The following article first appeared in Rolling Stone in May of 2004. It is written by Osha Gray Davidson. I received permission from Mr. Davidson to reprint the article here to include in my series of "Native Americans in the U.S. Armed Forces". Due to the length of the article, it will be divided up into seven parts. To read the article in its entirety, please click on the link provided at the end of the article. Thank you. Phyllis Doyle Burns

A Wrong Turn in the Desert - Part Three
By Osha Gray Davidson
Rolling Stone, 27 May 2004

Southeastern Iraq. 21 March: 2200 hours
By nightfall, the 507th had fragmented into two groups. The lighter and faster-moving vehicles led by Capt. Troy King, the commanding officer, continued on to the next position – code-named Lizard. The heavy trucks, some now in tow, were hours behind. Piestewa’s Humvee was designed for this terrain. But Dowdy was responsible for making sure the stragglers got to Lizard safely, so their Humvee didn’t reach the position until late afternoon.

Only King and his driver were waiting for them. The main convoy, and the rest of the 507th, had left two hours earlier. The supply company was now at half-strength, deep in hostile territory, without the protection of the forward battalion.

King organized a miniconvoy, with his vehicle in the lead and Piestewa driving Dowdy near the rear. Just after sunset, thirty-three soldiers in sixteen vehicles set off for Highway 8. Piestewa was exhausted. They all were. None of them had slept in thirty-six hours, time they had spent doing grueling physical labor. Trying to catch up to the main convoy, King attempted a shortcut across the desert. It got bad fast. After a few hundred yards, a truck would bog down in sand. They’d pull the vehicle out, repair it and start up again – until another truck got stuck and the process began all over again. They reached Highway 8 at 12:30 a.m., March 23rd. It had taken five hours to travel nine miles.

But now they were on a highway, code-named Route Blue, and made good time. In a half-hour they reached the intersection with Route Jackson, their intended route. For reasons still not fully understood, King mistakenly believed he was supposed to continue on Route Blue. The military had established a checkpoint at the intersection to prevent any mistakes. But the main convoy had passed by hours before and the checkpoint was all but deserted. Instead of turning left on Route Jackson, King led the 507th north on Route Blue – directly toward the city of Nasiriyah.

Lori joined just about every sports team there was in Tuba City – which says as much about the lack of things to do in Tuba City as it does about her love of athletics. The town’s unemployment rate rarely dips below twenty percent, and nearly one in four families lives in poverty – three times the national average. On cold mornings, smoke curls from the chimneys of hogans and ramshackle trailers. Broken-down cars adorn dusty yards, stray dogs with washboard ribs prowl unpaved streets, and a guy with beer breath hustles quarters outside McDonald’s at ten o’clock on Sunday morning. The closest movie theater is in Flagstaff, seventy-five miles away. Ask local kids what they think of the town, and you’re likely to get a two-word reply: "It sucks."

Like most other kids in Tuba City, Lori felt the push of a stunted economy and the pull of other places. In high school, eager for new experiences, she joined the Junior Reserve Officer Training Program. No one was surprised when she became the commander. She was no gung-ho super patriot, but she loved the physical challenges and the camaraderie. As a junior, her unit was scheduled to attend its first-ever statewide finals, taking part in a physical-fitness competition. The day before the event, Lori dislocated her shoulder in practice. Determined not to let her comrades down, she managed to do more chin-ups than any other woman, winning the women’s overall competition.

By the beginning of her senior year, Lori was looking beyond high school. Neither of her parents went to college – her mother is a secretary and her father does maintenance in the local schools – but Lori wanted that degree. She was looking at different colleges when she ran into another obstacle. She discovered she was pregnant.

There aren’t many job options on the reservation, and even fewer for girls who are poor, pregnant and seventeen. College was put on hold. Lori married her boyfriend and had two children, but the marriage fell apart. She wound up living with her parents in the small but comfortable trailer where she was raised, feeling trapped and desperate. She hated taking things for free, even from her family. So she left her kids in the care of her folks and enlisted in the Army.

Part four of this story will be printed May 9, 2008