When Christine Wormuth was confirmed as secretary of the Army in 2021, the importance of the moment wasn’t lost on her. “Serving in this role is a tremendous privilege and responsibility,” she said of becoming the first woman to hold the post overseeing the world’s most powerful land force.
Any concerns about her weren’t because she’s a woman, but because despite her deep roots in national security issues, she didn’t have a lot of Army experience. “She will need to gain the Army’s trust,” said Mark Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies shortly after her confirmation,
It didn’t take long for Wormuth to win that trust. “By setting an example of what’s possible as a woman in the Army, that will hopefully inspire and motivate younger women in the Army who are just beginning their careers,” she said five months later during an Army Women’s Foundation leadership symposium at the Association of the U.S. Army 2021 Annual Meeting and Exposition.
After almost two years on the job, Wormuth has moved on from discussing her historic investiture to demonstrating that women can do jobs traditionally reserved for men.
In the Army, women make up about 16% of the force, and since 2016, when DoD opened all combat arms jobs to women, hundreds of them are now serving in the infantry, armor and more.
As of Oct. 31, there were 662 women in the infantry, 1,890 in field artillery, 721 in armor, 1,057 in air defense and eight women wearing the Green Beret, according to the Army deputy chief of staff for personnel.
These numbers continue to grow. As more women join the Army, the service has adapted for them, including in 2021 authorizing “battle braids” and ponytails in uniform.
But years before these changes, women did the hard work and served notable careers, undaunted by job restrictions and grooming regulations. The desire to serve, lead soldiers and make a difference has always been stronger than the hurdles of the times.
It would fill the pages of this issue of ARMY and several more to capture the stories of all the women who have achieved trailblazing firsts in the Army’s history, but here’s a selection that offers a small glimpse.
Commanders in Combat
Retired Capt. Linda Bray: Facing Manuel Noriega’s Panama Defense Forces near their headquarters during Operation Just Cause in Panama in 1989, Bray and her soldiers fought for three hours to overpower the enemy’s control of the area—and Bray made history doing so. As commander of the 988th Military Police Company, Bray became the first woman to lead U.S. troops in combat. “Before this all started, I had always wondered what would happen,” Bray said, according to The Washington Post. “After this, in my opinion, there is no difference [between men and women]. They worked together as a team, all my soldiers.”
Sgt. 1st Class Leigh Ann Hester: After her squad leader’s Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq, Hester quickly fought back under heavy enemy fire, running toward an enemy trench line and engaging in a 45-minute firefight. “I remember getting out of my truck and hearing the bullets …. whiz by and pinging off of the concrete and puffs of dust … around my feet, and somehow, I came out unscathed,” she said. For her valor that day, March 20, 2005, Hester was awarded the Silver Star. She became the first woman to receive that award since World War II and the first to be cited for valor in close-quarters combat.
Capt. Shaina Coss: As the first woman to lead Army Rangers in combat, Coss, an infantry rifle platoon leader during a 2019 deployment to Afghanistan, draws inspiration from her career infantryman father. Though she felt generally supported by her platoon, Coss said in an interview with the West Point Center for Oral History that she had “candid conversations” with some NCOs who “fundamentally disagreed with [her] being there.” Since earning her Ranger tab in 2017, Coss said women at the U.S. Army Ranger School have become normalized, and she hopes it will trickle down through the Army and special operations community.
Maj. Kristen Griest and Maj. Shaye Haver: In what she described as “one of the highlights of my life,” Haver, a helicopter pilot, became one of the first two female soldiers to graduate from Ranger School on Aug. 21, 2015. As she prepared for Ranger School, Griest, a military police officer who later became the Army’s first female infantry officer, was motivated by the opportunity to “try to be a better leader and improve myself.”
Branch Busters
Retired Col. Sally Murphy: Drawn by the helicopters she saw in photographs from the Vietnam War, Murphy set her sights on the sky, enrolling in the Army’s aviation school at Fort Rucker, Alabama, when it opened to women. Though she was not always supported by her classmates and some of her flight instructors, Murphy became the Army’s first female helicopter pilot. Over a 27-year career, Murphy flew RU-21 and C-12 aircraft and UH-1 “Huey” and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. She retired as a colonel in 1999.
