Genesee Community College Student Veterans of America

Meet the first woman in the U.S. Army to earn a Silver Star for combat valor: Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester. Ambushed by enemy forces in Salman Pak, eastern Iraq, o...n March 20, 2005. With enemy fire peppering the convoy, the 23-year-old sergeant directed her gunner to send MK19 rounds downrange into a ditch containing more than a dozen heavily armed insurgents. Hester then dismounted her vehicle, lobbing rounds from her M203 grenade launcher and tossing two fragmentation grenades into the trench line before storming the area on foot. Joined by her squad leader, Sgt. Hester quickly cut through two additional trenches, personally killing three enemies to her front in close-quarters combat with her M4. With the irrigation ditches cleared, a cease fire was called. Forty-five minutes of sheer pandemonium had transpired. Twenty-seven insurgents lay dead, six wounded, and one captured. Every member of Hester’s unit survived. This excerpt was extracted from Militarytimes.com Read the full article here: https://www.militarytimes.com//this-sergeant-became-the-f/