I suspected that the soldiers rarely took us seriously and were entirely confused by why two women would voluntarily subject themselves to the hardship and the dangers of the Korengal Valley. I preempted their suspicion that we, the chicks, might hold them up in the field by being overly prepared, physically and mentally. I trained religiously for assignments, I made sure I had all the gadgets I’d need in my kit to be as self-sufficient as possible, and I tried not to show fear. As on any other assignment, I wanted to blend in here and be as inconspicuous as possible. There were some troops who struggled with the rigor of the daily six-hour patrols—primarily because they were carrying dozens of pounds of ammunition—and I was sure many doubted we would be able to hold our own alongside them.
I knew from previous experience that the soldiers went on these patrols almost every day looking for the “enemy” and establishing a presence in the area; sometimes they went geared up for a firefight. Several times a week, they walked into potentially hostile places like the villages of Aliabad and Donga, a series of houses made of thin stone slabs and stacked one above another from the bottom of the valley up the mountain. The patrols sometimes lasted seven hours. The terrain was practically vertical.
For the first few weeks Elizabeth didn’t seem hindered by her pregnancy, aside from the fact that she had to stop to pee several times during the course of each patrol. After years of trying to get soldiers to overlook our gender on embeds, I cringed each time we had to ask the platoon leader, Lieutenent Matt Piosa, to hold up an entire string of troops in unfriendly villages while Elizabeth scampered off into an abandoned house or behind a tree to empty her bladder. We were also both weak and not accustomed to climbing directly uphill, especially in the thin mountain air. At home I ran almost six miles a day, and I still had a hard time scaling the slopes. I couldn’t fathom doing it with a baby growing inside me.
One day we set out for Firebase Vimoto, another army outpost that served as a strategic overwatch point. It was named after an army soldier who had been shot and killed on one of his first patrols. We set out in the morning and walked straight uphill until we got to the base, which was little more than a few firing positions and a ditch for sleeping, surrounded by sandbags. It seemed a miserable place to spend a few months. On the way back daylight faded into darkness, and we, unlike the soldiers, didn’t have night-vision goggles. Less than fifty yards from the base, Elizabeth let out a yelp, and I heard the crackle of bushes beneath her feet. She tumbled head over heels straight down the mountain.
I was close to panic. I knew nothing about pregnancy, but I guessed that any abdominal impact could be dangerous.
“Are you OK? Did you hit your stomach?” I gasped, fearing the answer.
She barely answered. We were already so nervous about merely getting home alive. The fact that Elizabeth was also pregnant was so absurd that we didn’t even know how to react.
But Elizabeth took things in stride. Sometimes she would complain that the iron plates in her flak jacket put too much pressure on her chest and belly, so I switched my lightweight ceramic plates with her outdated steel ones. And we set off on patrols as usual—she weighted down by the growing baby, I by my cameras and her cheap steel plates.
After several weeks, I left for a stint at home to spend time with Paul. Elizabeth stayed in the Korengal Outpost and continued reporting. While I was gone, she sent regular dispatches of the happenings there, careful not to reveal any tactical information, and I felt a constant, gnawing guilt for having left her alone on the embed while I regrouped and decompressed with my boyfriend. One night Elizabeth called to say that she had gone on an overnight patrol and gotten so dehydrated that she needed two IVs on her return. I knew it was time to go back. I packed a bag full of winter gear for both of us, extra protein bars, and maternity jeans for Elizabeth.
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WHEN I RETURNED, we traveled to the even more remote Firebase Vegas, which sat vulnerably on a ledge cut into the mountain and faced a wide, stunning valley. Vegas was the humble home of First Platoon. There was a roofless plywood church, some sandbags, a wooden table, and an outhouse with a very crusty copy of Maxim magazine strategically placed next to the hole in the ground that was the toilet. A few months before we arrived, the platoon sergeant had been shot in the head and killed in the space between the toilet and the living quarters. Every trek to the toilet was an ominous sprint. There was nothing to do at Vegas but eat military meals out of envelopes—MREs, or meals ready to eat—gossip, play cards, sleep, and patrol.
One day, we talked with the troops about their personal lives, why they had enlisted, what they were doing before they ended up in the middle of nowhere, in the Korengal Valley.