Former Sgt. Heather Wagner: The first woman to serve as a sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, Wagner earned her Tomb Guard badge in 1996, just a few years after the Army opened the assignment to women. “There is no higher honor,” Wagner said, adding, “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do for my country than to guard the unknowns.”
Staff Sgt. Katherine Barrett: During a nine-week holdover after basic combat training, Barrett decided to change her MOS from signal intelligence to cannon crew member. Barrett, a powerlifter, went through grueling physical training to prepare for 13B school. And it paid off. During cannon crew member school, Barrett loaded and unloaded 15 155 mm ammunition shells, which weigh nearly 100 pounds each, and dragged a 270-pound skid 20 meters. Barrett went on to be the distinguished honor graduate for her class. Barrett, a private first class at the time who went by the last name Beatty, became the first female cannon crew member in 2016, just a few months after the MOS was opened to women on Jan. 2, 2016. Barrett said though it was challenging, “there was a lot of positivity” from her platoon, instructors and NCOs. “Everyone treats me like a soldier, like part of the team,” Barrett said. “It’s been really awesome.”
Staff Sgt. Elena Bryan: Captivated by a video of an M270A1 Multiple Launch Rocket System firing and lighting up the sky, Bryan knew which MOS she wanted when she joined the Army in March 2014. As she developed her skills, Bryan took inspiration from her first Army mentor, and in May 2022 became the first woman in the Army to serve as am MLRS crew member instructor. “When I joined the military, the first real mentor I had was an instructor,” she said. But she didn’t have a woman she could look up to in her career field. “I wanted to be the first. I wanted to do this for females coming into the 13M world and know they have a path to follow,” she said.
2nd Lt. Anna Zaccaria: Already a successful human capital consultant at Deloitte, Zaccaria was ready to do something different, so she took on the “biggest challenge” the Army could offer: the infantry. On Dec. 16, Zaccaria became the first female U.S. Army Reserve Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course graduate to serve in the storied 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry Regiment. As a soldier in the Army’s most decorated unit, and the Army Reserve’s only combat arms unit, Zaccaria is “exactly the type of officer this nation’s Army craves—competent, courageous and dedicated to being the best,” said Brig Gen. Mark Siekman, commander of the 9th Mission Support Command.
Sgt. Cinthia Ramirez: After always getting into trouble as a private, Ramirez began to set goals and standards for herself so she could progress in her Army career. In December, she graduated from the famously challenging M1A2 Abrams Master Gunner Course, becoming the first active-duty woman to accomplish the feat. “Mistakes shouldn’t stop you from wanting to be a better person,” she said. “So, just because we as females might fail the first time we try, it doesn’t mean we stop. We have to keep going and pushing.”
Retired Chief Warrant Officer 5 Donna Foli: In 1962, Foli left the Army after three years of service. But she quickly came to miss the camaraderie of being a soldier and enlisted again a year later, this time in the Army Reserve. After 30 more years of service, Foli became the first woman to be promoted to the top rank in the warrant officer corps. It was 1992, the year the rank went into effect, and Foli was a master warrant officer 4 working as chief of recruiting for technical warrant officers. Foli, who also worked as a government civilian, retired in 2002 after a combined 42 years in the Army Reserve and the Active Guard Reserve. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” she said.
NCO Power
Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Michele Jones: When Jones was selected as the ninth command sergeant major of the Army Reserve in October 2002, she became the first woman to serve as the senior NCO for any of the Army’s components. The Army is a “great equalizer,” Jones said in an Army interview. “Women … engage with the enemy just like any other soldier would.” For Jones, her focus has always been taking care of soldiers and accomplishing the mission, she said. “I’ve never deviated from that, and I know in my heart … that’s why I’ve been extremely successful in my career.”
Command Sgt. Maj. Veronica Knapp: When Knapp became the senior enlisted leader for the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) on May 27, 2021, she was the first woman to serve as the top NCO for an Army division. A career military police soldier, Knapp enlisted in 2000. “It is the honor of my life to stand here today among some of the greatest leaders, soldiers and civilian workforce in the Army,” Knapp said at her assumption of responsibility ceremony.
Reaching New Heights
Christine Wormuth: Appointed Army secretary in May 2021, Wormuth is the first woman to serve as the service’s top civilian. She came to the Army after a 25-year career as a civilian in and around DoD, including in the policy office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. She also was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and director of the International Defense and Security Center at the Rand Corp., where she was a frequent writer and speaker on foreign policy, national security and homeland security issues.
