, so you get to hear from soldiers, and you get to hear all different kinds of viewpoints. You learned a lot if you just listened to them. But it's not usually stuff people's going to be popular with. They're not going to like it at all. It's funny, though, because my brother was in the army, and he says, "Yeah, I definitely understand that." But then they actually started kicking people out at one time. That was stupid. BK:The Arab linguists, and there was a lot more lesbian discharge; sort of the lesbian witch hunt. SW:It's stupid. It's stupid, if they do their job. I know you said you didn't serve in the military, and the only reason I keep repeating this over and over again is because--I don't expect you to judge me or anything--but I do know I usually get it the other way around. What I just told you, most people would have chewed me out for that by now. Scream, holler. I've heard everything in my lifetime. They're just like--But by then, the conversation, that we got through that far, they would have already been, all of them, "What? What? How many years ago was that?" Because, I mean, when I--That was a long time ago, '92, with all that stuff. I told you when the AIDS first came out. BK:Right. SW:And they're like, "How can you have such liberal views?" They're not liberal views, they're called human views, and, to me, they're common sense. It makes perfect sense. But the very first time that I sat in a counseling, and I listened to--it was a whole support group; it was a homosexual support group. The very first time that I heard one of them say, "I really wish they would have never repealed it," I literally--I thought I was going to leave the room, I was so mad. I was like, "You've got to be frigging kidding me." Because remember? I got a brother, family. BK:Right. SW:I thought, "You've got to be frigging kidding me." And I remember [chuckles] the psychologist, he was so cute, he said, "Now, listen. Remember what they taught you in medical school. You got to sit down and you have to really listen. Don't judge, don't say anything, just sit down and listen." Because I thought, "Wait a minute. You fought for this for so long. This is what you wanted." But when I heard their stories, and their passion behind it, it was a really hard awakening for me because I didn't expect that. I expected, "Yeah, we got it! Let's go!" No. It was more like, "How dare you?" And one guy, his was very--his was pretty powerful. I think he was the only one that brought me to tears, but he was very powerful because he gave me a different picture that I didn't know before. He said, "First of all, the government don't belong in my bedroom." And then when he went into the whole story about, "I've trained, I've done this, I've done this, I've done this," and he went over all his 01:05:00 accomplishments, etcetera, etcetera, and he says, "You know what now? Now it's just going to be thought of--I'm this gay soldier that did that." He said, "I don't like that." He was very passionate, very honest. But I really was, I just wanted to get up and leave. Because my brother left the military because of that reason. BK:Oh, really? Wow. SW:I had made the wrong assumption that everybody was going to be happy and the whole world was going to be great. Butterflies and unicorns, medical benefits, education, and all that kind of stuff. But when he gave that scenario, he's like, "Why would they be there in the first place?" And that was really hard for me to hear because I didn't expect that, because I've been supportive, and I can't say that I was walking up and down Congress saying, "Have them do this, have them do that," but I gave both viewpoints, even the medical, and when I tried to listen, when he started talking, then I started catching what he was going for. He says, "Now you look at it. Here is where all these problems have come about." And when he told the second and third order of effects of the issues of doing this and making those changes--from his viewpoint, not mine--not a heterosexual, but from a gay perspective--that was a hard thing for me to accept because I thought, "You're wrong. That's just you." And then the next support person talked. And then it also made sense, if you think about it--and I know it sounds like a crazy analogy, but I'm only explaining this because you may not understand if you don't know any gays in your lifetime--but think about the child that I had in school who feels uncomfortable going into a particular restroom. And that's why I think God allows things to happen throughout your life so you can make better decisions later on. So when I hear from a kid that's uncomfortable going into--it's a boy--he's uncomfortable going into the boys' room, or the girls' room--when I hear his viewpoint, do you know how much harder it is for him? Selfishly, I didn't think about it until you hear it from a child's voice. You know how hard it is for him, that you put another sign, another door up? Why couldn't you have discreetly opened the damn door and let him go to the restroom. Now he's getting bullied, gets harassed, gets beat up, threatened, "Oh, I'm going to make you straight." How are you going to make somebody straight? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in the first place. But then you hear his side of the story, or her side of the story, whatever you want to say, but when that particular person--every human being should have the right to feel safe. That's what the military's about, right? It provides you freedom and safety, so why couldn't we do something that simple. Then once I heard the little child tell me the difference, not a parent, not some political activist, that's when--that changed my worldview right there, to hear a child say, "Now, look what you've done. Now you've singled me out. Now I stand out more than ever. That's not what I wanted. I want to feel safe and I want to feel accepted and not a glorified thing." Does that make sense? BK:Yeah. I'm hearing your perspective. SW:I know that sounds awful. Well, you do know that--Well, Republican headquarters, and the Democrat governor, that's who--the governor's the one that appoints you to the Social Services Board. BK:Right. This is Roy Cooper [Roy Asberry Cooper III, 75th and current Governor of North Carolina], just for posterity. SW: Oh yeah, Roy Cooper. He's great, and he's still got me on the board because he knows I'm--my views are definitely not one way or the other. But, to me, common sense is the thing I think is missing more than anything. If you treat each other with respect and dignity, it shouldn't take longer for an ambulance to come get a white person versus a black person. BK:Right. SW:But you see that happen. And the same thing. I know we got off on a tantrum on the sexuality, and it probably has a lot to do with my family and stuff, but that was the rudest awakening that I had. And then when I got out of the military, another thing that just really blew my mind was the bullying and stuff that goes on. In the military it's more acceptance. I feel like even though people are not--they don't see it this way, because in the military they think, well, everybody dresses the same way, acts the same way, does everything the same way. That is not true. In the military, every one of us were unique in our own way, but we were much more accepting. Not accepting of behavior, or not meeting standards, there's rules in the military, but we were actually more accepting than the civilian sector. BK:So it's more of a meritocracy, you'd say? SW:Yeah. Now this sounds like I'm being all negative since I got out, but that's not--it's just kind of like scales coming off, you just, like, "Wow. What in the world?" [chuckles] And common sense was not very common. And you know Roy Cooper--who was the--McCoy-- BK:Pat McCrory [Patrick Lloyd McCrory, 74th Governor of North Carolina]. SW:Pat McCrory, that whole bathroom issue. Maybe that's why I'm [unclear]. BK:HB2. [HB2, House Bill 2, the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, officially called An Act to Provide for Single-sex Multiple Occupancy Bathroom and Changing Facilities in Schools and Public Agencies and to Create Statewide Consistency in Regulation of Employment and Public Accommodations, is an act passed in North Carolina in March 2016. It was signed into law by Governor Pat McCrory]  SW:Yeah, and if you've got your kids--if you have kids, go to the schools and talk to the kids. Don't just go out here, and don't give me some far-fetched number about this happened, and there's molesters here, and there's all that. I don't care what bathroom you're in. You know what I mean? It just--I don't know. Common sense is not very common. BK:[chuckles] Okay. Besides the deployments, was there a certain assignment that you liked the best? SW: I liked teaching students in the emergency room at Fort Bragg. I loved that assignment. It's probably my favorite because you got to mentor, train, teach, and stuff like that. And then you got to be a part of the graduation and the ceremonies and the residency. Same thing as here doing the Board of Education, you go to their graduations and all that kind of stuff. But it's great to be a part of even the minor little details, and that's why being a teacher, you could go to the rotations, you see what they learn, and you do stuff like that. BK:Did you have to train to teach or did you just have a certain amount of experience? SW:I had a lot of experience, and then the training part, I just learned on my own because I was doing my--I was trying to finish up my Ph.D.; it was at University of Phoenix [Tempe, Arizona]. It's in Organizational Management [and] Leadership, and then that's when I had the neck surgery and that just-- BK:Was the neck surgery service-related? SW:Yeah, well, I only had one incident where I had on my ruck, it was a hundred and forty pound ruck, when the aircraft went a certain way and it slung--it slung us all, by the way, across the aircraft, and they couldn't relate it to that, but immediately after that, in Balad, I had to go in because I had numbness on my arm, and that's when they think it happened. So they kept that and they have it kind of like service-connected. BK:So it's a spinal nerve thing? SW:Yes. And it's built--all this has been rebuilt. My neck is all metal here. BK:Oh, wow. SW:I got some cool pictures of that. But it's been rebuilt here. And because I started notice my arm was going--by the time I was getting ready to get out, by the time they got me to the Wounded Warrior unit, I mean, I couldn't go to parade rest, I couldn't salute, couldn't do anything. That tore me up. BK:This is after-- SW:You never appreciate something until you can't do it. BK:Right. SW:This was recently, right before I retired; the year before I retired. I couldn't salute, couldn't get my arms behind my back. Soldiers came in, helped braid my hair. I had a driver. Couldn't do anything. BK:If you hadn't been injured, would you have stayed in longer? SW:Not in the current administration, no. BK:The