In the final hour of America’s longest war, Marine Corps Female Engagement Teams (FETs) reemerged as a viral conversation. As in too many cases, the nation required tragedy to bring the deeds of these heroic women into the light.
When the time came to evacuate Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in Kabul, Afghanistan, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) assembled a hasty, ad hoc FET. The Marines trained for a month in the summer of 2021 to deploy at the airport’s entry gates as female search teams.
Gabby Southern, at the time the adjutant for Combat Logistics Battalion (CLB) 24, served as one of the initial officers in charge of the team when she was a lieutenant.
“I always try to be clear with people that we did not have the training going into Afghanistan that an actual Female Engagement Team would have received,” Southern said, recognizing the pioneers of FET who deployed a decade earlier. “When it was finally identified that we were deploying, several of us went to the MEU leadership and said we would need females to search people at the gates. We formed on ship in June before going to Afghanistan that August.”
On the ground, the FET divided between gates searching females and children. As the days dragged on and the crowds increased in size and volatility, the Marines stretched thin. Females from other commands on deck joined them to boost the ranks.
Among the women from CLB-24, Sergeant Nicole Gee volunteered. Her name and photograph are now tragically forever intertwined with the fatal disaster at HKIA. One of the unrehearsed collateral duties the FET undertook was to gather lost or abandoned children at improvised orphanages near each gate. Some of the most heartwarming and heartbreaking photographs from this period, including the now viral photos of Gee, are set in these locations.
By Aug. 26, 2021, mayhem surrounded the airport. Most gates shut down entirely, diverting the riotous crowd to a single entry point at Abbey Gate. Here, a team of females stood side by side with Marine infantrymen from 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, processing civilians through. Gee and Corporal Kelsee Lainhart, an intelligence specialist with 2nd Recon Battalion, stood in front of the gate conducting hasty searches on women and children before sending them through for a more detailed search. Sgt Johanny Rosario Pichardo, another volunteer from Naval Amphibious Force, Task Force 51/5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, worked outside the gate alongside them. Around 5:40 p.m., a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device. Rosario Pichardo and Gee both died in the explosion, along with 11 other U.S. servicemembers. Lainhart was gravely injured.
The actions of the FET in August 2021, though far removed in training, capability and purpose from their predecessors, show-cased to a modern audience the necessity of special female teams and the courageous, indomitable women brave enough to volunteer for them. Even in the era of integrated, gender-neutral military occupational specialties (MOSs), these warriors added to the legacy and lineage of female Marines placed in extraordinary situations throughout the global war on terror, executing a duty that only they could accomplish, and committing to it, even at the cost of their lives.
The nation previously shined the spot-light on FETs almost a decade earlier, as the women who served on the initial, namesake teams adjusted to life at home after combat. At the end of 2012, Corporal Amber Fifer found herself near the center of attention in a raging national controversy. She survived extensive wounds in Afghanistan earlier that spring. She endured month after month of surgery, therapy and recovery. Photos from her Purple Heart ceremony circulated on Facebook, amassing a terrible collection of anonymous hate. Policy at the time mandated that every Friday Marines arrive for work in their service uniform, a prospect Fifer came to dread. She saw in the mirror at home a resilient young woman and warrior, one of an incredibly small handful of female Marines wearing both the Combat Action Ribbon and Purple Heart. She stood proud. At work, however, the ribbons on her blouse felt more like a scarlet letter. Some froze speechless as their heads involuntarily swiveled to follow her. Others glared, their nonverbal barbs flying. A few had the gall to actually comment.
“What happened? You get blown up by a mayo jar in the kitchen?”
The timing of her injuries coincided with broader events that thrust her into the limelight. A group of female servicemembers sued the Department of Defense that November to lift restrictions on women serving in combat. As the latest instance of a woman who went to war, and even got shot in the process, several news outlets pummeled Fifer as the unwitting face of the movement. Who was she? How did she end up in combat? What happened to her? Did she really think women should be allowed in combat arms?
