SGT Rebekah Edmondson Oral History

title:

SGT Rebekah Edmondson Oral History

creator:

Edmonson, Rebekah

subject:

Army | National Guard | Cultural Support Team (CST)

description:

Rebekah Edmonson was born in St. Louis County, Missouri and has lived in many places since then before settling in Charleston, South Carolina as of this interview. She joined the Army in 2008 and served in several operations over her time in Afghanistan. She remembers that when the attacks on 9/11 happened she was at the gym, and by the time she had gotten back to her apartment afterwards, the apartment of her Muslim neighbors had been set on fire. Although soon after the attacks she didn't feel an urge to join the military, many of her friends quickly enlisted and deployed, and seeing that eventually led her to join. Her father, sister, and grandfather all also served in the military. When she joined, she knew she wanted to work with her hands, becoming a welder and shifting towards special operations with the Cultural Support Team (CST) very soon afterwards. She got to Afghanistan in 2012, deploying as a Cultural Support Team leader, serving with different units depending on their need for support from a female service member. She would accompany teams on night missions and organize the women and children at the sites, search them, and gather what intelligence she could. Her first time out, what could go wrong did go wrong, and every step along the way she was keyed up and worried they were about to be attacked. She also didn't have another woman with her, and they had a very large group of women for her to work through. One of the women had an AK-47 hidden under her dress and she found a pistol wrapped with a baby, but she didn't think anyone intended to use them. She remembers another incident where the father of the family left his house first, and his wife behind him came out holding a gun thinking they had to protect themselves. A man in their partner unit took that as a threat and shot the father/husband, killing him instantly, and Rebekah still had to search and question the women and children afterwards, struggling to do so since she and the whole family witnessed him get killed by mistake. When they were out, their team was looking for people planning attacks based on intelligence that identifies them as enemy combatants. The height of this work was around 2012, with Rebekah often going out on multiple operations in a night and sometimes also patrols during the day. The way she was treated by men changed over her service with the CST. Closer to 2012, it was difficult for her to integrate with the Rangers she served with, with some of the younger men being told not to interact with her unless they were out on a mission. Other men treated her as a peer, so it was a mixed bag. One day while her team was on a mission, they got stuck without airlift and couldn’t have MREs dropped, so their Afghan partner unit slaughtered livestock and cooked for everyone. At first it was great, but later Rebekah realized she'd gotten food poisoning. A linguist showed her to a private area of the compound to get through her sickness. While she was working through the food poisoning, she looked over and realized she was in the room where they were stacking the dead. She stayed there, contemplating what she was doing in Afghanistan. Her next tour in Afghanistan was in 2014, and she served at Bagram Air Base. This was a much less busy period of her, going on the same sorts of missions but not as often or as far from the base. Her third deployment was in a training capacity at Camp Scorpion, running training for the Female Tactical Platoon (FTP), which she greatly enjoyed. Her fourth and final deployment was quite short and in an administrative role, helping to select and train CSTs and help them transition into their new post in Afghanistan when initially deployed. She chose not to reenlist after her second contract because she knew eventually the US would have to leave Afghanistan, and she no longer wanted to be there when inevitable disaster struck. Since then, she's been trying to make more positive impacts to right some of the wrongs on the part of the United States in the country's time in Afghanistan. Rebekah thinks that, despite some of the mess made, it is important to understand how much progress was made for women during US intervention and view it as evidence of how we can use our privilege as Americans to help others have access to opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have. Now, she works with Afghan women in the US to ensure they have all of the protections and services they deserve for their service with the military in Afghanistan. No transcript of this interview is currently available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Gill, Dennis

date:

2022-09-09

type:

Moving Image

format:

Born Digital

identifier:

1357; 2022.1357

source:

CST - FTP

language:

English

relation:

771005

coverage:

Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan)—2001-2014 | Global War on Terrorism—2001-present | Operation Freedom’s Sentinel (Afghanistan)- 2015-2021

rights:

Unrestricted