current administration? SW:During Obama's. BK:Okay. SW:Several of us got out. They got out, actually, before me. I had to wait until after my surgery was over. But they knew that things were changing. And there comes a point sometimes in your career when you say, "This is not a good thing." You step back and you--and it wasn't just the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." I don't want you to think that, by any means. But you can just say this is probably not a good way to go. You know that it's not going to be the most--it would not have been for the best interests of the military. My senior--my two--three senior officers above me, all within two or three years, all put in their papers the same time. That was just the onset of it, because once that started happening, then it became--it really wasn't looking at the overall picture, the entire mission of the United States Army, or any branch. When you have an entire mission, the cost-effectiveness. People do not look at that. For instance, something as simple as the bathroom. Do you have any idea--any idea--how much money it would cost the schools to make a separate bathroom? BK:Okay. SW:You know what I'm saying? That's 01:10:00 the same thing with the military. It's the same analogy, almost. Because you have--it's so much more than you think. You think it's no big deal because, like I said, if they'd have used common sense, let the kid go where they're safe. Move on, move out. But they don't do that, so then what do you have to do then [unclear]. Then the same thing in the military, you've got all these second and third order effects that you don't even think about. What happens next? Okay, alright, so we're going to add another bathroom and the kids in the schools--okay, let's do that. Well, what does it cost--not just the cost to build the bathroom, but then you've got security, then you've got more drug--whatever--because each one--every single school, like I said, there's second and third order effects, so you've got--whether drugs in the latrine, what's going on in the bathroom, you've got to monitor more bathrooms, all this kind of stuff. Whatever your excuse is, you could still have done the right thing all along. So when this started happening, it wasn't just that. Then the training thing started happening, and like I said-- BK:What do you mean by the "training thing?" SW:The training things. For instance, if they go to do the PT--weight--all those things were going to change with that. BK:The standards. SW:Oh, yeah. And, by the way, if somebody says they're transgender and they come in the military, how many thousands and thousands of dollars are you going to pay for each soldier that you do that for. When that money goes in that pot, then what happens next? Then they take convalescent leave. How is that fair and equal to someone else? Remember I told you I went to that counseling session when they were all in there talking and I was blown away. So when this guy tells me, "Look, I have been gay since the day I have been in the army and I've been in for fourteen years. Now I want out." Well, why? Well, now that this is happening, now we have a transgender in here, now I'm a commander, how much convalescent leave do I have to give them to go get their surgeries done? I'm still working. I've been to combat twice. This is his viewpoint. I've been to combat twice. I'm still coming and doing PT every day, I'm getting the same paycheck they're getting, now they're on convalescent leave for a medical that has nothing to do with combat, or being a soldier, or going to war. And then I got it. Until I heard it from that viewpoint, I didn't quite get it, to be honest with you. But when you hear it from that viewpoint, wow, it was pretty powerful. I wish they would have recorded that for you. That would be something for the history books. BK:Right. SW:Because they got to look at the overall mission. It's not about civil--and it is totally different between civilian life and the military, as far as that's concerned. You have a mission, there's a job you've got to do, and you don't really look overall, "Do I feel comfortable? Am I happy? Am I fulfilled?" No, you're a soldier. You do your job. But outside's a little bit different. Well, it's a lot different. But that was probably a hard thing for me. But no one's going to tell you that, and by the time you have anybody else's history later on in life--because this is thirty-three years, like I said, from the first AIDS case to the first trans--probably the first transgender to the other, I've seen it transition all the way through. So maybe it will be changed by the time--next group. When you have another history thing. BK:Right. Something will change because change is the one constant. SW:Yes, ma'am. BK:For your two deployments, did you volunteer to go? SW:I already had twenty years in, and the first deployment I had already had twenty years in, and my bags were already packed because I was supposed to be going to a training center. I had the duffle and everything, and they were going to draw straws to see who went, and I didn't think you should be drawing straws to see who goes to combat. What they needed was an emergency medicine PA on the ground. BK:Right. SW:Unfortunately for them, they didn't specifically say it had to be a male, they just wanted an emergency medicine PA on the ground, and it was a choice between myself and two Ranger PAs. And, actually, I wasn't even on the list because I was headed to the training center. BK:This was Iraq? SW:This is for Afghanistan. Right after 9/11. So they said, "Quick, we need an emergency medicine PA." Boom. There was only three of us that could have possibly gone. I was already headed to the training center, which was funny, because if I'm going to a training center, why wouldn't I just go straight to combat. Whatever. But, anyway, I was on--my bags, my duffle bags and everything was packed to go to this training center. [The September 11, 2001 attacks, or 9/11, was a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of 11 September 2001. The attacks killed 2,996 people and injured over 6,000 others] BK:In 2002, we're talking about. SW:And then I found out that the other two PAs, one of them didn't want to go because he was having problems with his wife, and the second guy had a moonlighting job and was concerned about losing money. And so, it kind of made me mad, they had the little straws, and I was actually over at an event--believe this or not--I was at another event. Remember I told you I wanted to be--they thought I'd be a command sergeant major, stay in the army forever? BK:Yes. SW:I was at another event singing that song that I wrote about command sergeant majors, and I was singing at the event, and when I stepped down from the stage, all the soldiers there and everything, and the DCCS, and one of the guys walked up and he said, "You know DCCS--" that's the Deputy Commander [Chief] of Clinical Services--"you know he's got them in his office now, they're getting ready to draw straws." I thought, "What?" And so, I was so mad I took straight for my car and drove over to the hospital and walked straight in his office and took the straws out of his hands and said, "You can keep your damn straws. I'll go." He said, "You're serious." I was like, "Yeah." That's how I ended up going to that one, because I knew I was going to end up going--probably--may have ended up going anyway. I already had twenty years in, but they'd[?] called a stop-loss, so one way or another--and it's right after 9/11, so I was just, like--everybody's--just go. [In the United States military, stop-loss is the involuntary extension of a servicemember's active duty service under the enlistment contract in order to retain them beyond their initial end of term service date and up to their contractually agreed end of active obligated service] BK:Right. SW:It blew my mind that somebody would not be jumping ready to go. Which I understand, because Rangers have a lot of missions, they do a lot of stuff, a lot of dangerous stuff, and they probably thought, "Maybe I'll sit this one out." Who knows? I don't care what their thought process was, but for whatever reason I was there. BK:You were attached to the Rangers already? SW:No. I was in Emergency Medicine assigned to Womack Army Hospital [Medical Center]; I was assigned to a hospital. But when they go to combat, or when you deploy out, they can pull you from anywhere and put you wherever they need you, and so they were just going to draw straws, and they both had legitimate concerns in their minds where they didn't feel like they should go to combat. BK:Got it. Okay. SW:But in my mind, I'm thinking I have twenty years' experience. Yeah, I'm thinking I've got a husband, I've got kids and stuff, but I'm thinking, "I have twenty years' experience, 9/11 just happened, we're in combat, I'm going to do whatever I've got to do to spare my children." Then I ended up going, and then at the twenty--that was at the twenty-year mark when I ended up in Afghanistan, and then I thought, "Well, I'll retire at twenty-five years." And then at twenty-five we lost Chuck, and that was hard. And so, Chuck was killed in Iraq. Chuck is Chuck Fortenberry, the pilot, and I had a strong need to go-- BK:Was it enemy fire? SW:Yeah. I had a strong need to go to Iraq. I wanted to see where he was shot down, and I thought, "I'm going to Iraq." That was at the twenty-five-year mark, so then I ended up going to Iraq. And then I came back, and that's when the neck started messing up and all that kind of stuff, and I had multiple surgeries and all that kind of stuff. Then at the thirty-three-year mark, it was my mom's birthday, and it was thirty-three years, and she says, "You know, Jesus died on a cross at thirty-three." [both laugh] I said, "Really?" I said, "Well, I'll tell you what. It's your birthday. How about that?" And so, I had a--and I'll send you a link to that as well, and so you'll see the huge retirement ceremony and all that they did there. There's probably--and the four-star headquarters. Probably a two-hour retirement ceremony for one person. I remember my aunt walking in, looking around, and she goes, "Who all's going to retire?" And they said, "Oh, this is all for Sherry." BK:Wow. SW:She was blown away. It's like wow. She said the same thing when I got promoted to lieutenant colonel. The place was packed. She was like, "Who else is getting promoted?" [chuckles] That was the cutest one. She goes, "Who else is getting promoted?" "It's just her." "Wow. Okay." I said, "Aunt Willaday[?], when you've been around thirty-three years, or you've been in the army a long time, a lot of people know you." And I taught my PA students, it doesn't matter what your job is, everybody's important; so much so that when I gave them a test, if you didn't know the housekeeper's name, you lost points. Because people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, and I nailed it and nailed it and just go on and on