Jane, We Hardly Knew Ye Died

LT. EMILY J. T. PEREZ, 23, a West Point graduate who outran many men, directed a gospel choir and read the Bible every day, was at the head of a weekly convoy as it rolled down roads pocked with bombs and bullets near Najaf. As platoon leader, she insisted on leading her troops from the front.

Two weeks ago, one of those bombs tripped her up, detonating near her Humvee in Kifl, south of Baghdad. She died Sept. 12, the 64th woman from the United States military to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Eight died in Vietnam.

Despite longstanding predictions that America would shudder to see its women coming home in coffins, Lieutenant Perez’s death, and those of the other women, the majority of whom died from hostile fire (the 65th died in a Baghdad car bombing a day later), have stirred no less — and no more — reaction at home than the nearly 2,900 male dead. The same can be said of the hundreds of wounded women.

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