Discerning between truly open dialogue and those who simply wished to antagonize her eroded Fifer’s spirit. Answers to the controversial topics eluded her. Fifer’s recovery exhausted her time and energy. She had not yet even begun to process how she felt about her traumatic experience in Afghanistan and what it meant for her. How should she, one Marine with one experience, speak on questions so broad? The answers, she knew, lay in a combination of experience from women across American history. The most recent and compelling experiences included Fifer and hundreds more who served on the original Marine Corps FETs, or similar U.S. Army teams, in Afghanistan. These women now stood as the prime case study of how females performed in combat. Not just in a combat zone, but on the front lines.
The Marine FETs trace their lineage back to the early days of the global war on terror. U.S. forces entering Iraq collided with cultural differences from the western world. The society influenced by Islam placed clear boundaries on limiting interactions between unrelated men and women—boundaries that U.S. forces were careful to respect. Insurgents took advantage of this glaring security gap and utilized women and children to smuggle arms and contraband though checkpoints. Men in women’s clothing evaded Marines searching the crowd. As the war transitioned from invasion to stability operations in 2004 and 2005, the Corps established an all-female volunteer program called “Lioness,” for the purpose of searching women. Female mechanics, fuel specialists, admin clerks and more volunteered to leave their primary MOSs for the opportunity.
Lionesses stood side by side with the infantry at checkpoints around the country. Their presence achieved a significant boost in security and built rapport with the Iraqi people. Before the term “Lioness” was even recognized back in the States, horrific and historic tragedy struck. On June 23, 2005, a Marine 7-ton drove around the city of Fallujah at shift change, picking up Lionesses from their assigned entry control points. Fully loaded, the truck waited to return through a check-point when a suicide car bomb attacked. The explosion ignited the truck’s massive fuel tank and launched bodies through the air. Several Marines died instantly. More were killed or wounded in a subsequent ambush.
Lance Corporal Holly A. Charette, a mail clerk, and Cpl Ramona M. Valdez, a radio operator, were both part of the teams searching women and children in Fallujah that day. They became the first female Marines killed in Iraq. U.S. Navy Petty Officer First Class Regina Clark, a 43-year-old culinary specialist and Operation Desert Storm veteran who volunteered for Lioness, was also killed. Male Marines Cpl Chad W. Powell and Private First Class Veashna Muy died in the explosion, while Cpl Carlos Pineda was shot and killed trying to rescue others from the burning truck. The blast wounded 13 additional Marines. Eleven of those were women. The suicide bombing endured as the deadliest and most devastating attack against women servicemembers during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The program expanded.
In 2007, 20-year-old Cpl Jennifer M. Parcell left her role as a landing support specialist to help. She assumed her new duties on Feb. 1. One week later, on Feb. 7, an Iraqi female entered her checkpoint and detonated a suicide explosive vest hidden beneath her clothes, killing Parcell. Through her death, Parcell became the tragic face of the program and one of the reasons Lioness became a widely recognized part of the Iraq war.
By 2009, the Lioness program garnered the admiration of new recruits back home.
“When I was in boot camp, one of my drill instructors had been a Lioness,” remembered Fifer. Fifer enlisted in August 2009 at age 17 along with her older sister, both of whom attended boot camp at the same time. “At first, I didn’t really know what that meant, but I remember being so enamored, like, ‘Wow, what a powerful woman, what an incredible thing to do.’ Especially at that time, with that political climate, it wasn’t lost on any of us that we could advance in our careers and we could push ourselves, but there were limitations. We were women. We were not allowed to be in combat roles. We would always be on the outskirts of all of this. I always felt we were not as special as the men, and that was so agitating, so I took it as a challenge to do anything I set my mind to.”
“One of my drill instructors was also a Lioness,” added Saje Mrowinski, who also enlisted in 2009. “I knew Lioness was not the only thing happening where females got outside the wire, but knowing the program was specifically stood up to reach the female population and utilizing female Marines, it all sounded extremely exciting to me. You get to be a part of the fight, and that’s exactly where I wanted to be.”
Like many thousands of their male counterparts, scores of women across the nation enlisted through the mid and late-2000s. In high school or middle school, they watched the Twin Towers fall in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, followed by an exodus of friends joining up to fight. Many women joined with an open contract, allowing the Corps to select their job for them in order to get to the fleet as quickly as possible. Rather than discussing opportunities the Marine Corps could provide and the jobs available to them, some women were first handed a list of the jobs they could not do. They proceeded, undeterred.