until they eventually believed me. [chuckles] BK:Do you feel that you were treated fairly for promotions? SW:Yes. I sure do. Only time I ever had an incident was once they were going to have a male doctor take over to the Acute Care Clinic, and it kind of made me mad because I had worked--I had been in the ER longer, and I'd ran the clinic longer, and I worked in that clinic, and put more manhours in that clinic, and had done everything, and jumped in every time, and they were just going to let a guy go in there and take it because he needed it for his job. Another bullet, another notch in his belt kind of deal. I'm like, "What are you, kidding me? As much time as I put over there? I'm the one--I worked there more than anybody else. Why would he be in charge of a clinic that he's not there." BK:They gave it to him though? SW:Nope, gave it to me. BK:Okay. In the ER clinic, you would be running things in the clinic? SW:Yes. BK:Okay. Do you have an overall sense of how things changed in the army that made an impression on you, besides the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," over the thirty-three years, or just because you're enlisted, then officer? Just such a different perspective. SW:Yeah, I think that--Actually, I think that it did get better. I know I gave you some--the only thing that to me was--as far as whether it had to do with--I don't know if you're asking because the male/female roles or whatever, but, to me, the major differences, they have more sensitivity training and stuff like that; a lot more sensitivity training and requirements. And that's a good thing. I just did not--I really did not really have that many issues. The ones I told you about--coming off the plane-- BK: Do you think maybe it's because you were in the medical field? SW:No, because I was out with the Special Forces and they are not nice. I won't say they're not nice--they are nice--that's the thing is, 01:15:00 people have this perception--they do this, they do that--and it's not true. I found some of the strongest family men ever in the Special Forces. They're like, "Oh, they do this; they do that." "No, they don't. Why you make up stuff like that?" A lot of them--I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there that they have this particular thing--it's kind of like--remember I told you, women, they're either--Now you've taught me a new one now--[chuckles] you're either a whore, a bitch, or a dyke. So I, to me, definitely there's probably no doubt in my mind that, if I was anything, it probably would have been more in the bitch role because I'm really persistent about, "this is this way"--not "this is this way," but I really like the way the military has certain particular standards and I try to do the best that I can. But I don't remember anybody ever calling me any those things. But I definitely love what I did, taking care of a kid, which I do now, too, as well, in the community. I really don't like the good ol' boy system, or how it's done locally; maybe it's just locally, I don't know, I could be wrong. I don't know what it's like in other counties, but, to me, that's a little bit different. But in the military, I can't honestly say that, hey, you couldn't do this because you're a female, or whatever. If anything--if anything--some of the particular females could actually do better than the men, depending on how they--depending on how hard they actually worked. Because if all things are equal, which, things are never all that equal--like, I was explaining earlier how men and women are totally different. It's, like, I can walk in the community, and I would have a total different reaction than what Jim would get. That's the same thing with the military. If you go in--and these are proven facts, this isn't things I just make up off the top of my head--you take a man that's, I don't know, six foot, four--six foot, eight tall, muscular guy, he goes in and says something, "Well, this is the way the PT's done. This is better." They're going to listen to that more than they're going to listen to somebody if they were five-foot-tall and weighed three hundred pounds. You know what I'm saying? BK:Yes. SW:Perception is everything, and I think, for me, my hidden blessing--for me, anyway--is being four foot, eight, because you always had to prove yourself, and you're always going to stand out. And if they tell you to make your uniforms, they look better than if they didn't. I remember standing up like this for Afghanistan, holding my arms out so they could measure, and the lady's literally in tears making my body armor--literally--because they didn't know if I was going to come back or not, and they're having to make my body armor and everything because I'm so short. But I said, "Hey, don't worry about me. I'll be okay. Got a smaller foxhole, I'll be deeper in the foxhole. I'm a smaller target, they'll never get me," that kind of deal and stuff. And the other advantage to that--and that's what I meant by men and women have different strengths--the other advantage I had to that was, for instance, if--when things would happen, as a woman, I could react a certain way that a man can't. BK:Right. SW:One of my best stories ever--I hate to call them "stories" because it makes you think you're lying, but you're not lying, I got pictures and stuff--but one of the best things was when--remember I told you about the tank that went through--and sometimes you're scared for people to come back to the tank because they got grenades or whatever and they're going to hurt them--but sometimes MPs [Military Police] would give out pencils or candy or something, and a little boy ran up to the tank and they sprayed him with mace. Well, this little boy, his dad was one of the tribal leaders in this particular tribe or whatever. They were between our soldiers, the American soldiers--that tribe resided between our soldiers and the Al-Qaeda [militant Sunni Islamist multi-national organization founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden and several other Arab volunteers during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan]; they were the only things in between. BK:Oh, gosh. SW:So talk about some pressure now. This is a real clusterfuck. This boy has got mace sprayed in his eyes, and his daddy is in charge, and his daddy and mamma [unclear]--and again, myths dispelled here, women do wear makeup underneath their burka, they're beautiful and all this stuff, I'll tell you how I know in a minute. So here's this little kid, he sprayed mace, and they're freaking out, they're like, "What are we going to do? We've got to get out there. We need to get medical care. What are we--We cannot take a man. No way we can do this." So the Special Forces and PSYOPS guys--remember the ones I was sewing the uniforms for and cutting hair and all that stuff--they're, like, "Sir, we know who you need to take." They're like, "What? Are you kidding me? "Seriously." They took me out, medical bag, the whole nine yards. I'll never forget the commander walking back and forth. You would think that they had just took his thirteen-year-old daughter out with Hell's Angels [The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club is a worldwide motorcycle club whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles]. BK:[chuckles] SW:He was just walking, pacing, pacing, pacing. We go out, we get out there, and what I don't realize is, men and women cannot--the men cannot go where the women live. So if the men--as we pull around they're telling me, "You cannot--We cannot go with you." BK:Right. SW:Once we get out there the interpreter's talking back and forth and he's going, "Oh, my God." I saw the commander's face, and he's shaking his head, "No." And senior noncommissioned officer's going, "He said whatever it takes." Because the commander's last words at the base camp, this very senior ranking guy says, "Whatever it takes. Fix this shit." Well, we get out there, and once they get out there, the NCOs, whose hair I've cut, uniforms I've sewed, etcetera, they know me and they're just like, "Trust me, she is so hardcore she could roll her own tampons, and don't fricking mess with her, let her do her damn job." Well, the young captain--or the young officer out there was like, "No, no, no, no." We pulled up where the cave is at, and the men are all in there at the cave, and you could see the women--this was hilarious--you could see the women looking over from the mountains, and over the fences and everything, and I loved it because whenever I got out of the vehicle, I was the senior officer. The NCOs--when I would get out of the vehicle there would be NCO's in front of me, ones behind me, and carrying my medical bags. The women were like, "What the crap?" You would think I was President of the United States. Here I am getting out of these cars. It was so cool. I've got so many pictures that would blow your mind. So then as I get out of the vehicle and they go in where the men are at, and even when I walk in it's very--you could tell they were a little bit uncomfortable with this--there was all these men surrounded in the little cave and they're talking, and the interpreter's going back and forth and they're telling what happened and blah, blah, blah. Well, long story short, the women are not anywhere near where the men are at. But the men cannot go over there. My soldiers, my security, none of them--and I don't say "mine," I don't own them--but the team that I went out with could not go with me and I had no security with me whatsoever. BK:Did you have a weapon? SW:I had my 9 mil [millimeter handgun] on me. Oh, yeah. I had my 9 mil on me, body armor and all this stuff, but I've got to walk over, and they're like, "It's over there." This is frigging Afghanistan. Over there, they all look the same, every cave, every hill, whatever, and I'm thinking, "Oh, my God. What have I got myself into?" BK:Wow. SW:And as I'm walking away, and I'm seeing them out of my peripheral vision and they're getting farther away, and I know they're not even within shooting distance. Remember the picture I told you that they took of the girl with the flowers and how far away they was? BK:Right. SW:I'm like, "Oh, my God, this is crazy." So [chuckles] I am walking through all this terrain stuff and thinking, "Okay, I've just got to find the cave where the woman's at with her little boy. Life is going to be good." BK:This is the boy that's been maced? You're trying to find him. SW:Yeah, the boy that's been maced. I'm trying to find the mom and the baby. We're going to do this, right? I can do this. So I'm getting up there--not me, [unclear], there by the grace of God, so I'm going around all these curves and everything, and I get up to-- BK:Were you walking? SW:I'm walking. BK:Oh, wow. SW:And I'm walking, and I'm going up, and I'm standing up on a hill and I'm going, "Oh, my God. Please, please help me find--I have no idea where I'm going." I reached down to my dog tag, and I had a bible scripture on it that says, "You are