Gen. Laura Richardson: As commander of the U.S. Southern Command, Richardson is the first Army woman to lead a geographic combatant command. She also is the second Army woman to reach the four-star rank. Commissioned as an aviation officer, Richardson previously was commander of U.S. Army North. During her tenure as deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Forces Command, Richardson served as acting commander, the first woman to lead the Army’s largest command. She also was deputy commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, the first woman to serve in that capacity in a U.S. Army maneuver division.
Lt. Gen. Jody Daniels: Serving as chief of the Army Reserve and commanding general of the U.S. Army Reserve Command since July 2020, Daniels is the first woman to lead a major Army component. With more than 35 years of active-duty and Army Reserve service, Daniels previously was assistant deputy chief of staff for Army intelligence at the Pentagon and director of the Intelligence and Knowledge Development Directorate at the U.S. Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany. In her civilian career, Daniels was director of advanced programs for Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratories and led the defense contractor’s Contextual Systems Laboratory. She also was a manager and engineer in the company’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Retired Gen. Ann Dunwoody: Dunwoody, who retired in 2012, is a woman of firsts. She is the first woman in U.S. military history to reach the rank of four-star general. She is one of the first women to complete the U.S. Army Airborne School and attend the 10th Special Forces Group Jumpmaster School. She also was the first woman to command a battalion in the 82nd Airborne Division; she was Fort Bragg, North Carolina’s first female general officer; and she was the first woman to command the Combined Arms Support Command. “My journey was more about leadership than gender,” Dunwoody said during a 2016 forum. “All of the good leaders I served with, all of the good leaders I looked up to, they all held themselves to a higher standard and encouraged their subordinates to do the same.”
Retired Maj. Gen. Laura Yeager: After three years in command of the California National Guard’s 40th Infantry Division, Yeager retired in July as the first woman in the Army to command an infantry division. Commissioned in 1986, Yeager was a UH-60 Black Hawk medevac helicopter pilot. In 36 years of service, she served as deputy commander of the 40th Combat Aviation Brigade during Operation New Dawn in Taji, Iraq, and commanded Joint Task Force North. “This is the best assignment of my life, and it’s such a joy for me to be able to leave this command and retire feeling like I’ve had the best job that I could ever have,” Yeager said about her final assignment.
Opening Doors
Retired Lt. Gen. Nadja West: In December 2015, West was promoted to lieutenant general and sworn in as the 44th Army surgeon general. She was the first Black woman in the Army to attain the rank and the first Black Army officer to hold the position. It wasn’t her first “first,” though. Earning her third star made her the highest-ranking woman to have graduated from West Point. In 2013, when she was promoted to major general, West became the Regular Army’s highest-ranking Black woman and the first Black two-star woman in Army medicine. “One of the things that I tell people is just believe that you can, and then don’t sell yourself short or don’t take yourself out of the race before you even start running,” West said in a 2017 interview with CNN.
Retired Maj. Gen. Tammy Smith: When Smith was promoted to brigadier general on Aug. 10, 2012, she became the first openly gay general officer in the Army. It was barely a year after the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was repealed, and her wife, Tracey Hepner, pinned her star. But the Army was unable to recognize the couple as family until 2015, when same-sex marriage was federally recognized. Commissioned as a quartermaster officer in 1986, Smith navigated her Army and Army Reserve career in partial secrecy, careful not to reveal her sexual orientation. Her last assignment was in South Korea as deputy commander for sustainment of Eighth Army. “My military identity is the strongest identity of all these other intersections in my life,” Smith said after her 2021 retirement. “I wasn’t afraid to take the hard jobs or to put in the extra hours to ensure that things got done. The reward I got is that people recognize a hardworking, competent officer.”
Capt. Simone Askew: In August 2017, Askew became the first Black woman to be selected first captain of the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Serving in the highest position in the cadet chain of command, Askew was responsible for implementing a class agenda, leading the corps through the academic year and acting as a liaison between the corps and the school’s administration. In an interview with Time magazine, Askew said she never viewed her race or gender as a roadblock or a leg up. “While it’s great to see headlines of me being the first, it’s also true that I wasn’t chosen to be the first,” she said. “I was chosen to be the first captain.”