The Girls Come Marching Home (female veterans of the Iraqi War)

The Girls Come Marching Home: Stories of Women Warriors Returning from the War in Iraq, by Kirsten Holmstedt (Stackpole, 2009, $27.95, 325pp)

Author Kirsten Holmstedt, who also wrote Band of Sisters. 

has put together a volume of experiences that encompass nearly all that was possible for the women who deployed to Iraq, including their post-deployment trials and tribulations. Her writing style varies with each woman in order to relay each personality and growth while lengthy chapters alternate with very short ones - a unique feature.

Both enlisted and officers' stories, from teens to their 40s, from medical personnel to convoy drivers, those who stayed in the military and those who got out or were chaptered out sometimes for medical reasons, and all the branches, particularly the Marines. The reader truly gets the flavor of what they might expect from women in combat for the first time: their bonding and closeness with each other and with the males in their units. Gender didn't matter: the mission came first. And yet, sexual misconduct does occur and did and is not always dealt with appropriately. Some even came from  broken families and discovered a new family in the military.

This reader especially found the EOD chapter fascinating (explosive ordinance destruction/disposal, the locating and disarming of mines and IEDs (improvised explosive devices). You will find a book that you simply can't put down, especially in the middle of a chapter. And  you will them want to read Band of Sisters and Soul Survivors: Stories of Wounded Women Warriors and the Battles They Fight Long After They've Left the War Zone.