never alone." And I remember standing there just as vividly as if it was yesterday. So I'm standing there, and I've got on my medical--I got the backpack on with my medical supplies in it, I've got on my LBE [load bearing 01:20:00 equipment?], my body armor, it's hotter than crap, and I'm standing--and I had my hand on the dog tag where I had a little bible scripture on it, and then I just put my hand down, and my weapon was on my 9 mil, and I was thinking, "What the crap? They are going to kill me. I am going to die. They will never find my body out here, I can't even see the guys that are supposed to be out here with me anymore." BK:Right. SW:"What am I going to do?" And as soon as I was standing there going, "Oh, Lord, what did I do," I put my left arm down, and when I did, I felt this little hand come up right through mine. Just like that. BK:Oh, my gosh. SW:I looked down, and there was this little girl, and she was so cute, and she just looked at me with them big brown eyes--she's in those pictures--and she took my hand and she walked me through all of these caves. I'm seeing goats, and I'm smelling stuff I've never smelled in my life before, and I'm going, "What in the world was I thinking? I'm never going to--even if I can get to him, I'm never going to get back to them. I don't know what I'm going to do." I really thought that I was going to die that day. BK:Wow. SW:And so, [chuckles] we go through the cave, and I'm going through all these things, and I'm thinking, "This is it. They're going to torture me. I'm going to be one of those bodies hanging from the bridge or something. I can see it now, my family's going to see them chop me up and stuff." But I go walking through the cave, and when I got to the cave there was a lady there with the burka, and she's got her little boy. BK:That's the boy? SW:And, remember, I had no interpreter with me; I'm by myself. BK:Right. SW:I can't speak nothing; nothing at all. I knew nothing of that time except for country hick. And so, I get through there and they bring the little boy to me. I treat the little boy, and she was very happy. I flushed his eyes out, brought everything with me, flushed out--did the medical treatment and everything, and I thought, "Okay, now what do I do? I don't know where the hell I'm at. I don't know how I'm going to get out of here. I'm going to die in this cave. Unless Batman and Robin [DC Comics superhero characters] shows up here, I have no way of getting out of this place. " Well, I'm just standing there and then she does her finger--she puts her finger out, like, "Wait one minute." BK:The mother or the little girl? SW:The mother, and then she says, "Wait one minute." And I thought, "Okay, maybe the little girl's going to come back and walk me through all the goats and all that crap and get me back to my team, get me the heck out of here." Well, the mother walks out, and I turned around, and when I did, she hands me a box. Now, this box is the size of a shoe box, and I'm thinking, "What the crap is this?" I have no idea what it is, but considering how some people had to give you chickens for taking care of their patients and stuff, maybe it's a loaf of bread because it's a little, small box, right? BK:Right. SW:I open up the lid of the box and you would not believe what was in that box. It was a newborn baby. BK:What?! SW:Newborn baby. Real small, tiny little baby, tiny little fingers. And it hadn't even been born more than a couple hours. I looked at that baby and I lost it. I had been deployed, I haven't seen my children in months. I could visualize their face, I had no pictures; they didn't even let me take my bible when we first went because you couldn't take it in that country. I had noth--And my bible has all my family photos and stuff in it. So here she hands me this box. BK:Is this an alive baby? SW:It's alive. And so, I'm holding something the size of a small shoe box; probably my shoe size since I wear such small feet. BK:That is a very small baby. SW:I'm holding this little baby, and it blew my mind. BK:Premature baby? SW:No, it was just that little because of the nutrition status. I'm holding this child in my hand, I'm standing in a cave, and I'm down on one knee, kind of like this, so I got one knee down, and I'm holding this baby in my hands, and as I do, there's a light from the cave right on the baby. BK:Whoa. SW:It just hit me so hard, "I miss my children." Then, I was homesick. That moment, it was a flood of emotions that come over me. Now, imagine this picture if you will: this is a hundred and ten degrees, at least, at a minimum, the rucksack's on, I have body armor on, there's a 9 mil on my right hip, I have my Kevlar, all of my full-battle rattle, whatever you want to call it, and there's a light coming down the cave right on this baby, and then, immediately, tears just started coming down my eyes, and I thought, "Oh, my gosh." I mean, I wasn't thinking, "How am I going to get out of the cave? I wasn't thinking about anything but that little baby and me missing my babies. But once I could get my breath and attempt to get myself together, when I could take my eyes off of the baby which I was so fixated on, I was still on my knees, still holding the baby, and as I'm looking at this child[?], I thought, "Oh my gosh. This is just--" I just didn't know if my heart could handle all this. But then when I look up, because obviously I was fixated for more than a minute, because when I look up, there was no less than fifty women standing around in the cave looking at me, with the light on the baby, 9 mil on my right, full army gear, and crying. They saw a female, they saw a soldier, they saw compassion, and one by one, they took off their burkas. BK:Oh, my gosh. SW:They saw this is an American woman, she's got compassion, and it did, and I stayed--I went to see them several times before I left Afghanistan. I never forgot that family. They didn't even know what a picture was. I sent film home and had my husband take pictures that's in there, and I had them send pictures back, and when I left that's the only picture they had as a family. BK:Wow. SW:Because I took--when we went back to visit multiple times in that village they wanted to take pictures with me. They did, they'd go by with the watermelon[?] and stuff. And the chicken; they're the ones that gave me the chicken. But that just blew my mind. BK:How did you get back, and what happened with the baby? SW:The baby was fine, they just wanted me to see the baby. They just wanted me to see it, and, of course, I was really emotional. They just thought that was the greatest thing in the world. So, of course, they go back, and they tell all the men in the village, "This is American soldiers. They're compassionate. This is what happened." And I tried to tell them, because I can't--now I know sign language, where I can do American sign language and stuff, but I knew nothing of that language. But it would be little stuff, like, if I wanted them to take a medication, I'd say, "In the morning--" You lay down like this, and in the morning be like [imitates a rooster call] like a rooster or something, and they would laugh and make fun of me, and that's the way we would communicate without an interpreter. But they clearly understand that picture. They clearly understand it. Because I was trying to--I'd point, like, my, and then, baby, and then I'd say like, "No," and just see long, long time, and they knew--even though they didn't have watches they knew what I meant by time. And they knew why I was crying and stuff, and it just really got to them. The--Each one took their burka off. That's the first time I ever knew they wore makeup and stuff under there. BK:And this is all in a cave? SW:Yes, in a cave. BK:How long were you there? SW:Of course, I'm scaring the guys to death because I've got to be back at a certain time or they're threatening to bomb the place if I don't. BK:[chuckles] SW:So then--And remember, I lost track of time because I was looking at the baby, and I'm not going to lie, I'm embarrassed. I mean, I shouldn't be embarrassed, but I was embarrassed; I just really got caught up in the moment. And then I go--and I hear my little thing going off, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. In other words, you better be coming back or we're coming in. [chuckles] I was like--And I was trying to say, "I got to go, I got to go, I got to go," and they understood what I was doing, and as soon as I got--the little girl who brought me there, they brought her back in and her and I ran all the way back to the vehicles. And I'm coming over the hill like this, "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay!" Because I knew--Because those guys are very passionate. They weren't going to let anything happen--I'm the only emergency medicine they had right there, there was no way they were going to leave me back there. So I was trying to get--I mean, I'm running. I was sweating; it was so funny. I got back to the tent, I was like--and I was trying to tell the other medical officers what happened. I couldn't even get it out, I was so dumbfounded by everything that happened. Then later, the commander comes back, he goes, "I don't know what the hell you did, but whatever it is, you fixed it." They got everything they needed. All the information they needed, protection, everything. BK:Wow. Did you get a decoration for that? SW:I got a coin. BK:You got a coin, huh? SW:Because no one's supposed to know I was there, remember? BK:Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting about that. SW:The next day they gave me a coin. I still got my coin; it's better than any medals. And I got the story and the pictures. BK:Yeah. SW:And the people, proof that I was there. But those boys never forgot it. They're like, "Ma'am, you have no idea what you just did. You must have took really good care of him." But I had only told the select guys in my group 01:25:00 what really happened because I was embarrassed. And I know you're supposed to say, well, men--soldiers are soldiers, whatever, but I was. I wasn't embarrassed with them, I just told them I started crying. I said, "I saw that baby, I was blown away." First of all, it was so flipping tiny. I mean, it was so small. And just like you, I thought, "It's dead. It's in a box." BK:Right. That's rarely a good sign. SW:I'm thinking it's dead. But they just want--they just didn't want me to--they just wanted me to see the baby. [chuckles] "We're going to show you our little doll baby," and it took me a minute to think, "Is this thing real or what?" BK:Wow. SW:It was just adorable. So that was a big changing point there. But, yeah, that's funny, "Did you get a medal?" Yeah, got a coin. BK:What was a decoration or medal you got that you are most proud of? That would have been that coin? Yeah. SW:But everybody doesn't know the story behind the coin. BK:Right. SW:I do know that before I left they tried to write up a Bronze Star with Valor, and I got the Bronze Star, but not with the