Discountedle for the price of 12. 95 with shipping. That is cspan. Org first ladies. If you are a middle or high school student, we want to know what the most Important Congress issued should address next year. 100,000 dollars in total prizes read the deadline is january 20. Next, Women Veterans of the iraq and afghanistan wars share experiences. They talk about their personal decisions for entering the military. Some dangers being countered in war zones, how they use skills during a deployment, and their transition from military to civilian life. This was hosted by the near Public Library as part of a sneering veteran history series. It is one hour 40 minutes. Id like to thank everyone for coming out today. This is the third and final Panel Discussion we of posted here. Havee honored to incredible individuals to share their stories on the stage. Seems toussion celebrate the complete story. Veterans tell their own stories, civilians another veterans can learn from them and begin to engage in more meaningful dialogues. You will seem, more information about our project. Oral history the oral history itself is an opportunity for anyone to share their story in exactly the way they want to share it. I am looking forward to listening to more interviews with veterans for this project. I see many familiar faces in the audience for people who have been interviewed for this project or have interviewed others. I would like to thank the Women Veterans and families that work for hosting this event with us and providing incredible resources and programs for Women Veterans. Could you stand up for a moment . Shes back there. Ok. I encourage you all after todays discussion to talk to her and ask her about the resources she has for veterans around the city. Shes raising to work with. Shes amazing to work with. I went to introduce you to our moderator this afternoon. We worked to make sure the panel was collaborative. Asking all of the veterans on our panel what questions they want us to ask and what they would like us to stay away from. Which questions have you been asked quite often and which you have wanted to be asked but rarely ever are. Maggie is an independent filmmaker and a cultural anthropologist based in new york city and her move recent or most recent film talks about direct movements in iraq and it won the center for documentary award and was broadcast in the pbs series, independent lens in 2008. Most recently, she coedited sensible politics, the visual culture of nongovernmental lack of is him published by zone books in 2012 and we are honored to have her moderate panel so now i would like to invite her to give a few opening remarks. Thank you. I would like to start by thinking alex kelly in the new york Public Library for inviting me to moderate today. Its a real honor to be on the same stage with people who have served in the post9 11 conflict in iraq and afghanistan. My connection to this issue is as a filmmaker. We made a film that we started working on in 2005 and finished in 2008 about a group of army women who served in the sunni triangle and were sent out with allmale infantry units to help deal with some of the problems arising when they were going into homes and in countering iraq he women and children, civilians. Iraqi women and children. We saw this as important historical lack or is in an ongoing action of the transformation to a fuller gender integration. At this time when we were making the film, very Little Information was available about what was going on in terms of what the women were doing. The stories at the women told us were primary sources of information about the new way that women were being used in iraq and the defector combat integration taking place. Since then, a new generation of women in combat veterans have emerged. They have come home from the conflict and this generation including the women on the panel today have organized and are changing the narrative and the policies that affect military women and Women Veterans. They are raising Critical Issues that the military needs to address including Sexual Harassment and rape. They express themselves and their writing, memoirs, poetry, artwork and are visible in radio, television, and film. With that, i would like to get started and have the opportunity to have them tell more of their stories. I will introduce each panelist briefly and we will start with the questions. Nicole goodwin, down at the end, and listed in the u. S. Army in 2001. She served as a supply specialist and was deployed to iraq in july 2003 for five and a half months. When she returned to the bronx she was one of the first Homeless Veterans and was featured in the documentary, when i came home, as well as many news programs. She lives in new york city where she is raising her daughter and writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She graduated with a ba in english and creative writing, anthropology. Teresa grew up in white plains, new york, serving as a Marine Corps Communications officer from 20022006 deploying wants to iraq and is writing a memoir about the deployment relationship and its aftermath. I read her writing at the Kennedy Center and washington, d. C. She lives and works in new york city. Rebecca did i say that right . An explosive Ordnance Disposal technician serving on act of duty from 2004 2 2008. And in the Army Reserves from 20082 thousand 10 deployed to afghanistan in 20062007 currently working towards a masters degree in International Affairs with a concentration in media and culture. Recently transitioning from the u. S. Army as a cap than having served seven years in active duty currently working as a board event manager in a Marketing Division at the New York Stock Exchange euro next. She deployed to iraq in 2007 as a Company Executive officer with the first to gauge combat team. There she managed logistics and operations for her unit to conduct intelligence operations across southern iraq. She deployed to kandahar