Women get flustered under fire. They're too fragile, too emotional. They lack the ferocity required to take a life. They can't handle pain. They're a distraction, a threat to cohesion, a provocative tease to close-quartered men. These are the sort of myths you hear from people who oppose the U.S. military's evolving new rules about women in combat. But for women who have already been in combat, who have earned medals fighting alongside men, the war stories they tell don't sound a thing like myths

"I remember hearing the bullets hit the ground beside me and hit my truck behind me. Our squad leader had us sneak around and flank them. From a trench line that overlooked the field, we laid down fire, and I know that I shot, and made fall, three. After twenty minutes, most of the insurgents out in that field were incapacitated, but there were three more still left in the trench line opposite us, about thirty meters away. We knew that the only way we were going to end this is if we took them out. The staff sergeant and myself, we jumped in the trench; our teammate followed us along the top. I was so concentrated that I couldn't hear the bullets. I didn't even hear my own rifle. We hugged the wall of the trench on the right side. It kind of jutted out a little bit and gave us cover, but we couldn't get the right angle to kill them with our rifles. We resorted to throwing grenades. That did the trick. Looking at what was left of them, I felt nothing. A woman can't be a killer? I beg the contrary."

— Staff Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester, military police, Army National Guard Ambushed by enemy forces in Salman Pak, eastern Iraq, on March 20, 2005. Awarded a Silver Star, the nation's third-highest military decoration for valor—the first female recipient since World War II and the first to earn it for close-quarters combat.

Female Engagement

"Outside the wire"—beyond the confines of the base—women have regularly seen combat as military police, convoy drivers, medics, combat photographers, interpreters. Some also became members of female engagement teams, or FETs, a detachment created to help fight the war in Afghanistan. Two to three women would be embedded with an infantry unit and would accompany it on foot patrols, over IED-strewn roads, and through ambushes, raids, and firefights. They could do what male soldiers could not: communicate with local Muslim women.

Sergeant Kristen Dombosk, civil affairs, ArmyThe way this war in Iraq was fought, there was really no front line. You could get hit just as easily on the base as during a mission. It didn't matter if you were infantry or not; we went out with infantry all the time. We all had the same equipment, the same combat load, the same types of missions. It was just semantics.

Sergeant Kayla Williams, military intelligence, ArmyWomen weren't assigned to combat-arms units, but we were "attached" to them as needed. I ended up going on combat patrols with the infantry. Because I was female and because this was Rumsfeld's "You go to war with the army you have" phase, I did not have plates for my flak vest. If women aren't in combat and if you only have so many plates to go around, why would you give them to the women?

Corporal Sarah Furrer, FET member, MarinesOur mission was to collect information about the village: who was there, what was going on. We also did the hearts-and-minds kind of thing. We'd sit down with these women; we'd take off our Kevlars [helmets]; we'd put down our guns; we'd talk face-to-face and have tea. These people can barely count. They have never seen big, giant American people. We look like robots to them. It becomes very personal.