Valor, and it was for--my personal belief is, I think that the command that was attempting to do that, I think that they were trying to do that to kind of make up for that situation because they knew how serious that was, with the mace incident. And being the first female. They wanted me to have something that would say just how important it was, what I had done, and how far I had gone, because I could have been killed any minute. BK:Right. SW:It was--that was "wow." I mean, I've been shot at and it wasn't as scary as that. BK:Sure. SW:Yeah, because you just don't know. I mean, you talk about a leap of faith. BK:And you're alone, which-- SW:Yeah. So when people start talking to me and they start preaching religion and all this stuff to me about, "Oh, I've got to take a leap of faith." I'm like, "You have no idea what the hell you're talking about." I've got a shirt that says, "I love Jesus. I cuss a little," and somebody put a Sharpie [marker] and put "a lot." BK:[chuckles] SW:But it don't mean I don't believe in God, I just don't believe he's this great judgmental thing that comes down and beats everybody upside the head and stuff like that. [chuckles] You should come to Lee County, you'd get a kick out of this place. It's funny. BK:Wow. What would you say the most rewarding thing is about your military experience? It was your life, so. SW:Yeah, the most rewarding--because you know that, in a way, you can set the example and you can actually--some of the women--like the voting--that's not a big deal to people in America, to vote, even though they have the right, you know what I mean? BK:Yes. SW:And sometimes I give that little spiel too. You don't look at--And people get mad--oh, they get so mad--when I say--especially in a place like this, Republican Headquarters. Whether it's Democrat or Republican, if you vote the right person, if you actually go out and research them, and sometimes, like in recent events, I can't say it was the best person, but you just have to look at the lesser of two evils--I'm going to get in so much trouble with this--but you just have to make the best educated choice that you can. And so, that, to me, when going overseas and being able to, for lack of a better word, to witness or to be an example to some of them, that, as long as your voice--you have a voice, it needs to be heard. I mean, this isn't where women are silenced and whatever, if you have a voice it should be heard. It may not--Everybody don't have to agree with you, but if you have a voice, you have the right to be heard. That's why some guy was so mad at me one day, he said something to me, something smart, and he's like, "Well, I don't even know why you're running for office anyway, a woman's house is in the home--" I mean, "a woman's place is in the home." It kind of made me mad, and I remember it was something I had heard somewhere, I don't even remember who said it, but I said, "No, it's not. It's in the House and it's in the Senate." Because they made me mad, because I'm thinking, we make decisions every day that affects next generations, and you shouldn't be looking at me, who the crap I sleep with, what gender you think I am, what homosexual thing, and what religion you think I am, what party you think I am. In reality, do you even know me? And if you do, you've got to know those candidates, and not just people that just get out there and talk all kinds of crap. And so, to watch the women vote, that just--oh, boy, that was amazing to me, because the same women that's out there with their red thumbs up in the air, they would be women that not that long ago they'd chop their thumbs off. And, yes, they do things like that. BK: This is Afghanistan? SW:Yes. And Iraq. Yes, because remember the rules of thumb? You ever know how that come about? You ever heard that phrase "rule of thumb?" BK:Yeah, I've heard of it, but I don't remember offhand-- SW:Yeah, it's where you can beat your wife with a stick as long as it's no bigger than your thumb. BK:Or thicker, right? SW:Yeah, thicker than your thumb, yeah. The rule of thumb and stuff, and so--Plus, you'd teach them a lot of lessons. I was on one mission in a burka and a kid came up and hit me with a 2 by 4 [2 inch by 4 inch piece of lumber]--something like a 2 by 4--on my back. BK:Oh, gosh. SW:Thinking I was one of the women. [chuckles] And we're walking down like this way, and next thing I know I get hit really hard--bam--and remember the guys on the other side, and the next thing, all they heard was, "Not today, motherfucker," click, click, and they all came running. And that was me, this coming over, and me like this. And everybody was like-- BK: This is a local kid? SW:Yes. He thought it was a great idea to hit me. BK:Oh, my. SW:But I didn't--I hadn't learned yet how to not react. [chuckles] BK:Right. SW:They said--They laughed about it forever. They laughed, they picked on me for weeks, they're like, "Ma'am, you have any idea--that's all we heard was, 'Not today, motherfucker,' and click, click, and soon as we heard that--" and they--it was so funny, you could hear me scream those words, and you could hear me cock my weapon, but you didn't hear him hit me. That's what I was telling the guys, I said, "You all wanted him to hit me." "No, no, no. No ma'am, no ma'am." That was Dickerson; that was the boy that got killed. We were in Afghanistan together, and he got killed in Iraq. I just think--I just remember his face, and I was like, "What? You didn't hear him hit me, but you heard everything else." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." They did things like that. But for the women to see a reaction from another woman, that was--they were in shock. They were like, "Wow." So here's these women, they're going to be walking in groups forever in Afghanistan thinking, "Holy crap. What's under the next burka? We don't know what's going to happen next." Because they didn't know--they didn't expect me. [Petty Officer 3rd Class Christopher M. Dickerson was killed in Iraq on 30 April 2004 when his military vehicle hit an explosive device while traveling in a convoy] BK:Right. SW:Just like they didn't expect me to cry when I held the baby, or stuff like that, or when you get out of the vehicle. And every time I would go out in the village, because the men in front, the men in the back, that was hilarious. They didn't know how to accept that. That, to me, was the fun part. BK: How did you end up in Lee County? SW:Because we were retiring here in Lee County. And I actually love Lee County, that's why I would have liked to show you around. They have a lady across the street, she's making pottery with horse hair in it, there's a beautiful antique store down here, there's a train that goes through here. You're going to hear a lot of negative stuff about Lee County, but I absolutely love the small-town kind of atmosphere, and the other stuff does not bother me. I'm here, and I want to make a difference wherever I'm planted. Didn't want to go all the way back to Eden, where I was raised by my mom, or Reidsville, where I was born. I was only born in Reidsville, even though I was raised in Eden, because that was the closest hospital, just so you know; it's the country. [chuckles] And Eden, I just didn't want to go back there because I felt like there was--when I was growing up, anyway, it just seemed like there was a lot of drugs and stuff like that, and I wasn't very--I just didn't feel comfortable going back to that town, and I just fell in love with Lee County from day one. And it did it on that street. I can tell you the day, it was on the Fourth of July. They had a Fourth of July parade and had little kids here with the little dogs, all the kids and dogs were all dressed in red, 01:30:00 white, and blue. You could have an animal, so they had a pig too. Any animal, any pet, and any child. They'd be on bicycles, so it was pets and animals in red, white, and blue, and I thought, "This is where I want to stay. Right here." BK:How long ago was that? SW:That was about, I'd say, seven years ago. Even though I was already here, I just knew then that's when I always wanted to be here. I don't want to go; I'm going to stay right here. And, boy, they come at you. Like I said, good ol' boy politics. But it will make a difference in the rest of the--the women in the community. If you saw some of the things that--I see the young girls that come in here and sew and do stuff, and you teach them things that sometimes they don't know. Like I said, there's a lot of perceptions that you can only learn that wisdom with age. You can sit and read a book all day, but that's like somebody reading a book and never got on a boat to sail and they think they can sail. BK:Right. SW:If you get out there and you live it, it's a different story. The only time I ever had any kind of misconceptions or feel just a little bit--not sad, it's not the word, but a little bit disappointed--is sometimes in the human nature where people attempt to judge people, and they always got their little reasons for it. For instance, I had a girl who came in and she had a nose piercing, and her mom was having a fit, and she goes, "You know you're going to die and go to hell because your body's been pierced." BK:Really? SW:I was like, "What? Where did that come from?" BK: Wow. SW:I kid you not. She's totally serious too. She says, "But the bible says about piercing." I said, "Really? That's what the bible says?" And, I mean, I couldn't correct the mother in front of the daughter, so I--she done whatever she had to do. The mom goes to the restroom, and I take the little girl to the side, I said, "When you get home, I want you to tell your mother that you want to read about Rebekah. Just go to the back of your bible and just look up Rebekah, just like you do in school when you're looking up a subject, and have your mom read all the verses about Rebekah." And so, when her mom--she did that, and her mom got home, her mom was reading her about Rebekah, who was given a nose ring. BK:Wow, that's great. SW:[chuckles] And later everybody was like, "Are you serious?" I said, "Oh, yes." So if you really want to challenge me on stuff like that, I can show you where you have an all-loving God. He doesn't care what color--Oh, and you want to get into races--I pulled the same story on it where--I don't know if you remember one of the stories where this man got married, and the woman was darker than the rest of them in the tribe, and they all wanted to--and they were saying and talking bad stuff about them. It was kind of like an interracial relationship kind of thing, and God--they sent a bear out to attack them, so I said, "Go read that. Go take that to them." And after that they're like, "We're not going to mess with her no more." BK:No. Got it. Are you still adjusting? SW:No, I don't think I have, to be honest with you. Like, the gunfire and stuff. The thing is, it doesn't really bother me, as far--when the gunfire and stuff goes off, I just--I still don't like fireworks. I can tell a