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 In May of 2011, a good friend and several members of his team
were killed in Kandahar, Afghanistan. It was the most lethal day of
the war for American troops since the surge in 2009. 1st Lt. John
Runkle and his men were on a mission to interdict and destroy
homemade explosive the main ingredient in improvised explosive
devices used in Afghanistan. It was supposed to be an easy mission;
with very little risk—until it all went terribly wrong.
My
history with running is easy to explain -- I had none. I never in my
life would have thought to go out and run for fun. Those people were
crazy! I had a professor in college who was a distance runner and
while she always looked fantastic and happy, I could never imagine
wanting to do that to myself. I smoked, drank, never got enough
sleep there was simply nothing about me that screamed “athlete”.
Then, in 2009, I decided to join the U.S. Army. I'm very
competitive, and always have been. So when I finished college and
being a soldier became my next goal I figured I'd better start
running.
Truth-be-told, I knew very little about what being
an officer in the Army would entail, but I wanted to be the best.
Like most Americans, I thought of the fearsome basic training as
some kind of physical gauntlet for which I would have to be as
strong as an ox and as fast as a cheetah just to make it through.
Where drill sergeants hover over trainees barking orders creating a
world of chaos. My competitive spirit would drive me to succeed,
which would lead me to put myself on a crazy regiment of five mile
runs in the Texas sweltering summer heat, punctuated with bouts of
push-ups and sit-ups until I could barely use my arms or laugh
without being in pain--and absolutely no cigarettes. I wanted to be
a soldier...not a female soldier...but a soldier.
When I arrived
at basic training I was shocked to find out that I wasn't expected
to be an iron-woman of any kind. In fact, just being somewhat
prepared physically seemed to impress the drill sergeants, as it was
so far from the normal trainee, whose first day of exercise seemed
to be the day they got off of the bus at Fort Jackson, S.C. That is
the sole job of a drill sergeant...to break down the trainees
physically and mentally to mold them into soldiers, ready to defend
our nation.
After 10 days of training, we prepared to take
our first Army Physical Fitness Test. I was prepared to run around a
15:30 2-mile, which is the Army 100-percent mark for a 22-year-old
woman. The course consisted of three laps for a total of a two mile
distance. The whistle sounded and we took off. By the time that we
passed the first round of time keepers, they were visibly staring at
me and talking--which only made me wonder if I was doing something
wrong. At the beginning of my second lap, the company commander, the
scariest person to an Army basic trainee, stepped up and pointed at
me so hard that I slowed to a stop with a quick "Yes, Sir?" "No, no,
keep running!" was all he said. By the time I hit my third (and
final) lap; all of the drill sergeants were cheering me on and
calling out my running number. At some point, I noticed that in a
class of more than 200 people, there were only about five males in
front of me, but honestly, I was not thinking about anything but
being able to breathe again once I crossed the finish line. Once I
got close enough to see the clock, I could scarcely believe it at
all! It said 13:05! That couldn't be right, could it? By the time I
crossed the line, my time was 13:17 and my commander was asking me
my name ... which is unheard of! I have always been competitive, but I
never dreamt it would give me this kind of exhilaration. After that
test, I was affectionately dubbed as the fast girl, a title which
still follows me around today.
A couple years of Army
service pass by, and I think of myself simply as good at running,
though not as the coveted title of runner. I concentrated on fast,
short running, which was what I would be tested on ... never running
more than about four miles at a time. My theory was that you could
endure any misery for a measly two miles, but I would still not have
categorized running as “fun.”
Eventually, like most folks in
the Army over the last 12 years, my time came to deploy to
Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. As a deployed
staff officer, I worked 12 or more hours a day, seven days a week ...
imagine Groundhog Day, but with much more dust and really bad food.
