NRI
Sikh girl on US Kabul mission
CHANDIGARH,
Khushwant Singh
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 forces that consists
of over 200,000 women soldiers.
Presently on active duty in Afghanistan, Specialist
Kaur is attached with the 315th SECFOR and is
on a one-and-a-half-year mission in the war-torn country.....Full
Story
NRI
Sikh girl to join US army in Iraq
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.
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