Also, by 2009, Lionesses achieved enough success in Iraq that senior leaders sought ways to rebuild and rebrand the program in Afghanistan. Even as U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq and the pioneering Lioness program shut down, the lessons learned translated over to the new front. The new program, called FET, would be much broader in scope; more ambitious in pushing the limits of what women were allowed to do in combat.
Lionesses served the sole purpose of conducting searches on women and children. These duties were carried out primarily from static positions, co-located with male Marines at checkpoints. The primary mission of FETs would be to build rapport with the Afghan people. Searching women and children, more than half the Afghan population, played a crucial factor in adopting the new teams, but the “hearts and minds” counter-insurgency strategy formed their basis. To accomplish this goal, the new structure attached two or three-woman teams directly to infantry units in the field. FETs would be mobile, live on the same combat outposts as the infantry, patrol with the men daily and integrate into the local Afghan communities.
Initial FETs deployed in much the same fashion as Lionesses had. Women already in country were hastily assembled and plugged in where needed. The first official FET, designated 10-1, assembled volunteers at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif. They arrived in Afghanistan with little more training than the Marines already there but worked to establish themselves. Despite myriad hardships and barriers to overcome, these early FETs discovered the Afghan people largely appreciated their presence. FETs also tapped into the wealth of knowledge and influence hidden beneath the veils of Afghan women.
Perhaps the greatest challenge confronting the initial FETs was the DOD’s Combat Exclusion Policy, barring women from jobs or units assigned to direct combat. The nature of the global war on terror produced a murky definition of “the front.” Female servicemembers throughout Iraq and Afghanistan took part in numerous firefights or other combat engagements. Now, with FETs attached directly to the infantry, some lawmakers viewed their creation as a manipulation of the policy for women and an exploitation of the war’s ambiguity. By mid-2010, FETs were recalled from their outposts while senior leaders in the States debated their legality, arguing the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law. Do combat enablers, such as military police, logistics, and now FET, remain simply a support unit when directly attached and involved in combat? Or, does their mission in direct support of combat operations categorize them now as a combat unit?
In the end, FETs endured. They returned to the field, however, with restrictions in order to make them adhere to DOD policy. The Marines were not allowed to participate in infantry patrols where the express purpose was to pursue and kill the enemy. Some teams were told they could not operate at night. Most arbitrary and frustrating of all, each FET was ordered to return to the main operating base at Camp Leatherneck every 45 days for a two-day stay before returning to the field. These “resets” served simply to circumvent the policy, showing on paper that FETs were not permanently attached to the grunts.
FET 10-2 formed in summer 2010 amidst all the obstacles their predecessors were facing.
“The opportunity to be part of 10-2 came up that May,” recalled Colleen Farrell, at the time a new second lieu-tenant and air support control officer. “I didn’t really know anything about it, but it sounded incredibly rewarding and like an opportunity to be at the tip of the spear, close to the heart of the mission. There were four officers on the team, and we were really trying to just build the program. 10-1 was already in country and running into a lot of difficulties just being allowed to go out and execute their mission. So, we were trying to define what our mission would be and how to brief commanding officers of infantry battalions on how we could best help execute their mission and be a force multiplier.”
More than 50 Marines and female U.S. Navy corpsmen volunteered from around the West Coast. Saje Mrowinski was one of them. A 19-year-old open contract enlistee now stuck in a MOS she disliked, Mrowinski bucked against her command in order to create the opportunity for herself.
“I had found out about the program earlier before it was even officially released. It instantly became the one thing I wanted. I was very naive about the Marine Corps when I enlisted. I knew a couple infantry guys, one of whom was already out, and hearing their stories and seeing who they were, I thought, ‘Wow, I want to join that.’ I didn’t know females weren’t allowed in combat, didn’t know about all these laws and restrictions that would be my reality. Once I got to the fleet and learned FET could be a possibility, I immediately fought my way onto the team.”
