Realities on the ground

Veterans Day: As female soldiers die in Iraq, the push for women in direct combat gains momentum | Lynn Vincent

Spc. Micah E. Clare/U.S. Army/AP

Besides controversy, the war in Iraq has thus far generated a pair of grim and unprecedented bookends:

Lori Piestewa, Private First Class, U.S. Army, died 3/23/03. Hostile fire—
ambush.

Jessica Ellis, Corporal, U.S. Army, died 5/11/08. Hostile fire—IED attack.

Piestewa, 23, of Tuba City, Ariz., was the first American woman to die in combat in Iraq after her supply convoy fell under attack near Nasiriyah. Ellis was the most recent woman to die by the enemy's hand. The 24-year-old native of Bend, Ore., died this May when an improvised explosive device destroyed the Buffalo armored vehicle she was riding in. It wasn't her first encounter with a bomb: She had escaped another IED blast with cuts and bruises only three weeks before.