weapon, a gun. I still don't appreciate, probably more so than ever--since I've gotten out I have a very low tolerance--and by that I don't mean that I react and say or do anything in a negative way--but I have very low tolerance for people who want to be judgmental about other people, particularly if it's their personal life and things they can't change, whether it's race, poverty level, whatever. I have very little tolerance for that, probably because of the thirty-three years and all the rank structures. That makes a difference. And you say, "Well, why does that make a difference?" Well, if you went to West Point and you went in the military as an officer, you have a certain mentality. BK:Yes. SW:When you are enlisted and you become an officer, they call you Mustangs. So, I mean, of course [I'm not like?] horses, but I've been all ranks. I've shoveled mud to try to put it back in the hole, and at the same time, I have put chest tubes in bodies, I've helped people breathe that couldn't breathe, and I've stood before Pentagon at 4-star levels. I've been all the way up and down, and so, for me, it's--I won't say I've been down--but all the way up there, going all the way through, so, for me, there's an appreciation for every single level. So if you'd ask, "What's your favorite rank," most people say, "Oh, it's got to be lieutenant colonel. You can tell everybody what to do." No. Every rank, every stage of my life, something was significant, and that you learn from. But getting out, the hard part is that you still have the mentality where you always want to do something, and when you do something, you have goals and objectives, and you set that time, and you do this to yourself. People don't do it to you; you do it to yourself. I'm having to readjust to realize it's not that I want people to be like me, because I don't. I don't want you and I to be just alike because one of us is unnecessary. If you not just like--one of us is unnecessary. BK:Right. Fair enough. SW:That being said--But I do realize that I have a different type of perception, and if there's anything that I could change since I've been out, I wouldn't say that I'd be more relaxed, because relaxed is not the word because I do know how to relax, but I would not--I'm trying not to expect people to be the same way. Remember how I said I have a hard time with people being judgmental about--whether it's race, sex, poverty, or whatever? Well, it's the same way, except for with me, with the thirty-three years in the army where I feel like I'm at a disadvantage, is, I may not judge you on these other things, and I'm not trying to judge anybody, but I do know it's easier for me to get disappointed if you don't have any work ethics, or you don't have any goals or objectives. I'm like, "Wow. Why would you waste your life like this?" Because I've lost some friends to suicide and stuff like that, so I kind of want them--I want everybody to have a purpose and a goal. BK: You feel that's why; they didn't have a purpose anymore? SW:Yeah. Or they didn't feel like they're valued or loved anymore, like I put in the little book thing here. They just don't feel like they can do anymore. BK:These are military people you lost to suicide, or some civilians? SW:Some civilians also. Because I think there's always a pur--and I'm not saying it had to do with bullying. Maybe that's why I'm so passionate about when people start--everybody's got various opinions about different things, but most of the time when you see it, it's just--they've given up hope for whatever reason, and that's not good. And that is definitely, definitely, not a political statement, because your hopes should never be in who's in office; they come and go. Think about it. Presidents come and go. Only [U.S. Supreme Court] Justices stays forever. [The U.S. Constitution provides that U.S. Supreme Court Justices "shall hold their offices during good behavior", which is understood to mean justices may serve for the remainder of their lives, unless they are impeached and convicted by Congress, resign, or retire] I put my hope in God, and, for me--because God is not this--goes around condemning everybody. But I see that a lot, though, since I've gotten out. People like to put other people in little boxes; everybody's like this, everybody's like this, or like that, and that's not true. We're just all unique in our own way. BK:Okay. SW:But other than that adjustment, I still don't like fireworks. I don't think I'll ever care much for them too much. But one good thing about all that, though, is now you're noticing there's little advertisements that come out once in a while that tell people that--that everybody don't like fireworks--and then you don't feel like you're by yourself. [chuckles] The other thing since I've gotten out that I do definitely appreciate them taking care of, as far as government assistance or whatever, with the 01:35:00 VA [Veterans Administration] stuff, is that I see that they're doing more and more stuff for women who are survivors of sexual trauma. And from what I can gather from the military versus the civilian sector, it almost seems like they--for some reason you would think that there would be more sexual assaults, and more cases in the military than outside the military, and I'm not sure that's true anymore, by working with--being outside; since I've gotten out. BK: Right. SW:You just assume that it's a bunch of men, that's what it is, but I don't know. Somebody would have to give me a little bit more studying stuff on that because I've seen a lot of stuff since I've got out of the military. You hear more cases about the women that have the same issues, whether they're in the military or not. BK:Right. SW:It might be more close proximity to the sexual harassment, or whatever, and stuff, but. That's the only thing I can think of. BK:Okay. And you said you served at the Pentagon? SW:No. I had to go and talk up there. That's where that mural thing is. BK:Oh, okay. SW:I just had to talk when I came back from Afghanistan. They wanted my experience. BK: Okay. Wow. Do you consider yourself to be a trailblazer? SW:Well, I was the first female, ever, as the XVIII Airborne Corps PA; I was on the panel first for the State of North Carolina vet-- mil [military] vets; first female PA for FORSCOM [United States Army Forces Command]. Yeah. BK:Okay. Have any of your children been in the military? SW:No. I figure I've done--I don't want them-- BK:You don't want them to-- SW:My daughter initially went to West Point, and she was there, and she figured out that she didn't particularly care for that type of lifestyle, and, quite frankly, I said, "I've done thirty-three years, your dad's done twenty, that's a total of over fifty years. I don't care if none of you all join the military or not." BK:Would you recommend the service to other young men and women today? SW:Absolutely. Particularly if they were in the situation that I was. That was the best option for me at that time. I know other people go in for different reasons, but it was the best option for me. Like I said, it was the--once I got into basic, I mean, that's the safest I've felt. I really did love the army. BK: Okay. SW:I love my life now, too, but the military, I have no regrets; I wouldn't do anything different; not a thing. I would still go through all the ranks; I wouldn't go in as an officer, I'd go through all the ranks. You learn--I would not change a thing. I probably would have stayed longer if my neck would have tolerated it, but, no, I still see a purpose here in the community. I don't say--I didn't turn out the right way. What I meant to say was, I am still--and actually, I'm glad I got out when I got out, even though you hear people all the time, "Oh, I miss it. Oh, I miss it." No, I've got enough stories, I think. And remember, this is only since I was an officer, there's a lot more enlisted and stuff, but I just wouldn't change it, wouldn't change a thing, and I would definitely recommend it to anybody, particularly if they're young and they don't have money for college, and if they have--and not just for that reason alone--and they have a sincere desire to serve. Then they should do it. Did you ever want to join? BK:Did I ever want to join.? SW:Now you're thinking, "Not now, after listening to all your stuff." BK:No, no, no. I grew up in the 1980s. Everyone in my family had bad eyesight, so I didn't really have a tradition of service. I was fortunate that I could go to college; my family had the financial security. So it just, honestly, wasn't on my radar at all. SW:I would have never--Well, I would have never been where I'm at today without it. BK:Right. SW:Looking back, I mean, I know a lot of people in my class, and I'm going to be fifty-four in August, and you go back home and you see them and you're just like, "Wow." And it's not nothing negative, it's just you can see a total difference, and I'm just--to me, it was right for me. And people will know if it's the right thing for them. My daughter went, she's like, "This is not for me. This is definitely not for me." She's at the University of Charlotte [University of North Carolina at Charlotte] and she's a Special Education--she started out an engineer, she did great, she got a lot of scholarships. She knew she had to be good to get to West Point. She got in, she's like, "No, this isn't for me." I said, "Okay." The next thing you know, she's at Charlotte, and she's going to be a Special Education teacher. And she's the most sought-after teacher that they have there in the summer. She told me she wanted to do Special Ed, I thought, Special Education-- you met my other son--so I'm thinking that kind. No, I walked in and there were kids in there building flipping robots. She has a robotic lab; they've given her an office down at UNC Charlotte. BK:Wow. SW:I mean, she's like a freshman at the time, I think. I was blown away. I was like, "Wow, this is what you're going to do?" She's good at it, so. BK:That's amazing. SW:But, yeah, I would recommend it. BK:Okay. What does patriotism mean to you? SW:Patriotism, to me? To me it means love of country. And my priorities may sound different to some people, but my priorities particularly, even more so after combat, has been and will continue to be, that it is God, my country, and my family. I understand that a lot of people go a different direction. I choose God first because I would not want to be anywhere where you don't have a faith in something; a higher power. I choose country before I did family because I would not ever want to have family without living in a free country. I've told you my family, their relationships, etcetera. I can't imagine if my daughter, who has decided she wants to choose a homosexual lifestyle--I can't imagine somebody beating her seventy-two times, and putting her in jail, and then killing her because of a choice, for whatever reason. I can't imagine having a child on a bicycle who has a burka and goes down the road on the back of the bike with her brother