Sergeant Sheena Adams seized the opportunity in a similar fashion. She left the Marine Corps for nearly two years after an uneventful first enlistment as a diesel mechanic. She reenlisted as a helicopter mechanic, hoping for a chance to go to war.
“Shortly after I got to my new unit, they told all the females there about the FET program. My gunny told me I shouldn’t do it since I just arrived, but I was like, ‘No, absolutely not.’ This was everything I ever wanted to do. This was the whole reason why I got back in. I wanted to do something from the front.”
Kimberly Martin’s path onto FET 10-2 proved unique, one of a limited number to be part of both Lioness and FET. She enlisted after high school into aviation ordnance, but in 2007 was offered the chance to become a Lioness. The following January, she deployed to Haditha, Iraq, for four months manning checkpoints and conducting searches. Her enlistment ended in August 2008. She left the Marines to work toward a college degree.
“I still had time in the IRR (Individual Ready Reserve) and one day I got a call from a prior service recruiter trying to get me back in. I told him I had done Lioness in Iraq and really wanted to do something similar again. He connected me with another recruiter at Camp Pendleton who signed me up to join FET as a reserve Marine.”
The women gathered at the Advisor Training Cell (ATC) at Camp Pendleton to begin their predeployment workup. A far cry from the bare-bones training 10-1 received, 10-2 underwent a comprehensive and taxing three-month program. Training included combat marksmanship, combat life-saving training, Tactical Combat Casualty Care, language courses, cultural courses, situational training exercises and final integration into the Mojave Viper combined arms exercise at Twentynine Palms, Calif. In August 2010, the FET boarded a waiting aircraft and flew to Afghanistan.
The Marines divided into pairs and dispersed to their assigned infantry units. Some groups possessed a third, their Navy corpsmen, to join them at the front. With no one but their sister by their side to count on, and little precedent of experience on which to build, each FET in Afghanistan encountered trials as unique as the individual women who comprised the teams. Factors far outside their control predestinated the influence they might achieve and the freedom with which they might operate. The topography of each area of operation (AO) and the level of violence it contained, the demographics of their local populations and the sway the Taliban held over them, the cooperation of each grunt unit; all of it dictated how the deployment would take shape. Regardless of their circumstances, the Marines embraced each challenge, battling to prove their worth and make a difference.
Working with the infantry proved the most immediate and persistent obstacle. Some teams found themselves attached to units who did not ask for them and did not want them. Perhaps, in some cases, a previous FET left a bad impression, or in others a team had never been with them. Some FETs attached to units where the grunt leadership embraced their presence and directed the Marines to do the same. In either case, the infantry companies mostly greeted each FET with hesitation. They weren’t grunts, weren’t guys and existed for a softer purpose, seemingly at odds with the infantry’s mission to locate and destroy the enemy.
“We were looked at with a lot of suspicion,” said Martin. “For a lot of guys, the attitude was that we were just there to get them in trouble.”
“One of the first patrols my team went on, our unit took us 8 miles, out and back, for no reason other than to try to break us off,” remembered Adams. “We carried all the gear, kept up, and didn’t complain. That was just the beginning. Every new squad, every new guy we worked with, you had to prove yourself over and over again. Initially, they viewed us as these girls they would have to take care of. They’d have to wait because we were not fast enough. They’d have to carry the weight because we were not strong enough. We had to do everything the same or better and never complain. We had to do extra to show that we were just as capable, if not more so, than some of them.”
The Afghan population simultaneously presented unique circumstances to evaluate and overcome. Some areas of the country were very receptive. Others, especially kinetic, Taliban-infested regions like Sangin, remained hostile. The pervading cultural attitude toward women hindered their efforts. Some men refused to speak with FETs without their heads covered by a hijab. Some berated or spit on them, refusing to let them speak under any conditions.
