Over the past decade, a string of war movies emerged in the wake of 9/11: The Hurt Locker, Syriana, The Messenger, Green Zone, Lone Survivor, and American Sniper, to name just a few. Some have performed better than others at the box office, and many have received critical acclaim. Almost none has included portrayals of women in combat.
For the last two years I reported on a team of women soldiers recruited by special operations in 2011 to serve on combat missions alongside Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, among other special operations teams, all while the combat ban on women remained in place. When I would tell friends I was working on a story about a “band of sisters” on the front lines—women connected forever by what they saw and did at war and by the fact that America had no idea they did it—they would ask me if the story was about rape or PTSD.
Neither, I would answer. The story was about valor.
These untold stories have consequences both for how America sees its women in uniform and how they see themselves: With women mostly absent from our war stories, Americans find it hard to understand the combat their servicewomen have seen. And the women themselves are loath to explain their experience to a nation that already struggles to connect with the less than one percent of the country that has fought its wars.
[For more of this story, written by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/ent...ng-in-action/400235/]
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