First gallantry award since WW2 for US woman GI

Her "exceptionally valorous achievement", as it is phrased on her citation, highlights the growing role of women in front-line action despite a Pentagon ban on them joining combat units.

"Her actions saved the lives of numerous convoy members. Sgt Hester's bravery is in keeping with the finest traditions of military heroism," the citation reads.

Sgt Hester, whose regular job is as a supervisor in a shoe shop in Nashville, Tennessee, was deployed to Iraq last November as part of the 617th Military Police Company, a National Guard unit based in her home state of Kentucky.

At about midday on 20 March, the unit was providing a security escort for a 30-truck civilian supply convoy when it was ambushed at Salman Pak, 20 miles south-east of Baghdad by guerrillas armed with assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Gunfire and explosions erupted as the insurgents opened fire from an orchard and irrigation trenches.

Sgt Hester - a vehicle commander - led her squad of Humvee armoured vehicles straight through the line of fire and into the "kill zone" along a dirt track flanking the enemy positions, cutting off their escape route.

Spraying bullets from her M4 rifle and firing grenades from an M203 launcher, she and a colleague, Staff Sergeant Timothy Nein, 36, scrambled from their vehicles, took cover behind an embankment and then slipped into one of the enemy trenches. Their attackers were just 150 yards further along.

"It was crazy, adrenaline pumping," Sgt Hester told the Courier-Journal newspaper of Louisville, Kentucky. "You didn't have time to think about everything that was going on. It was kill or be killed."

The pair worked their way along the trench "foot by foot, step by step," with Sgt Hester personally shooting dead three of the insurgents.

"Bullets were flying everywhere," she recalled in a separate interview. "I could hear them pinging off the truck."

By the end of the 90-minute battle, 27 guerrillas lay dead, six were wounded and one captured. Three members of Sgt Hester's unit were injured.

"It was, without a doubt, one of the most significant impacts a military police company has had in this war," Captain Todd Lindner, commander of the 617th Military Police Company, said afterwards.

Six other soldiers won awards for their role in the battle, including Silver Stars to Specialist Jason Mike, 23, and Staff Sgt Nein, who praised Sgt Hester and his other soldiers for their actions. "It's due to their dedication and their ability to stay there and back me up that we were able to do what we did that day," he said.

Another woman, Specialist Ashley Pullen, a driver, earned a Bronze Star for braving enemy fire to give medical help to her critically injured colleagues.

They were presented with their medals by Lieutenant-General John Vines, the US ground commander in Iraq, during a ceremony at Camp Liberty in Baghdad on Thursday.

"My heroes don't play in the National Basketball Association and don't play in the US Open [golf tournament]," said Lt-Gen Vines. "They're standing in front of me today. These are American heroes."

The ceremony provided a morale boost to a unit in mourning. On Tuesday, one of Sgt Hester's colleagues, Specialist Michael Ray Hayes, 29, was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade near Baghdad. He was the sixth member of the Kentucky National Guard to die in Iraq and served in the 617th alongside his brother, James, and their sister, Melissa.

The Silver Star, which hangs on a red, white and blue ribbon, is the fourth highest honour in the US military, but the third highest to be awarded specifically for bravery in action. Recipients must have displayed "gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States while engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force."

The Silver Star has been earned by about 140 soldiers serving in Iraq, but Sgt Hester is the first woman in more than 60 years to have received it.

About 15,000 female troops are serving in Iraq. Since the war began, 36 have been killed and 285 wounded.

Under Pentagon restrictions, women are barred from direct combat units - that is, infantry, armour, Special Forces and certain artillery units - and from any unit smaller than a brigade, which consists of between 3,000-5,000 members.

However, they can work in back-up roles such as police, supply and maintenance units and, owing to the nature of the war in Iraq - where battle lines are blurred and guerrilla warfare prevails - more women soldiers have found themselves in close-combat situations than in any previous conflict.

"The fact is that in Iraq now, everyone is in danger," said Martha Rudd, a US army spokeswoman.

Attempts by some Republicans in the US Congress to further limit the role of female troops in Iraq were dropped earlier this year, with critics of the move - including the Pentagon - protesting that it would undermine morale and hamper military operations.

Heroines such as Sgt Hester, say supporters, are proof that women can hold their own on the front lines. She is still in Iraq, where her unit continues its work escorting convoys and assisting the Iraqi highway patrol, and intends to seek a job in law enforcement once she returns home in November.

"I'm honoured to be even considered for, much less awarded, the medal," she said, adding that it "feels great" to receive such a historic accolade. But she insisted: "It really doesn't have anything to do with being a female. It's about the duties I performed that day as a soldier. Your training kicks in and the soldier kicks in.

"You've got a job to do - protecting yourself and your comrades. I think about it every day, and probably will for the rest of my life."

The episode adds to her family's already illustrious military history. Sgt Hester's grandfather, Oran Sollinger, was awarded a Bronze Star for gallantry during the Second World War. "I'm going to tell her that I have to re-enlist now and get a Silver Star, too," the 79-year-old joked. "I am really proud of her."

Her father, Jerry Hester, of Bowling Green, Kentucky, said yesterday: "I'm overwhelmed at what she's accomplished in Iraq. It's something to be very proud of, and my wife and I are. Leigh Ann is a very good soldier.

"She played softball and basketball all through high school and she's won a lot of games. But those games didn't mean nowhere near what this medal does, and what she's done for her country."

Following in the heroic footsteps of Angel of Anzio

THE first woman to receive a Silver Star was Mary Roberts Wilson, a US Army nurse who led wounded soldiers to safety when a field hospital in Anzio, Italy, came under heavy German shelling during the Second World War.

She became known as the Angel of Anzio for her heroism in February 1944, when she and 50 other nurses remained at their posts and evacuated the injured as shrapnel ripped through the tents in which they were working.

Six nurses were among the thousands of dead in the prolonged fighting that followed the Allies' invasion of Italy less than three weeks before. Three junior female nurses also received a Silver Star.

"I was fearful but not scared," said Ms Wilson, who signed up after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. "There were so many soldiers depending on you."

Ms Wilson, of Texas, who died of a heart attack, aged 87, in 2001, also gained notoriety for shouting at Bob Hope to "get busy or get out of the way" when he made a morale-boosting visit to her hospital.

After the war she remained modest about her award and kept her medal locked in a chest.