pedaling, and she shows an ankle and she gets stoned to death. So, for me, it's God, my country, and my family. I have served my country for thirty-three years; I'm going to serve God forever. I've served my country thirty-three years, and now that I have retired, my intentions, until the day I die, is to continue to serve my God and my country in the United States, because they make you take an oath when you join the military. You have to raise your hand, say, "I swear to support--I promise to support and defend the constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic," and this just goes on. Well, when you get out of the military they don't say, "Hey, we take that oath back." So, until then, I still like to defend the Constitution. Everybody has freedoms, that I feel like--Not just I feel like, but that is given to them by the Constitution. And then the family, I love my family to death, but the reality is, if I lived in a different country, under different standards, other than the freedoms that we have here, I would not want to have my family. So, for me, patriotism is--that's a big word. It's not something to take very lightly. Like they were talking about the kneeling with the flag--now, will I tell you--especially after what I've witnessed since I've got out of the military--can I tell you that I believe that everybody is treated fairly and equally by police departments and all that kind of stuff? No. But kneeling for the national anthem, that, to me, is totally unacceptable. You want to do something, go up to Congress. You want to make a statement, write papers, go up there. Run for office, better yet. Run for office and do something about it. But, to me, that's just way--and I know I'm not the only person to feel that way, but that is--to me, that's just the ultimate thing of disrespect, and it doesn't make any sense. To see it from a different viewpoint, imagine being on a board of education watching a graduation ceremony when there's a small group over here decides they're not going to sit up--they're not sitting up straight, they got their hat on backwards, they're not going to stand up, they don't do anything. The flag comes in, they do the national anthem, whatever, they're sitting there talking loud, whatever, on the phone, and then three of the graduates coming down. And you are a part of the notification committee that has to knock on the door and tell them their father's not coming home, you're part of the team that puts a flag over the casket, and you're part of the team that folds the casket [flag] and hands it to that child who is now walking across that stage. Once you have your rights and you start infringing on somebody 01:40:00 else's, to me--Again, common sense is not common. If you don't want to be there, you don't want to stand for that flag. You don't care, whatever your reason is, step outside. Stay outside until that part's over, because that offends them, you know what I mean? Does that make sense? BK:Yes. SW:So, to me, that's what those kinds of things mean to me. Patriotism, you're willing to sacrifice whatever you've got to do for your country. That's not going to say I'm going to go in there and follow somebody blindly and do stuff that I think is unethical and immoral and things like that. You still have to do the right thing. But, for me, patriotism is about service and respect. And unfortunately, that may be one of the key components of why the perception might be that society is changing so much; we don't always have respect. Not just for the flag, but not even for each other. At least some of the things I'm seeing. It blows my mind. BK:Is there anything in particular you would want a civilian to know or understand about what it is like to serve in the military that they might not understand or appreciate? SW:The sacrifice. It's not just the big things, it's the little things. By that, I mean you got to look at the whole picture, and by that I don't mean the little things like, oh, I can't paint my toenails, or I can't wear fingernail polish, or I can't wear jewelry. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the sacrifice where you get on a plane and your child's not walking, and you come back and your child's walking. Or you get on a plane and your teenager is in high school, and by the time you come back, they don't want to talk to you. They've gone through so many changes. Or the sacrifices of, of course, dying, as well. But then there's the sacrifices that you don't see. I believe that no soldier has ever gone to combat and come back uninjured. I'm not saying Purple Hearts, but they all come back, something is different. They are; they're totally different. And I'm not trying to say anything negative, and some people get--and civilians--everybody's not going to--PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] doesn't mean you're going to turn around and grab a gun and shoot somebody. PTSD, to me, means I might get quiet, I may not want to talk to anybody. This is the longest that I have ever talked to another human being since I have been back from combat. But that doesn't make me crazy, I'm just very selective. Because I know when I leave, I'll remember stuff, or I'll think about things that I didn't think about before, but it doesn't--but it's good. It's not bad; it's not all bad. But that's what I would want civilians to remember, that the thing that they do is sacrifice, but the reality is not only is there sacrifice; for me, personally, I realize it's also a choice. Last time I checked, it was a volunteer army. BK: Yes. SW:I volunteered to go. I joined at seventeen. I raised my hand, I got into what I was getting into, and maybe I didn't know exactly what I was getting into, but it was a thousand times better than I thought it was. It really is. It's so much better than I ever thought it was. But when it was time to retire, I knew that it was time to retire, but I also know for the rest of my life, because I made a voluntarily--I made a decision to join the military, serve my country, it has made me a better person. Like I said before, the fact that I'm a soldier doesn't make me--I mean, the fact that I'm a woman doesn't make me a different soldier, but the fact that I'm a soldier sure as hell makes me a different woman. And that is true, but that being said, when you have all of these things when you come back, and people say, "What's it like? Did you shoot somebody? Did you kill somebody?" I don't want to answer your question. I'm not trying to be rude or anything, it's just sometimes you just don't want to talk to people. It doesn't mean at any minute you're going to go off or anything. But that's the only thing I want them to know, that there are sacrifices that--even though it's a volunteer army and, yes, you chose to do it, sometimes there's sacrifices, and there's going to be the wounds that you don't see, that nobody can prepare you for. Nobody. And there's no way you can know it going in. None. I'd have never dreamed some things that--not that you just see in combat, but what that sacrifice has cost. That's a pretty expensive price. I know you see all these advertisements--oh, the sacrifice--and it's always showing people who died, etcetera, and stuff, but sometimes--and we do have twenty-two suicides a day--but sometimes that sacrifice and that cost is actually worse than just dying. Dying, it's over; your pain is over; you don't live with it every day. For instance, one of the pictures you saw with the kids, when I'm coming out of that aircraft, we had a--and it's in that book there, that suffering[?] book--but that story there, coming out, that's something you don't ever forget that. But if you would have asked me when I joined the army, "Are you prepared that you're going to have memories where you're carrying kids out of landmines, or you're coming off aircraft and they're missing arms and legs, are you prepared for all of that?" Nobody's going to tell you that. You don't know that. Besides, there's people who's been in the military for twenty-plus years, thirty years, and never saw combat in their entire life. BK:Right. SW:I could have never been prepared for all that, and I know this is a lot to put on you, but that's what I did. It's just what it is. But that would be the only thing, is just remember that sacrifice; just because they didn't die, doesn't mean they didn't give you the ultimate sacrifice. Especially when a parent loses a child, or they missed time that they can never get back. Does that make sense? BK: Yes. SW:Okay. And, again, it's a volunteer army; volunteered it. I still think it's the best decision for me. BK:Okay. Well, we've talked a lot, and I know there's more stories to tell. Maybe, since I'm coming back, we can think of things that both you and I haven't thought of or want to go back to. But is there anything right now that I haven't asked, or something else you want to say? SW:No. I just hope I haven't bombarded you with too much--what do they call it, TMI?--too much information at one time. BK:No, we're wanting the story of your life. It's amazing, your service. No, no such thing as TMI. SW:I tried not to give you too much trauma. Remember that guy said, "Don't tell them too much because you're going to upset them." I suspect, especially if there's a part two, by the time we're done, you will have more than you've ever got from any interview. BK: Maybe. We did have an interview that went on in two parts because she was at Fort Hood when Major Hassan--the massacre there. We had to do the interview after the trial, and hers was eleven hours. She was by far the longest. [On 5 November 2009, Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist, fatally shot thirteen people and injured more than thirty others during a mass shooting at Fort Hood, a military base near Killeen, Texas.] SW:I don't know, if I was there I'd probably have to be breaking up every now and then. BK:Right. SW:Because I was at Fort Hood during the Luby's. BK:The Lubys? SW:The Luby's--they came in--the guy drove in with a truck. "Bell County did this to me," and he started shooting up everybody. [The Luby's massacre was a mass shooting that took place in 16 October 1991 at a Luby's Cafeteria restaurant in Killeen, Texas. The perpetrator, George Hennard, drove his Ford pickup truck through the front window of the restaurant, and quickly shot and killed twenty-three people and wounded twenty-seven others] BK: Oh, gosh. SW:Oh, yeah. Had those patients, and I was in PA school, so whenever that--'72 or '73, whatever--but I was in PA school when that happened--'92, '93, I think. I'm not sure. They had Luby's and my kids were right across the street. And the next thing my dad sees is me loading patients on a helicopter. He's freaking out. BK:Oh, gosh. SW:Because we took a lunch break. Oh, there's all kinds of stories like that. We took a lunchbreak, and they are smart, they saw the truck run into the restaurant, the other PA students went next door to Red Lobster, and me, oh no, I've