is a unit Intelligence Officer for the 217 air calverley calgary squadron. These are the panelists. Id like to talk about your reasons for joining. Can you talk about why you chose to enlist . Ok, thank you. The reason why i chose to enlist was that it was a dire situation in my home. I come from a very impoverished dysfunctional family and there were not many options open for me to elevate myself. At that time, i was very young, 19 going on 20, and it seemed like my options had run out. Living in the south bronx and the living this impoverished life, wanting more, wanting an education and these things motivated me to search for a way out as soon as possible. Thats why i enlisted. I had a bit of an economic motivation for joining. I did it to pay for college. I did rotc in undergrad and i would not have been able to a for school otherwise. I went to m. I. T. Im from the south. Every single male in my family has been in the military. I grew up in a very religious environment where women was supposed to stay home barefoot and pregnant and that was not my thing. I decided i wanted to pursue military service. It was interesting. Long story short, i had open heart surgery so it took me almost two used to get a medical waiver and i ended up going into explosive ordinance disposal, basically the bomb squad. I did that relatively challenging job. Economics played a big role in it. Were in the middle of a war but i want a College Degree and i dont want to have any debt. There was still a patriotism factor as well, what i would refer to from the deep south in my family heritage. I think we all share the common idea of the camaraderie and that it was a chance to travel and meet a lot of new people, be taken out of my comfort zone. I joined the rotc my sophomore year of college and paid for my school. When i was a sophomore in college, 2001, post 9 11 that happened and i got a letter from the rotc department who said we would pay for school but this is an opportunity for you to serve after college. I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to be apart of something bigger than me especially after 9 11. I was searching for a way to give back and rotc was that. It was a great experience all together being on active duty. I got everything i wanted and then some. To talk about how others reacted to your decision to join up . Unit on my campus was ready at it. Its a small school, a Small Organization on campus. I was in a sorority and a lot of my sisters were just shocked when i said i wanted to join rotc. I am five foot thing and it really surprised them. We had drills, had to wear the uniform and at that time it was the olive green uniform. They referred to me as the pickle. It was a joke. I was not being made fun of. It was a term of endearment. It almost raised awareness that anyone could join the rotc if i could do it and im only five foot. I will not say i led that alone but we had a pretty good turnout next year people wanting to become a part of the program. At first it was just like, really . They could imagine me becoming a part of that organization. When i said i was in a sorority or a cheerleader in high school, people in the army were surprised by that when they saw me more in uniform. It was an interesting dynamic. You shocked them both ways. I want to have each of you talk a bit about what your m. O. S. Was, how you made the decision to choose it, and what skills you learned in the process to get down to some of the brass tacks. Could you start . I wanted to be a duty and be special forces but that was not an option. I picked what i thought was the next best thing and i went dod eod i was in the bomb squad. I always ask people if they have seen the hurt locker, and that was me except it was not all that realistic but it gives people a Vantage Point to start from. We mostly did ied missions, respond to them when people found them or after they went off. Ieds are basically roadside bombs. I did a lot of work with explosives and then i did a lot of work when we were in afghanistan because i was the only female in the unit i was assigned and attached to, i did a lot of biometric Data Collection being a woman and having the skill set i have. You are a woman and you can disarm bombs. We will bring you and you will also mingle with the local women population that all of our men can deal with. I got cross trained in a lot of the different skill sets outside of my actual job description. One of the things i do miss a blowing stuff up. Its awesome and fun. I miss the challenges, everyday something different. You never knew what youre going to get yourself into. I relayed it honestly to be a policeman or a firefighter because theres a lot of downtime followed by a lot of weve got to go. Get your stuff and lets hit the road. One of the ironies about being in afghanistan and in the bomb squad is doing my actual job was not the most restful. Driving through the mountains was the most stressful. Driving a 20 ton vehicle on Mountain Pass with a 600 foot drop to your righthand side. Please, just get me there. I can deal with whatever i need to when i get there but i have to get there first. There were a lot of interesting contradictions and ironies associated with my position but about a. M. 20042008, there were about 50 women in the whole field in the army. Very infrequently did you ever see another woman who was in eod so that made me an anomaly. Sometimes just doing a woman in the military can be an anomaly in and of itself but its even more isolating in a sense which is challenging. I really enjoyed my job and i kind of miss it sometimes. It would be nice to make something go boom every once in a while. You were in a team of how many . Cliques teams of three to four. You were assigned to different locations. Most of the time he would send a whole unit over but our unit, a lot of people think about companies being a couple hundred people or so. Ours was 20 people. We were very small, very handsome