02/08/2025
The gunner shouted, “Shut the door,” as the deadly hail of incoming machine-gun fire started raking and pinging off the Humvee. They were trapped… caught in an insurgent enemy ambush. As the .50 caliber machine gunner started pouring suppressive fire back at the enemy, Staff Sergeant Santos turned to combat medic Specialist Brown and yelled, “Let’s go, Doc.”
Monica Lin Brown, a girl from a small town, beat the odds by becoming a US Army paratrooper and a Silver Star recipient. The first women to actually receive the Silver Star were four World War II Army nurses.
Monica Brown’s Silver Star came at a time when the Pentagon policy prohibited women from serving in front-line combat roles in the infantry, armor, or artillery. But the nature of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with no actual front lines, allowed women soldiers to take part in close-quarters combat more so than in any other previous conflicts.
Growing up in a small Texas town, Monica excelled in sports, running track and cross country in high school. “Running is like meditation for me; I can just think without anyone talking to me,” said Monica.
Early on, Monica became interested in radiology through an aunt who was an X-ray technician. She found it engrossing enough to consider it as a future career. Later, an Army recruiter informed her that she could receive radiology training in the military, and they would pay for it.
A few months later, she disappointingly learned that the Army radiology program was canceled, so she enlisted in the Army as a Healthcare Specialist, which is a fancy way to say she was a combat medic.
During Basic and Advanced Individual Training, Monica met her mentor, a drill sergeant whose impact would help define who she would become in the Army. “She was high-speed and airborne-qualified.”
Her independence and strong personality set her apart. “I wanted to be high-speed like that. My drill instructor was from the 82nd Airborne Division and had that maroon beret and the Airborne patch. I knew I wanted to be like her,” recalled Monica.
After completing Airborne School, Monica was assigned to the Forward Support Company of the 82nd Airborne Division. On February 7, 2007, Private First Class Brown deployed to Afghanistan to Forward Operating Base Salerno.
At first, Monica was kept working strictly on the base. “The first actual patient I worked on was an Afghani man who had a gunshot to his leg. My reaction was, ‘My gosh, this is a real person, and these are real injuries; this isn’t training anymore.’ That’s when the switch flipped, and I think everything changed from training to me really liking my job,” said Monica.
In March 2007, a small outpost occupied by the 73rd Cavalry requested a female medic, and Monica was chosen. The outpost was little more than a cluster of tents with no plumbing or running water. The perimeter was surrounded and protected by dirt-filled walls.
Monica’s aid station was a tiny 8-by-5-foot area barely big enough to fit a stretcher. “I loved it and the challenge,” she said. She went on some resupply and humanitarian missions with Delta Troop.
To respect Afghani traditions, any medical treatment of an Afghan woman had to be conducted by a woman. Women throughout the country were also excluded from basic medical treatment facilities by the Taliban unless the facility exclusively treated women.
The Outpost Charlie Troop was running combat patrol, and in April, their other medic went on leave. US Military regulations stipulated that women weren’t supposed to be assigned to any front-line units. Still, Monica was the only medic available, and she received orders to accompany the patrol.
When Monica arrived, Charlie Troop received orders to go on a search-and-capture mission. They would be out in enemy territory for five nights. The patrol consisted of four heavily armored Humvees and one Afghan National Army pickup truck.
Having spent the night just outside the small village of Jani Khel, Charlie Troop was informed on the morning of April 25, 2007, that two Taliban insurgents lived in the town. They spent the day searching the small village and found nothing; the enemy had already fled the area.
By late afternoon, they started moving out of the village, one by one, turning off the road into a dry riverbed adjacent to it. Monica rode in the Humvee with the platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Jose Santos. She never heard the explosion, but the .50 caliber gunner on her Humvee yelled, “Two ones hit. I see smoke and a tire rolling through the field.”
The rear Humvee, with five soldiers inside, had driven over an improvised explosive device (IED) that utilized a pressure plate for detonation. Looking back, they saw the Humvee engulfed in a fireball, and its fuel tank and reserve fuel cans ignited. Monica instinctively grabbed her medical bag and her weapon and opened the door.
The .50 caliber gunner yelled down, “Shut the door,” as incoming machine-gun fire started hitting the Humvee. They were trapped in a classic ambush. The .50 caliber gunner immediately turned around and began laying a heavy stream of suppressive fire toward the enemy. Staff Sgt. Santos turned to Monica and shouted, “Let’s go, Doc.”
With Staff Sgt. Santos a couple of steps ahead of her, they ran approximately three hundred yards through the heavy silt blanketing the dry river bed. Enemy machine-gun and rifle fire chased them as they sprinted to their objective, the burning Humvee.