Amidst all circumstances, FETs learned to take advantage of their alien ethnicity. They were outsiders to the grunts, non-infantry types trespassing on exclusively male turf. They were outsiders to the Afghans, not the Marines they’d grown used to dealing with and not the same as the women within their own villages. FETs felt they existed as an apparent new “species,” a “third gender” evolved by the necessity of modern warfare. They were disdained by many on every side but also free to establish their role without precedent. They were Marines, but there to help, not to fight. Once the people understood this, trust took root. Villages welcomed their presence in a way the infantry might never have accomplished. Once the infantry accepted their presence, FETs worked with them to creatively generate success and access to places and information previously unreachable.
“We found incredible success with the infantry units that used each FET as a force multiplier and really believed in the added value that we brought,” Farrell stated. As an officer, Farrell oversaw three to five teams at a time, in addition to working with her staff sergeant as their own FET. “Even the male Afghans shared information with us that they would not share with the male Marines. We just had a different relationship and a different dynamic. And because of their strict cultural customs, male Marines were not allowed to interact with or do anything near Afghan women. Oftentimes, when we’d knock on a door and ask to speak with them, the women would be put in a completely separate room so that the male Marines could not engage with them. From a security standpoint, if you’re going to hide something in your house, you’re going to put it in the room where the Marines can’t go. Without FET, we were missing those areas and the entire perspective and information that women had. We had tremendous success gathering information on things like weapons caches or locations of improvised explosive devices that enabled us to save lives, but also, if you’re trying to do village stability operations, the women might have a very different perspective on what that village needs. By engaging with everyone, you have a better understanding of how the Marines can turn the tide against the Taliban and how we can actually help.”
Success resulted through hard-fought, tenacious persistence, but was ever accompanied by hardship, heartache and failure. The very nature of their work placed FETs at the center of a foreign culture steered by rampant gender discrimination; a culture they were neither equipped to change nor expected to change. By simply involving women into their conversations, FETs amplified their voices and supported their rights. In some cases, their work flourished. In others, the local male leadership trashed their efforts.
Martin helped build a school in one village. Beginning in a tent outside the American outpost, Martin and her partner worked with families to gather the local children. Families received constant threats from the Taliban not to work with the Marines, but the FET persisted, even finding ways to convince the local leaders to allow little girls to attend lessons. By the time Martin’s deployment ended, 15 or 20 girls were included. Watching them seated next to the boys in school became Martin’s proudest moment from her time in Afghanistan.
Simultaneously, Adams helped create a school in her AO. After nearly seven months of work, between 30 to 70 boys were in attendance four days a week. The FET worked to include girls in the school, but the men of the community refused to allow it, even beating the girls who briefly attended. The experience endured with Adams as an intensely bittersweet memory.
Additional setbacks occurred each time the FETs attached to a new infantry company. Deploying on a different schedule than the grunts, teams worked with multiple units moving in and out of country, which caused distrust among the local population.
“Every time a battalion changeover happened, things got extremely hostile again,” said Mrowinski. “All the locals figured it out quickly, and it reset all the progress you’ve made. As soon as you stepped outside the wire, that was very evident.”
Friction increased not just with the locals, but with the grunts. FETs started from scratch through each battalion changeover to reestablish bonds with the infantry squads and prove to the local population their commitments remained the same.
Through all the challenges, work, success and setbacks, FETs remained very much in combat. Their “resets” at Camp Leatherneck occurred with maddening regularity, skirting the Combat Exclusion Policy, but failing to alter their experience on the ground.
“I was being shot at on my first day in Afghanistan,” Mrowinski said. “It was just like being fully immersed into everything you ever thought might be a possibility, and now it is your reality.”
In the Nawzad District of northern Helmand Province, Adams’ FET was tasked with rebuilding relationships in Salaam Bazar after previous units razed it to the ground. Their efforts yielded no progress. On Nov. 2, 2010, after another failed engagement, their four-vehicle convoy departed the town. The second vehicle, with Adams on board, struck an IED. The blast rocked the occupants, inflicting traumatic brain injuries on each Marine and an injured ankle and broken clavicle on the gunner.
“This happened in the afternoon and there were no wreckers available,” Adams said. “We ended up in a small firefight, but things calmed down after dark. We stayed there all night. We had another firefight first thing in the morning, then the first wrecker assigned to come get us hit another IED on the way. Throughout the day, we could see black figures moving into the area. Later in the afternoon, by the time another wrecker was coming out to us, we ended up in a significant firefight taking fire from three sides. We were too close for air support, so an F-18 did a low flyover as a show of force. That gave us time to get the truck hooked up to the wrecker and pulled out. Everybody survived, but we ended up out there for about 36 hours.”
