She slung an M-16 rifle on her shoulders for the
first time when she was 17. At 20, she is patrolling the streets
of Kabul.
Meet Indian-born Ranbir Kaur of the US National Guards who first
hit headlines in 2003 after becoming the first Sikh girl to join
the US armed forcesy.....Full
Story
Sacramento, March 15, 2005
NRIpress
NRI, Sikh 19-year-old India-born girl , part-time college student
from San Joaquin Valley town of Earlimart. By summer's end,
Ranbir Kaur expects to trade her textbooks for an M-16 rifle
and head for Iraq.
Ranbir Kaur (Picture by Sacromento Bee)
Ranbir Kaur (Picture by Sacromento Bee)
Ranbir Kaur joinen the California National Guard in late 2002,
two days after her 17th birthday and more than a year before
she graduated from Delano High. She got $3,000 bonus for enlisting.
The daughter of Sikh grape farmers, Kaur emigrated at age 7
from India to the Bay Area, then moved to Earlimart, a dusty
burg of 6,600, about 40 miles from Bakersfield, 70 miles from
Fresno and light-years from the kind of things that would interest
most teenagers.
"Ranbir wasn't pushy," the counselor said. "She
didn't ask like, 'Do you want to join?' The girls were like,
'Wow, you did that?' She'd just tell it like it was. It was
like the girls didn't realize they had this option."
Kaur, who works as a clerk in a doctor's office and studies
at Bakersfield College while she waits to be deployed to Iraq.
- More than 150,000 women serve in the National Guard and
Reserves
- More tha 200,000 women are on active duty in the U.S. armed
services
- An estimated 100,000 of them have served in the Iraq combat
theater so far.
- Women make up 19 percent of the Navy, 15 percent of the
Army, 20 percent of the Air Force and 24 percent of the Army
Reserve.