Four of the injured had been thrown from the vehicle; the fifth, Specialist Larry Spray, was caught inside by his boot and was on fire. Sergeant Zachary Tellier, without hesitation, entered the burning truck and managed to pull him out.
Out of breath and with her heart racing from the riverbed sprint, Monica observed that all five of the soldiers were injured. Some appeared to be going into shock, stumbling, and disoriented, while others suffered from burns and profuse bleeding caused by numerous cuts and abrasions.
Specialists Stanson Smith and Larry Spray were in critical condition. Spray had severe burns, and Smith had a severe laceration on his forehead, blinding him in a mask of his own blood.
Monica and one of the lesser injured soldiers grabbed Smith by his body armor and dragged him into the safety of a ditch fifteen yards away. Sergeant Tellier quickly assisted Spray to the ditch.
“I did not really think about anything except for getting the guys to a safer location and getting them taken care of,” Monica recalled. The other vehicles from the convoy turned around to form a crescent formation and began to return heavy fire at numerous enemy positions.
The enemy spotted the hapless soldiers hunkering down in the ditch and started dropping mortar rounds towards them. Monica threw her body over Smith, shielding him, and yelled to another soldier to cover up the other casualty as more than a dozen rounds landed around them, kicking dirt and debris into the air, adding to the chaos.
Just then if the situation couldn’t get any worse, the ammunition cache inside the burning Humvee started to cook off and explode: 60mm mortars, 40mm gr***de rounds, and rifle ammunition going off in all directions. Again, Monica threw herself over the wounded to shield them with her body.
Lieutenant Robbins, the platoon leader, moved his Humvee near the injured and was amazed that Monica had survived. Robbins later stated, “I was surprised I didn’t get killed in those exposed few minutes I was out there and Pfc. Brown had been out there for at least ten to fifteen minutes or longer.
“There was small arms fire coming in from two different machine-gun positions, mortars falling, a burning Humvee with sixteen mortar rounds in it, and chunks of aluminum the size of softballs flying all around. It was about as hairy as it gets.”
Staff Sgt. Santos drove the Afghan pickup truck over to get the wounded; he would later recall that bullets were impacting within inches of Pfc. Brown, but she steadfastly remained focused on treating the casualties. Lieutenant Robbins also commented on her calm demeanor under fire, “Pfc. Brown was focused on her patients the whole time. She did her job perfectly.”
Monica and Staff Sgt. Santos pulled Smith onto the truck while Larry Spray crouched behind the back window. Once the truck started moving, Monica dived over the front seat onto a bench in the back. She continued to work by putting pressure on the heavily bleeding laceration on Smith’s head. She held Spray’s hand, giving him comfort, as his charred body started to shake. She continued asking Spray questions to prevent him from going into shock.
Staff Sgt. Santos drove across the river and stopped behind one of the Humvees; Monica set up her Casualty Collection Point there. Smith was bleeding heavily and slipping in and out of consciousness, and Spray had extensive burns.
Monica bandaged Smith, then started IVs on both soldiers. She expertly covered Spray’s burns with gauze and put him in a hypothermia bag. She soon had them stabilized and prepped for medevac, but it was another forty-five minutes before the helicopters arrived.
Monica recalled, “When the medevac helicopter was taking off, and everything was quiet, my ears were still ringing. I couldn’t hear anything. I was walking through the field back to the Humvees, through shin-high green grass, blowing because the bird was taking off. I remember thinking, ‘Did that just really happen? Did I do everything right?’ When I got back to the trucks the guys were all hugging me and thanking me.”
Staff Sergeant Aaron Best, who served as Lieutenant Robbin’s .50 caliber gunner that day, said, “I’ve seen a lot of grown men who didn’t have the courage and weren’t able to handle themselves under fire like Monica did. She never missed a beat.”
Two days later, her superiors abruptly pulled Monica from the field. She had attracted too much attention. Specialists Smith and Spray were flown back to the US and eventually recovered from their wounds.
On March 21st, 2008, the US Army flew Monica’s brother Justin to Bagram Airbase to stand beside her as Vice President Dick Cheney presented nineteen-year-old Combat Medic, Army Specialist Monica Lin Brown the Silver Star.
The military said Monica Brown’s “bravery, unselfish actions and medical aid rendered under fire saved the lives of her comrades and represents the finest traditions of heroism in combat.”
Monica said she never expected to be in a situation like that and credits her training and instructors for her actions that day. She added, “I realized that everything I had done during the attack was just from repetitive memory.”
To read the harrowing accounts of over twenty more women heroes please check out the just released book, "Women in War" by David A. Yuzuk available as a Paperback and ebook on Amazon and most major sites.