Adams was evaluated and given 24 hours bed rest. She remained in country performing her duties until the 10-2 deployment concluded. Headaches tormented her throughout that time. Over the next several years, migraines increased in frequency and ferocity until a doctor finally recommended brain surgery to relieve the pressure inside her skull. To the present day, Adams has not received a Purple Heart.
The 10-2 deployment ended in April 2011. Many of the Marines requested extensions. Seven months was nowhere near long enough. They worked tirelessly earning respect, proving their worth, improving communities and establishing themselves within their AO. Passing it all off to the next green team felt unfathomable. The FET disbanded as soon as the Marines returned to Camp Pendleton.
“When our Marines got home, we had no decompression period at all,” remembered Farrell. “Within three days, everyone went back to their original commands. These were commands who hadn’t deployed and hadn’t gone through the same combat experiences. The FET didn’t get R&R. They didn’t get the types of services that units typically get when they are returning home, either physically or mentally.”
“This was unique to FET and incredibly detrimental in many ways,” Mrowinski reflected. “Most Marines coming home from a combat deployment return with their units that they just experienced life changing events with, death, destruction, humanity at its most raw, but they have a group with which they have understanding and can process together. … Then, you have a bunch of women who just experienced things that will be questioned, downgraded and misunderstood by others once they return to their parent commands that have often not seen combat. Not to mention, the FETs had common experiences, but the only person you deployed with was your teammate, and they too would be ripped away from you in less than three days’ time as you are trying to reacclimate to being back on safe American soil. In a sense, it’s like being left behind, where most will never know what you had done or been through, and just about everyone wouldn’t believe you, as well as being told you will not get to do this ever again. It was a very profound experience.”
Responsibility shifted to II Marine Expeditionary Force on the East Coast to provide the next year’s FETs. While 11-1 and 11-2 worked up and deployed from Camp Lejeune, N.C., the ATC at Camp Pendleton prepared for 12-1, the next team they would be responsible for training. Adams and Mrowinski remained involved as ATC instructors. Farrell joined as one of the 12-1 officers set to deploy again. These three Marines, with their firsthand experience, helped evolve the training program into the most robust version it had ever seen. The three-month work-up they experienced nearly doubled, spanning from the fall of 2011 through spring 2012. Fifer and 40 other women volunteered and completed the training—perhaps the best prepared FET ever assembled and ready to go.
Broader national events conspired against the team, even as it completed the intense training cycle. In June 2011, President Barack Obama announced the final phase of his plan to withdraw from Afghanistan, to be completed by summer 2012. FET 12-1 suffered the consequences.
“Two weeks before we were set to deploy, they cut the team in half,” said Farrell, one of the team members slashed from the final roster.
Fifer remained on the team and landed in Afghanistan in March 2012. Paired with her team leader, Corporal Mallory Ortiz, the Marines attached to Weapons Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines.
“Going to Afghanistan was wild,” she said. “I just remember feeling very out of my depth. It was a whole entire social landscape that we had to navigate.”
They worked to overcome stereotypes and assumptions. Slowly, they developed relationships with the infantrymen surrounding them.
“Every single chance we got, we tried to get out on patrol. I’m sure the men we were working alongside were like, ‘Ugh, another patrol,’ and then you’ve got these two women who are super freaking jazzed to go out. We just tried to take advantage of every opportunity. Some of the guys seemed annoyed by our presence and didn’t want us there. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dogging on them. This is their job. We’re coming in and we’re creating this potentially hazardous environment for them. They didn’t know what our training looked like. They didn’t know how capable we were. They had to approach us with caution.”
At the beginning of May, the FET departed with Weapons Company’s 3rd platoon on a multi-day mounted patrol to a village in the Musa Qal’eh District of Helmand Province. They found the village evacuated except for a single family: one man with his brother, his two wives and 10 children. The Marines spent the night in a wadi below the town. The next morning, May 11, 2012, the convoy planned to return home. Fifer’s vehicle struck an IED on the way out of town, knocking off a front wheel.
