If or when a female soldier someday enlists in the Army infantry, she will probably look a lot like Sgt. Amber Sellers, 29, from Cullman, Ala.

I met then-Specialist Sellers in late May 2008, past midnight, outside the Tarmiyah, Iraq, home of “Abu Mutaz,” a suspected insurgent bomb maker about to be arrested. I had embedded just that afternoon as a journalist reporting on Specialist Seller’s unit: Alpha Company, First Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division. Her commander had given her an additional role as my personal security.

That night, we had left Tarmiyah’s downtown joint security station. If there was a “front line” in Iraq’s surge era of 2007 to 2009, a security station was as close as one could come. The small outposts were convenient operating points for soldiers trying to provide local security and assistance, and were inviting, stationary targets for any opposing force.

It was not much of a raid. Capt. Chris Loftis, the company commander, simply knocked hard on the metal gate outside the home; Mr. Mutaz, sleepy and resigned, opened the gate and calmly accepted his arrest.

Left behind were his wife and several children, including three daughters.

When she removed her helmet, part of Specialist Sellers’ soldierly identity fell away. She took candy from a bag and handed it to the children. They weren’t grateful, having just watched their father taken away in the middle of the night. Still, they took the small minor gift and mumbled a “shukran” for thanks. Later, she searched Mr. Mutaz’s wife for the documents that women sometimes hid.

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“I can’t waste time, waiting five hours for somebody to send us a female for searches,” Capt. Loftis said that night, explaining how a female soldier’s presence helped during the tactical such missions. “If I have other targets, we want to keep going. This way, I can get the search done immediately.”

Specialist Sellers had worked at the Camp Taji motor pool, but there wasn’t much call for her training in tank repair. Captain Loftis had wanted a dedicated female soldier at his security station. Other female soldiers came and went in short rotations; Specialist Sellers volunteered for the full-time job.

Now, Sergeant Sellers remembers getting used to that semi-infantry life, with unfamiliar requirements like learning depth perception with night-vision equipment.

“Marching through palm groves using night vision, I’d be up, then fall down. I didn’t know how to pull security, or do any of that,” she said. “But the guys never disrespected me. They’d pull me to the side, teach me a few things.

“Every day I wondered what we were going to do,” she continued. “I know the guys weren’t excited, because that’s what they did all the time. But I got to go out on missions? Go on patrols? You didn’t have to tell me twice. That’s what I expected the Army to be.”

The unit eventually returned to Hawaii, and Specialist Sellers went back to her old job. In 2009, she deployed to Iraq again, but this time staying on a forward operating base. She had a new perspective about the differences between wartime life and garrison life.

“I was like, ‘I’m in the motor pool again? What? I don’t belong here,’” she said. “The infantry sees what’s going on. You have no idea if you’re on a F.O.B.; it’s a whole different experience.”

Now at Fort Hood, Tex., Sergeant Sellers doesn’t say that all women should want to join the infantry or other combat-specific jobs. But she does think they should have a fair opportunity to participate in all aspects of Army service.

“There are no special circumstances. You’re there to perform a job, the same job as a man,” she said. “Some women can do it. Some women can’t, even if they think they can. If you’re going to run with the big boys, you have to hold it to their standard.

“I don’t know how many women would try,” to join the infantry, if it opened to women, she continued. “Some. If they really knew what they were getting into, probably not a lot.”

Sergeant Sellers does not pretend that she served a true infantry role. But she performed her role in midnight raids or during daytime trips to rural villages. Captain Loftis felt her presence benefited the mission, and his junior soldiers behaved accordingly.

“If everyone’s in the right mindset, it will work. The commander’s attitude will trickle down, and Captain Loftis was an exceptional person,” she said. “I didn’t have any issues in Alpha Company, but it’s not going to be like that with every unit. It’s risky, but I’m all for the ones who can hack it.”

Last summer, Sergeant Sellers graduated from Fort Hood’s new Air Assault School, earning a set of wings for the tough 10-day course on helicopter rappelling.

After graduation, the school’s first sergeant asked her if she wanted to get certified as an instructor. He knew little about the specifics of her Iraq deployments, Sergeant Sellers said, or about the time she had spent alongside the infantry. He wanted a female instructor, since female students would attend, and Sergeant Sellers had proven an especially strong performer on the challenging obstacle course that was a prerequisite for attending.

She is not sure what she’ll do when her current enlistment ends in about 18 months. Would she try to join the infantry herself, if the Army allows it? “I could see it,” she said. She also has her daughter, Ariana, 11, to consider, and Ariana is not a fan of the Army. “She associates it with me being gone,” the sergeant said.

For now, she enjoys being in the small group of Air Assault instructors, a tight group working together. She teaches aircraft identification and hand-arm signals to a classroom of about 100 students.

“The physical part’s no trouble for me; public speaking is the hard part,” she said. “I was so nervous, giving my first class, but my team chief and other instructors prepared me.”

Two soldiers from Tarmiyah’s security station in Iraq recently attended the Air Assault course; Sergeant Sellers “smoked” them during the obstacle course, yelling at them to do flutter kicks and burpee jumps. They all tried not to smirk at each other.

“They know that I know what it was like out there,” she said.

“If I come up to a group of infantry guys, I can relate a little. They might say, ‘a girl? Are you kidding me?’ I don’t really throw it out there. I just listen.”

Nathan S. Webster, an Army veteran of the Persian Gulf war of 1991, is a lecturer in first-year writing and creative nonfiction at the University of New Hampshire. His book, “Can’t Give This War Away: Three Iraqi Summers of Change and Conflict” is available as an e-book on Amazon. Follow his blog at “Can’t Give This War Away” and on Twitter.