In 2010, the United States Army created Cultural Support Teams (CST), a secret pilot program to insert women alongside Special Operations Soldiers battling in Afghanistan. The women of the CSTs put themselves in the line of fire to build relationships with the women of both the Afghan mountains and the tough streets of the Afghan cities. At 7:15 PM on Wednesday, November 18, 2015, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania will present a lecture by Gayle Lemmon, author and Senior Fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, based on her New York Times bestselling book, Ashely’s War. Lemmon will discuss the complexities of war, as well as tell the stories of the war in Afghanistan through the eyes of the members of the team. The talk will also cover why the Army believed women could play a unique role on Special Ops teams.
In Ashley's War, Lemmon uses on-the-ground reporting to understand the complexities of war to tell the story of CST-2, a unit of women hand-picked by the Army to serve in the highly specialized and challenging role. The pioneers of CST-2 proved, for the first time, women are physically and mentally tough enough to become part of the Special Operations community. This professional acceptance, came with the hefty price of personal loss and social isolation; the only people who really understood them were the other women of CST-2.