“The whole patrol halted and we were just like, ‘What the hell? We were just here the day before and this wasn’t here.’ ” Fifer remembered. “Everybody dismounted and went back into the village. The infantry detained the two men from that family. To us, it was obvious they were part of this.”
The Marines returned to their vehicles as they waited for permission to bring in the men for questioning. Hours passed. The sun climbed higher, pushing the temperature well over 100 degrees. Fifer sat in the back seat of her disabled vehicle, surrounded by Marines in other seats and one standing next to her in the turret. She propped her door open, inviting a merciful breeze into the cab. Finally, battalion headquarters advised the platoon did not have enough information to detain the Afghans and to release them. Outside Fifer’s vehicle, grunts cut the two men loose. One of them ran into the poppy field next to her. He disappeared momentarily, unearthing an AK-47. He stood, swiveled and opened fire.
Fifer occupied the seat closest to the shooter. In seconds, five bullets tore through both her arms and both her legs. Another bullet struck the leg of the Marine standing in the turret. Sergeant Wade D. Wilson was outside the vehicle when the shooting began. He drew his M9 service pistol and charged the insurgent, firing as he closed the distance. He pressed ahead, even as enemy rounds struck him over and over, until fatal wounds overwhelmed him. His jaw-dropping, unhesitating actions drove the insurgent away and into the fire of other Marines, who killed him.
On the third deployment of his career, Wilson served as the platoon sergeant in charge of his platoon. He had already received meritorious promotion to private first class, lance corporal and corporal, and at the time of his death, was up for meritorious promotion to staff sergeant. For his astounding, selfless sacrifice, Wilson posthumously received the Silver Star.
“Sergeant Wilson saw what was happening and put himself between us and the shooter,” Fifer remembered. “He put himself between us, and he saved us. God, it couldn’t have been more than a minute. It was just so fast. He was really a wonderful person. I didn’t know him that well, but I was so grateful for the opportunity to know him at all. He was incredibly kind and gracious to Ortiz and I. He was so accepting of our presence, and he wanted us to be there alongside them. His support for us felt so genuine.”
Fifer was evacuated to the United States for treatment and recovery. Having hardly begun her work, leaving Afghanistan devastated her. The abrupt and unexpected ending of her deployment sadly mirrored the end of FET as a whole. The rest of 12-1 closed out their deployment in the fall of 2012. When they returned home, the entire program shut down. Adams remained assigned as an ATC instructor by that point. She was tasked to reinvent a condensed version of the FET training she had helped evolve to be utilized moving forward by MEUs preparing for deployment.
“I asked for two months to put them through everything,” Adams explained. “They told me, ‘You get two weeks.’ ”
Adams cherry-picked the most important aspects from her own experience and the feedback of other FET Marines to craft the MEU course. In April 2013, the 13th MEU assembled female Marines from its different subordinate units. Now, in addition to the rest of their predeployment training, these Marines attended the hurried FET instruction. For them, FET would look dramatically different; a subordinate, collateral duty assembled as needed, if at all, while on deployment. After barely three years in operation, the dedicated, deployable teams ceased to exist.
The women of FET returned to their MOS fields and determined their next steps. Leaders like Farrell continued advocating even after their disbandment.
“As an officer, it was very hard to ensure that my Marines received Combat Action Ribbons, which obviously affects their career and impacts them to this day if they try to get VA healthcare or services.”
U.S. Army female servicemembers witnessed similar struggles. Cultural Support Teams (CSTs), the Army equivalent of FET, formed in support of Special Operations on classified missions. In November 2012, Farrell joined forces with another female Marine officer and two female U.S. Army soldiers, all combat veterans, as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the DOD arguing for the repeal of combat exclusion. Their personal experiences, along with hundreds of other women in Iraq and Afghanistan, held legal standing in the case. They contended the policy was outdated, harmful and unnecessarily limiting for female servicemembers.
