Traditionally women have been kept at a distance from the front lines, but in Afghanistan there are no front lines.\u00a0 The fight is everywhere\u2026 and it\u2019s nowhere.\u00a0 The combatants may be staying in the shadows or hiding in plain sight.\u00a0 And since there\u2019s no battlefield per se in Helmand Province, women are serving in the U.S. military here in a variety of roles.<\/p>\n
One of those women is 21-year-old Da\u2019Shonda Shedd, an Army Private First Class from Marieta, Georgia, on her first Tour of Duty.\u00a0 She\u2019s a Combat Engineer and her unit is working in support of the Marines 1st<\/sup> Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion at Forward Operating Base Payne in Southern Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Da\u2019Shonda is a bridge crew member.\u00a0 She and her fellow soldiers operate a ferry of sorts, moving troops, civilians and up to six huge armored vehicles at a time across the Helmand River between Payne and the wide open territory to the west.<\/p>\n She says she joined the Army for a change of pace and to prove people wrong, people who said she couldn\u2019t do it.\u00a0 She tried college but it didn\u2019t work out and says she was sick of the party life back home.\u00a0\u00a0 She says she\u2019s learned a lot since she\u2019s been here and become a better person, less selfish and more appreciative of the little creature comforts we all take for granted.\u00a0 She also admits she\u2019s counting the days until she can go home, especially with the temperature topping 110 every day and headed for 130 in a month or two.<\/p>\n Da\u2019Shonda Shedd is a soldier, and she\u2019s as close to war as any female can be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Traditionally women have been kept at a distance from the front lines, but in Afghanistan there are no front lines.\u00a0 The fight is everywhere\u2026 and it\u2019s nowhere.\u00a0 The combatants may be staying in the shadows or hiding in plain sight.\u00a0 And since there\u2019s no battlefield per se in Helmand Province, women are serving in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4752,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-579422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4752"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}