got to pull into the parking lot--oh, my gosh. I'm hauling patients all over the place. BK:Wow. SW:It was amazing. I was the first female that had the prison--not the prison overseas, I'm talking about at Fort Knox [Kentucky] medical center [Fort Knox Correctional Facility Medical Treatment]. I had that prison as well. BK: You were in charge of the--Wow. SW:Yes. Once you read through all of this and get a chance to look at it, you may have more questions of a different thing. BK:Okay. SW:I pretty much 01:45:00 focused mostly on Afghanistan today. Iraq's got a few interesting stories, too, but they don't pertain to women and stuff. BK:It doesn't have to be about women. Oral history is your experience. You are a part of this collection because you are a woman, but we don't need to be talking only about women. Does that make sense? SW:And by the way, we were talking about the corruption in politics and how they do that kind of stuff, the military, I can say, in my experience I only had one incident that I would consider way out--I don't want to say way out there, corruption or anything, but I just know when something happened and someone tried to cover it up and stuff, that kind of stuff blows your mind. Then when you get out in the civilian sector, particularly in politics, and you go, "What were you doing?" And you see all these moving pieces, it doesn't make you lose faith in mankind, but you're just like, "Wow." No wonder people don't believe the media, politicians, in that order. Now, that is the biggest change. I thought I had a huge time warp. I don't know--you're probably not old enough to remember this, but I remember when reporters were respected, journalists were respected. Everything that you saw in the paper you knew was true. I truly do--people were making fun of me the other day, they're like, "Ma'am, you are really old." I'm like, "Well, okay, I'm old," but I remember that, and I remember respect, and that's what I meant by, in this country, the biggest thing that I personally have noticed is respect. Respect for themselves, respect for each other, respect for any type of profession, respect--I mean, even teachers, we have teachers get beat up with cell phones because kids don't want to give up their cell phones. So they don't have respect for themselves, much less each other. Not the flag, not the country, not God, anybody. So if there was one lesson that was ever learned, when somebody says, "Hey, it seems like you went through a time warp," the one thing I would miss the most was the fact that there was respect. You may not agree with each other, but you could respect each other. Remember I was telling you about the people that I had in the clinic with me from the transgender, homosexual, whatever? We still care less[?], we still respect the human being. Does that make sense? BK: Yes, it does. SW:And these people, they don't even respect life, they just shoot each other. Like I said, I'm probably giving you this in a tainted view because of what just happened, but it blows my mind. I don't know. But if you look through that thing, it has all the job things on it, and then you'll see what I also sent you. Hopefully you got all that in your email by now. It's going to be a lot, though, as far as--it won't be a lot, I didn't mean to kind of do that. And I do have all kinds of pictures. I'm trying to think how many of them I may still have on digits [digital?]. Thank goodness I didn't put them all on digits[?] because that computer crashed. You may have some of the only stuff that's on there. And I have no idea what all is in some of that stuff. I have forgotten some of it. Just pick and choose what you want. BK:Also, those cassettes would be very interesting. SW:Yeah. My husband's like, "Oh, you sure you want to do that? I said, "[unclear]." BK:Again, what we can do is digitize and you can tell me, "Oh, do not put that there." [Speaking Simultaneously] SW:Yeah, because that's pretty raw, because they were every day from trauma and stuff. I know for him, he said the hardest part--he said mom loved the ones where you're laughing and carrying on about when you walked into the wrong shower. But the day the boys was killed, he said he pulled over, they both balled for about a half hour. Because you could tell; you could hear me. It's a cry you can't even imagine. I don't know if you've ever known anybody that's ever lost a child, or something that important, and to lose three or four at one time, and I was not happy with God. [chuckles] I wasn't screaming, hollering, cussing, carrying on, you could just tell that I was not happy at that time. I was having a hard time with that. And then you get parents--people don't tell you this part of the story--in the medical field, when you have--you retrieve bodies and stuff, when you're--when family realizes that you're the last one to see them alive, they kind of hang on to you, and they ask you questions, and that's hard. Like, if you picked up a guy and it's his arm over here, leg over here. I mean, as morbid as it sounds, just like everything's over there. The penis might be on this rock, fingernails over here, you're putting all these body parts together, and then when you meet the family, the family is like, "You know, the last time I talked to my son he was complaining, 'They just did all the shampoo down there, it just smelled horrible.' I sent him the best-smelling shampoo ever. Do you know if he ever used it or not? It had a mango smell to it." The mom is telling you this and you're sitting there thinking, "What? His scalp was over here to the right, fingernails is over here, this is over here." In your mind, that's what you visually see because that's the last thing you saw. BK:Right. SW:And I'm just like, "Yes, ma'am. His hair smelled great." "Really? Even when you picked him up? I know it's hard for you to imagine, but even when you picked up his remains [unclear] smell good?" And you're thinking, "It's a hundred and twenty fricking degrees." Blood smells like metal; it's got a metallic smell to it. The whole body, regardless, and she's asking me what his hair smells like. Wow, that was rough. BK:And you were outside the wire picking up the--wow. SW:Yes. And I was like, "Yes, ma'am. It was great. It was awesome. It smelled great. It was awesome." I mean, what do you say? But I just thought that was--wow, what a question. But when I went to the memorial ceremony, the grandfather of one of the boys were there because they were--all of them had one thing together, and the grandfather, out of the blue, he comes running down the aisle. He's an older gentleman, I'm thinking, "Wow, he's going fast." And he could see me, and I'm coming down the aisle, and I had one of them's son and one of them's daughter, one in each arm, walking them down the funeral. And they got down there, and the army does the memorial service, and they'll do stuff like--what's your middle name? BK: Actually, I don't have a middle name. Beth Ann is my first name. SW:Okay. Let's say that your name was Beth Ann Jones, and you are the person who is not--you're being buried; you're one of the people that's being buried. They would go through and they'd call out--they do the bugle stuff, but they call out this--they do a roll call. BK:Right. SW:And so, when they call the roll call, they would say, "Charlie Thomas." And, of course, you're not going to answer. And then they would say, "Sergeant Beth Thomas." And you wouldn't answer, of course. "Sergeant Beth A. Thomas." Total silence. And then the little boy, right beside of me, he just hops in my lap and he's, "Hey, can you tell them that my daddy's in heaven. He is not here." Oh, my God. Thought I was going to die. Everybody just turned and looked. He goes, "Can you just tell them that he's not here." I was like, "Wow." I mean, and it echoed all the way through the cemetery. And he was just as serious as he could be. I mean, these things happen and there's nothing you can do. And so, when people say that they're bothering you, [unclear], kneel at the flag, yeah, it bothered me. The little kids come, and they were all dressed in red, white, and blue. No bigger 01:50:00 than that. We're talking less than three feet high, a little girl and a boy. I still got pictures of them. They still send me messages because their dad missed their weddings and their graduations and stuff. BK:And which one is this? SW:Out of the boys [unclear]. I can even get you a picture of the little--the girl is so sweet, her family's--but Chase was the little boy's name. They were both--They still talk to me on Facebook and stuff. On April the fifteenth they still send me--we still message back and forth and stuff, and then--And that's why--remember I told you what happened with the news when they did that crazy story on the fifteen--so these families are still calling me all during the day. I'm just like, "What else could you have done to me?" So after that I'm like--I won't say--there's nothing worse that can happen to me after that. I was like, "Wow." Because I've got all these families calling me, [that's the day I lost all the boys?], it's just all this stuff kind of going on, and so after that everybody thought, "Wow." That's when everybody thought what do you--quit the school board, quit the politics or whatever, and I thought, God's got a lesson here because there's no way anything can get any worse than this. Talking about eating a live toad first thing in the morning, because on that day, April the fifteenth, when you have your taxes, and you pay your taxes, and you whine and complain about that, I think about those men, what a tax burden it is, and tax on their parents' hearts and how it destroyed their families. Young kids was--and now they're older and the girl's graduating, the brother's graduating, kids are growing up, and they're still having issues and stuff like that. That's when it's--To me, when you talk about patriotism and you think, "Well, they gave the ultimate sacrifice," and they did, I respect that, but you've also got to understand every wife, every mother, every son, every daughter, whatever, they gave that same sacrifice, and more so because they got to live out the rest of their life. If that makes sense. I've kept you way too long. I'm so sorry. BK: No, I really appreciate you spending the time. SW:Well, you are welcome anytime. I'll try not to give you too many at once. I'm trying to keep a count of the ones that make people upset because-- BK:No, no, no. Please don't. SW:You're so sweet. BK:I mean, I'm very, very appreciative for telling us your story. I feel very honored that you shared with us. SW:I will find those cassettes and get those--and when you go to Stewart's[?] site, if you tell me if there's anything on there you want and he'll get it to you. He's really a good man and I think he gets a lot. But this is what I have for those two operations. BK: Well, thank you. Any other final for today? SW:No, that's it. Thank you so much and God bless you for listening. It's supposed to be