Running became my outlet, the only thing that was keeping me sane
and helping me pass the time. Once, when a soldier moved my running
log, you would have thought they were cuddling a grizzly bear cub
and I was its angry mother with the way I snarled at him. I just
couldn't stop running every day without exception; it was my release
from the world around me. I felt like I would explode if I didn't
get out on the road...well, out on the mud trail.
In April of
2011, I volunteered for a new initiative that the U.S. military was
implementing in the fight in Afghanistan, adding women onto combat
teams. This idea arose because Afghanistan is an extremely
conservative society where foreign men are not allowed to look at
women, let alone touch them while searching them. This created a
problem for the military and terrorists quickly learned to use our
respect for their cultural norms as a lethal weapon by using women
as suicide bombers, front line attacker and any other way terrorist
could fathom in order to inflict fatal harm to soldiers. To combat
this tactic the Female Engagement Team was born.
A group of
six females began training with a great group of guys, led by 1st
Lt. John Runkle. Upon arriving I was expecting the guys to be
extremely unhappy with being forced to “babysit” females in a combat
zone; to the contrary, they were pretty receptive. From the
beginning their attitude was “So you think you want to be in the
infantry? Alright, let's see if you have what it takes,” so began
the battle drills. By the end of the first day, my knees were black
and blue from kneeling on gravel, I had cactus spikes so deeply
embedded in my palms I thought they would come out the other side.
My competitive spirit began to emerge with my challenge that I can
sprint faster in my boots, full body armor and helmet, under cover
of darkness than John could wearing only his regular uniform. The
male soldiers certainly got a kick out of that and, to his credit,
so did John.
John became a good friend in a very short
amount of time. We spent time talking about the mission in
Afghanistan overall, and what we wanted to accomplish with this new
initiative. We were very enthusiastic about our ability to make a
difference in this historically war-torn country. He told me about
his family and I told him about mine. We shared personal photos,
pictures that every deployed soldier carries somewhere on their body
at all times to remind them of what they are fighting for. John was
there for me when I got promoted and we made plans to run together
whenever he found the time free from missions. He was there to
encourage me when I thought that I wouldn't be strong enough to do
what we might to be asked to do when we went “outside the wire.” He
was always there to listen to anyone who needed him and to provide
his quiet, but strong support ... that was what everyone loved about
him.
Then disaster struck. One “ordinary” mission changed
the lives of countless people. By the time I got the news, nine
people were dead and counting. We had no names, we had no details,
all we knew was they were OUR GUYS. Words cannot possibly describe
the feeling of despair when your first thought is “God, I hope it's
not my friends” and then the sickening feeling hits you that
everyone on that mission was a friend, or just a good guy, or
someone that helped train and encourage you, and who had all been
willing to fight beside you and guard your life with theirs on
previous missions. Then the waiting set in.
Due to the age
of technology in which we live, names of deceased soldiers cannot be
released to anyone before the family members are officially
informed, as one ill-timed comment on Facebook could cause
irreparable harm to a multitude of people. So no one went online, no
one made phone calls. After five hours of waiting, I couldn't take
it anymore. I changed into my workout uniform and I walked out. Some
people looked at me as if I were crazy, others eyed me with
disdain—how could you think about running at a time like this. All I
knew was that it was the only thing that made sense, the only thing
that I could possibly imagine doing. I started running with no plan
or direction, and didn't stop till my phone buzzed, three hours
later with four ominous words: we have the names.
Hearing
the list of names was like nothing more than being repeatedly
punched in the face ... hard. Not only were the guys from our platoon,
they were from our team, all six of the guys that we had worked most
closely with, who had personally trained us and taken us out on our
first mission. My friend, John, took a wrong step while radioing for
help for his already wounded men. Words cannot describe the
devastation, the un-realness of it all, nothing could...so I just kept
running. I ran two more hours that night, before finally breaking
down in the sand and crying till I ached.