“I was still on active duty when I joined the lawsuit, so I had to think through those initial implications, but my instinct was that it was the right thing to do” Farrell said. “I felt, as an officer, it was my obligation to use my voice to get rid of this policy that was harming my Marines, and also harming the Marine Corps’ capability. It was incredibly challenging, but I knew it was the right decision. I was very surprised how quickly the policy was repealed.”
Less than two months later, on Jan. 24, 2013, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signed the order lifting combat exclusion. It would take several more years before women truly integrated into combat roles. Still, the effects of combat exclusion linger into present day. In November 2025, U.S. Congressmen Darrell Issa reintroduced a bill called the “Jax Act,” named after U.S. Army veteran Jaclyn “Jax” Scott. The bipartisan legislation aims to correct the service records of hundreds of Army CST members who served with Special Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but never received recognition for being in combat. The legislation would enable female soldiers access to additional disability compensation and benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs. As of this writing, the Jax Act is still pending approval and applies specifically to Army CSTs. Marine FETs who may also have gone unrecognized or misclassified are not included.
Today, the legacy of original Marine FETs and Lionesses manifests in a palpable juxtaposition of pride and sorrow.
“Having been part of FET was one of the biggest accomplishments of my life,” Fifer reflected. “I’m still so honored for the opportunity to have been part of something so impactful. Us being women in that climate was so important, and yet we were overlooked by so many. We were such a small piece of such a large picture that we just get washed out really easily. There are a lot of women who had to sacrifice a lot in order to be on these deployments and be part of something so controversial.”
Throughout her healing during the months after combat exclusion was lifted, Fifer remained an advocate for female servicemembers amidst a flak storm of discrimination. She absorbed repeated blows, some even blaming her for Wilson’s death. Her nine-year career ended when she was medically retired.
“FET was everything I ever wanted to do,” said Adams. “I got to go make a difference. I got to go be the Marine I never thought I’d get the chance to be. For that I am
thankful. But, the pullout from Afghanistan was extremely saddening. All the work that we did, all the potential we saw in communities; we should have never gone there if that’s the way we were going to treat it. People are still trying to get out because they helped us there. I know we made a difference there, it just didn’t last as long as we hoped it would. I still think about those kids.”
“Being part of Lioness and FET was probably the greatest and worst experience of my life,” Martin reflected today. “It was great because it was groundbreaking stuff, something I would never trade, and definitely changed the way I deal with people today. The whole Afghan withdrawal though, seeing the way it went down, just made me feel like the biggest fraud. We told these people, ‘We’re here to help you, here to support you, here to make your lives better. Don’t be afraid of the Taliban, you can stand up for yourself.’ That’s not true at all anymore. It makes you feel like a failure. You made these promises that ultimately weren’t kept, and now who knows what’s going on over there. I think about those little girls. They’re grown women by now. What happened to them?”
What does the future hold for FET? With an integrated infantry, what roles might special female teams play in the next war? It feels inefficient and half-hearted to task a female infantry Marine with executing her primary job while simultaneously taking up the “hearts and minds” mission of cultural support on the front lines. It seems clear women will be required to perform this type of dedicated duty wherever Marines may go. For certain, there will always be inspired Marines who volunteer, standing proudly on the shoulders of the trailblazing women who came before. Their legacy endures in its impact on the entire U.S. military.
“The work that female servicemembers did in Iraq and Afghanistan directly led to the repeal of combat exclusion,” Farrell stated. “All FET members, and everyone who contributed to this mission, should be proud. It’s much broader than the individual things we did over there on a daily basis. It’s history changing, and it impacted generations of men and women in the service.”
Featured Photo (Top): LCpl Sienna De Santis and HM3 Heidi Dean, both with Female Engagement Team, India Co, 3/5, RCT 2, greet children during a patrol in Sangin Valley, Afghanistan, on Oct. 29, 2010. (Photo by Cpl David Hernandez, USMC)
About the Author
Kyle Watts is the staff writer for Leatherneck. He served on active duty in the Marine Corps as a communications officer from 2009-13. He is the 2019 winner of the Colonel Robert Debs Heinl Jr. Award for Marine Corps History. He lives in Richmond, Va., with his wife and three children.
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