Real Heroes Wear Dog Tags: Women Veterans

“We need to remind people, that the real heroes wear dog tags…” said Chaplain Scalf, Crossroads Hospice, Akron-Canton, OH.

When you think of a Veteran — a hero — what is it you see? On Veterans Day, we explored this concept in the ways that it has evolved over time.

Perhaps you see a man. It isn’t unlikely because, for the most part, this is the perception of a Veteran we’ve constructed as a society. Nearly 90 percent of Veterans, after all, happen to be men.

But what about the other 10 percent? What about the women that sacrifice their lives to our great country?

They serve, protect and experience their own challenges and deserve our recognition and support. Being deployed is daunting enough as it is.

Angela Faison, an Assistant Clinical Director at Crossroads Hospice who was activated in Desert Storm from the Army Reserve in 1991, can tell you that:

“I was 20 years old, afraid, and I just had to drop everything. I was in college, going through nursing school… To have to stop everything and report… yeah, it was pretty scary.”

Imagine that combined with being an extreme minority in the unit deployed. Ten percent.  There weren’t a whole lot of women in Angela’s unit; it was less than 20 women in a unit of 150.  Of that, she was the only woman in the unit serving as an 88 Mike (Motor Transport Operator).

Women like Angela serve, protect and experience their own challenges and deserve our recognition for it. These women Veterans can often be fighting an uphill battle in several different regards:

1. Some studies show that women are twice as likely to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) than men.

2. Their divorce rates are higher than their male counterparts – almost triple the rate.

3. According to the Pentagon, “more than one in four women who join the military will experience sexual assault during their careers.”

Women are serving and protecting their country, and according to some research, paying a higher price for it than their male counterparts.

For Angela, there were ups and downs that came along with that isolation, as you can imagine. Thanks to a strong support network, mostly ups.

“That was always kind of scary,” she says. “I was the only female, but the guys, they looked out for me. They kept me with them. We were like a family.”

Support networks in this situation, among many others, are incredibly important in terms of creating a better experience for women in the military. Because of that, and the fact that Angela had both school and a job as a nursing assistant waiting for her upon returning home, the transition wasn’t all that bad, as we foundit often can be.

It’s obvious that not all Veterans have such a smooth transition back home. Oklahoma’s Woman Veteran of the Year, Coral Porch, was able to attest to that when we spoke to her last month.

“I didn’t sleep in the family bed basically for about three or four months because of these things. All of this excess baggage I came back with,” she says.

She details her sleepless night and her struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that persists to this day. She also explains how her support system helped her overcome her struggles, particularly as a woman Veteran with a military spouse.

Her experience as a female in service is rare, but it doesn’t play out that way for most women, she notes. She describes her experience at a women Veteran support group that happened to be led by a man.

“Some of the other ladies had more of a problem dealing with men than I did,” Coral says. “I could deal with the male leadership and figures, but there were women who were much worse than I was. They wouldn’t even be in the same room alone with a male just because of the other things that they had seen.”

Predominantly male leadership, sexism and gender discrimination during service we among the challenges Coral described these women had the unfortunate experience of having to overcome.

When Angela observed other women Veteran, it was a different kind of gender-specific struggle she saw:

“The sight that I will never forget is the time when we were deployed — us because we’re a reserve unit — some of us were mothers. At the time, I wasn’t. But just to see the sight of mothers having to leave their children. That whole [experience] was just chaotic.”

Women Veterans have an entirely unique set of challenges which we must recognize in our support of them. One thing remains true through all of it: Just like it does for all of our heroes, it doesn’t mean they’re not strong:

“Just because I’m a female doesn’t mean I can’t defend myself,” says Coral. “I built a lot of strength and fortitude just because of the things that I have witnessed and was a part of — good or bad. Some people might call it tough love or tough training. I just call it they things that make me a stronger person.”

Of course, no matter how strong any of us are, Veteran or not, there is always one consistency: We need support and care from those who love us. This was something mentioned by each of the Veterans we’ve spoken to over the months for Real Heroes Wear Dog Tags.

Great support and care is integral to a happy and comfortable human experience, especially for Veterans who put their own dreams, comfort and security aside for our country. This is why Crossroads Hospice is honored to serve Veterans at the end of their lives through programs like the Veterans Recognition program, and give them the support and care they need and deserve.” 

The Real Heroes Wear Dog Tags series began in 2013. Read previously featured Veterans’ stories and learn more about how Crossroads recognizes and cares for our Veterans.

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