By the time that
the Internet blackout was lifted and I logged back into Facebook to
talk to my family, I saw a post on my wall from John. The day before
he died had been my birthday, which no one pays much attention to in
Afghanistan and the last thing he had done as he was going to bed
before his final mission was to leave a note on my wall. I never
even saw it till after his memorial service. Several weeks passed,
and I still couldn't heal. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. People
kept telling me that they were so happy that none of us females had
been on that mission ... and I wanted to slap them. What made my life
worth any more than those who had sacrificed theirs? Why did it have
to be them, and why was I still standing here? There were no answers
for any of these questions to be found. So, anytime I felt the tears
coming on, I would run—dark glasses would hide the tears and as far
as the red face, well, I was running ten miles in 110-plus-degree
heat and dust, no questions would be asked.
As time passed,
things began to become okay again. When I couldn't make sense of the
senseless tragedy, running helped me to not have to think of it for
hours, and then mercifully pass out when I hit the pillow. Running
helped me to realize that it was okay to go on living after your
friends died, it became therapeutic.
I started off small by
signing up for small 5k races that the USO put on for the troops.
These are great events that help boost morale and allow us to
“escape” mentally for a while. I began to smile again when I
received my first gold medal. Five weeks later was the Fourth of
July 10k race that my unit put on to boost morale. We all showed up,
decked out in red, white and blue and began running to extremely
patriotic music being blasted out over the desert.
Realization that I was now a runner complete, I began to look for
longer runs to compete. On October 11, our brigade ran a ‘shadow'
Chicago Marathon, a really great event sponsored by the Chi-town
marathon and volunteers. People who had run in August of that year
donated their T-shirts and even their hard-earned medals so that
deployed soldiers could have the chance to feel a part of the
ever-coveted ‘running community'. If any of you are reading this,
know that it meant the WORLD to us. In 40 days, I went from someone
who had never voluntarily run more than five miles in a stretch to
taking third place in my gender in a 13.1-mile event. I was
ecstatic. I hung my medal in my room, I begged someone to send me
their old Runner's World magazines, and I knew that I was
permanently hooked.
It has been a little over a
year-and-a-half since that day, and I have competed in 22 registered
races, medalling in some and just being happy to be a part of
others. I have run in Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Chicago,
DC, New York, Indiana, Miami, Brazil, Australia and Afghanistan. In
May 2012 I ran my first 10 mile race—a tryout for the Fort Campbell
Army Ten Miler Team—placing second and making the team. After six
months of training, I represented the 101st Airborne Division in the
famed Army Ten-Miler in Washington, D.C. finishing with a time of
68:48—I was shooting for 70 flat. Four days later, I took an Army
Physical Fitness Test and finally achieved my goal: running the Army
two mile in under 13 minutes (12:29)—scoring 100-percent on the
Army's male score board. A week and a half later, I ran my first
marathon in Savannah, Georgia, with a time of 3:30—qualifying for
Boston on my first try.
In such a short time, I have learned
so much about running—and ultimately, about myself. I've learned
that I can run a 7:30 mile until I choose to stop. I've learned that
going downhill can injure far more than going up one. More
importantly, I've learned how to cope with disaster. I've learned
that life extremely short and you better make every step count—as I
know all too well how each one might be my last. I've learned that,
while non-runners think we are crazy because we run, some of us are
running to literally keep from going crazy. I've learned that I
never want to stop racing. I've learned that I can be injured.
Through running, I have met so many people ... people who have
become my friends and confidants, but whom I never would have met
otherwise. I've learned from them to admire running in all its
forms, from the 18-year old guys who can sprint an eight minute two
mile, to my 43-year-old colleague who was so in love with running
that she wouldn't give it up even when doctors were begging her too
slow down due to injuries.
Most of all I've learned that we
all run for one reason or another and to never judge. Some run for
the exhilaration, some to forget their overwhelming pain and some to
remember those we love who have fallen. It was a long road... but now
I can say I am a runner.
Courtesy story
via 159th Combat Aviation Brigade Public Affairs
Author's preference to withhold name
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2013
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