in. Everybody knew at everyone but we were centrally located and we would disburse so you were only with two or three people that you specifically have deployed with from your unit at any given time. It is a very different set up than what we consider to be outside of the mainstream military and we did things a little bit differently. It was a unique set up at the time. And can you give us a sense . You would be told there might be something you need to go check out in this place and your group of three or four would be assigned that task . You never go out by yourself. You always have to have an escort. I work with Task Force Paladin, a counter ied task force. We had an Intelligence Officer and post blast analysis that would go out and collect biometric data from the actual blast site itself and then we had our team who would deal with actual ordinance or ieds that were not exploded. We would kind of sit around and wait. They were always outside doing this and all the time. We would get a call. We think weve found something. We need you to respond. You have to have an escort and a lot of times, combat engineers and military police were already out on mission and they would have to come back and get us in our two vehicles and escort us out to the site where we were in order for us to take care of what we needed to take care of. You were an Intelligence Officer. We worked with Task Force Paladin. I was not directly assigned with them but we did work with them. When i was in iraq, it was Security Force missions were the brigade and we ran convoys through the entire country starting in the south. Baghdad, back down. If there was a threat along any of the routes, they would assess those threats through what Task Force Paladin was able to preside. Indirectly, we probably supported one another. Can you talk about your training and what you did in iraq . That was my first appointment. I studied psychology in college. When i wanted to become an officer i was told that you should have a business degree and i used psychology every single day regardless of my specialty. First and foremost, i wanted to be an officer because i wanted to be a leader and intelligence happened to be the branch i chose going in. I liked intelligence because basically as a new officer, second lieutenant, i was responsible for a platoon, aerial assets. I was responsible for a 24 person platoon that operated these unmanned drones for the unit. Which part . This was seven iraq. Southern iraq. I was with a manned helicopter unit. I went in with some experience from that understanding more of the aerial respect they are and what needed to be looked at in terms of intelligence but we were in southern afghanistan during the same thing except now im dealing with pilots putting themselves at risk going out several times a day and flying helicopters themselves. These were small aircraft with two pilots, no passengers, singleengine aircraft. They were built in the 1970s and in terms of technology, it did not really improve from what was used in vietnam. It was an interesting dynamic between iraq and afghanistan and what my mission was all within the intelligence cycle. And afghanistan, where there are people flying at the helicopters during the reconnaissance . We had apaches and kyowas that went out. The difference between the two, the ability to target where as the other is the smaller craft going out not so much in an often several offensive role, but theyre looking for information, taking pictures, literally hanging their arms out. They were frequently targeted because they are small aircraft. They do not fly fast like an apache or an air hawk. It was up to my group to assess the damage to the aircraft and understand where they were being targeted and at what level. It was to identify the capabilities of the enemy so that we were protecting the ground troops. There were times when our pilots would go out every time they were directly supporting someone on the ground and often times they were shot at because they were supposed to disrupt those. Click sets interesting. Can you talk about your role . I was a Communications Officer in the marine corps. You dont get to pick. They picked for you. I saw that i had a technical degree from undergrad and they made mickey and indications officer. I worked with radio, satellite, wired telephone. I was deployed for seven months in 2004 and one of the reasons i became an officer also was the leadership asset aspect. Growing up with three younger brothers and having been a Camp Counselor was the best preparation for that ever except for in iraq with machine guns. The main role was to be on a base which did get mortared and lay cable underground. This was before the marine corps had a lot of multichanneled communication between different bases. Within our own base, we had to make sure all of the telephone, cable, and the fiberoptic was the difference. My marines were really hard working. They would go out there and dig trenches to lay cable underground. We would get the entire company, 200 marines, to help us out. They took out all of the old iraqi telephone wires and replaced it with 30 kilometers of cable all total through the base. Then we would get a mortar and the cable would you cut and then the repair marines would have to go repair it. Its being in charge of the whole cycle but i work with a lot of fantastic people. Thats great. Nicole . My story is a story of misdirection. I wanted to be a journalist, actually. The recruiter told me that i could not make the cut. I did not get the proper schooling to enlist as to get the journalism slot. I was like, what do you guys have to offer. He mentioned a few other moss, and then he mentioned supply, and i was like, well, i have retail experience. I have office experience. Supply and garrison versus supply during a deployment is really two different atmospheres, different tribes of stressors, whereas when i was and garrison in germany, it was a lot more