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LJ woman to receive Silver Star
Published March 10, 2008
LAKE JACKSON — A seventh-generation Texan from Lake Jackson who joined the Army to pursue an education as a nurse will be the second female soldier since World War II to receive the Army’s Silver Star for valor later this month.
Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown, granddaughter of Lake Jackson resident Katy Brown, saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said.
After the explosion, which wounded five soldiers in her unit, Brown ran through insurgent gunfire and used her body to shield wounded comrades as mortars fell less than 100 yards away, the military said.
“I did not really think about anything except for getting the guys to a safer location and getting them taken care of and getting them out of there,” Brown told The Associated Press on Saturday at a U.S. base in the eastern province of Khost.
She started running toward the burning vehicle as insurgents opened fire. All five wounded soldiers had scrambled out.
“I assessed the patients to see how bad they were. We tried to move them to a safer location because we were still receiving incoming fire,” Brown said.
Brown told her grandmother she did what she had to do.
“She told me they were in a five-Humvee convoy and she was in the next-to-the-last one, and the last one hit an IED,” Katy Brown said. “When it did she just grabbed her bag, and jumped out and went back and started taking care of the guys and at the same time they were under ambush.”
Katy Brown said Monica instructed infantrymen on how to care for the wounded, and was able to get them safely away and into a helicopter within minutes.
“I said, ‘Monica, were you scared?’ and she said, ‘Not until it was all over, Ma Maw,’” Katy Brown said. “She said, ‘It just came natural that I got out and did what I had been trained to do.’”
Pentagon policy prohibits women from serving in frontline combat roles — in the infantry, armor or artillery, for example. But the nature of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with no real front lines, has seen women soldiers take part in close-quarters combat more than previous conflicts.
Brown, of the 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, said ammunition going off inside the burning Humvee was sending shrapnel in all directions. She said they were sitting in a dangerous spot.
“So we dragged them for 100 or 200 meters, got them away from the Humvee a little bit,” she said. “I was in a kind of a robot-mode, did not think about much but getting the guys taken care of.”
For Brown, who knew all five wounded soldiers, it became a race to get them all to a safer location. Eventually, they moved the wounded some 500 yards away, treated them on site before putting them on a helicopter for evacuation.
The military said Brown’s “bravery, unselfish actions and medical aid rendered under fire saved the lives of her comrades and represents the finest traditions of heroism in combat.”
Brown is a medic in the Army and joined when she was 17, along with her brother, Justin, who is an infantryman stationed in Afghanistan as well, Katy Brown said.
Brown graduated from high school a charter school when she was 15 and saw the military as a way to get the education she’d always wanted for free, her grandmother said.
“I’m just so excited for her,” Katy Brown said. “It just tells me what a strong girl she is. It allows her to have more of an education than just the regular, and she deserves that because she’s really a hard-working, honest, good girl and she’s not had an easy life.”
Katy Brown has worked as a volunteer with the Military Moms and Wives of Brazoria County for the last two and a half years, founder Mary Moreno said, and through that, Moreno had a chance to meet Monica Brown.
“When we met her in the summer, she came up to our office just to thank us personally for sending the care packages to her and to her fellow soldiers,” Moreno said. “She’s just an awesome, awesome person, so what an award to this wonderful young woman, who is, to us, very deserving.”
Brown will return from her 15-month deployment on April 15, her grandmother said.
Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester of Nashville, Tenn. received the Silver Star in 2005 for gallantry during an insurgent ambush on a convoy in Iraq. Two men from her unit, the 617th Military Police Company of Richmond, Ky., also received the Silver Star for their roles in the same action.
Facts reporter Erin McKeon and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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