Posted on 01/03/2004 3:17:45 PM PST by Pokey78
Since she was last home two years ago, Ashley has flown her F14 Tomcat on more than 200 hours of combat missions in two wars. She talks to Martin Bentham about life as a 'Top Gun' - and what she will do next.
The Christmas tree lights are flickering in the living room of her parents' home in Surrey as Ashley, a former British public schoolgirl, recalls her momentous year.
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"They were shooting at my aircraft, so I had to pay attention, move out of the way and not think about the possible outcome," she says in a matter of fact way. "They were firing Sam missiles - you can see those launch because they are very bright - and triple-A anti-aircraft fire. There was a lot there, so the missions are very intense.
"You obviously get nervous, there's a big adrenaline rush before you go over hostile territory, but it's what we train for, so we fly in and fly out and get back as quickly as we can."
It is hardly the usual festive season conversation, but then 29-year-old Ashley, a lieutenant with the United States Navy, is hardly a typical Home Counties girl. Since she was last home two years ago, she has flown her F14 Tomcat - the aircraft made famous by Tom Cruise in the film Top Gun - in two wars, carried out more than 200 hours of combat missions, and spent a year at sea on aircraft carriers.
Ashley (her surname cannot be disclosed for security reasons) was raised in Britain from the age of five months, and attended Sevenoaks school and university in London before moving to America in 1997 to become a pilot.
Day after day in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, her task was to fly missions lasting between five and seven hours to drop satellite or laser-guided bombs on enemy targets - dodging retaliatory fire - before returning to her carrier to catch a few hours sleep before starting again.
It was a worrying time for her family, as her mother, Carolyn, admits: "Watching CNN and seeing anti-aircraft fire going up towards the planes is not very good when you know that your daughter is in one of them."
Last week as Ashley sat in the village where she grew up, the dangers of war seemed remote. It was her first visit home since the summer of 2001 and she was determined to make the most of it. She has had a hectic schedule since arriving two days before Christmas; visiting the local pub where she used to work, tucking into her favourite English foods (scones, chicken and ham pie, and Cadbury's chocolate) and seeing a local prayer group, who met regularly to pray for her safe return.
"It's been so good to be back," she says. "I wanted to do the traditional British things, so I've been to Stonehenge in the cold and wet, been back to my local pub for some beers, and we've had lots of family and friends round.
"I've kept in touch with my friends through e-mail and phone calls, but since the last time I was here some of them have changed their jobs, boyfriends . . . there's a lot to catch up on. Our lives are very different now, very diverse, but it's very nice to be back.'
Ashley's job has been the talk of the village. "When the family go to parties the subject tends to come up quite quickly, and at the drinks party we had on Boxing Day everybody wanted to talk to Ashley about what she's been doing,' says Carolyn.
She and her husband, Ray, a consultant in the oil industry, come from Louisiana but moved to England in 1975, soon after Ashley's birth. Ashley stresses that, despite the controversy over the Iraq war, the family's friends have been supportive. She, herself, has no doubt that both wars were necessary."There is controversy, people have their different opinions, but the job needed to be done," she says.
"My British friends were very much for it. I was in London yesterday, and outside Parliament there are still banners and stuff like that. War is never pretty, but you never go to war unless the place gets so bad that it's required. When you constantly hear bad things, like US soldiers dying, then people start asking why are we there? Catching Saddam has been a very big boost to morale and shows that we are still doing a good job and that we are getting somewhere."
With her long brown hair, and wearing a roll-necked jumper and jeans, rather than the combat overalls she wears at work, it is hard to imagine Ashley as a war pilot. Even on board ship, she strives to retain her femininity; a hard task given the heat, grime and cramped conditions of a carrier with more than 5,000 crew members. Her cabin, shared with three other women, is filled with "smelly lotions and potions" and photographs of her family and her cat, Herbie.
There is no doubt, though, that Ashley has the resolute nature that any fighter requires. She knows that the bombs she drops kill.
"It is a very distant, non-personalised war in an aircraft. You don't see the devastation that it causes, although you know it happens. But we are out there to do a job. It's a short-term problem for a long-term goal, that's what we are trying to do. A lot more people would die if we weren't there."
Ashley, who is nicknamed "Mumbles" by her American colleagues because of her English accent and vocabulary emphasises that great efforts are made to avoid mistakes. "You don't just fly in and drop a bomb, you fly in and check, check, check, and then drop. If you are not sure you don't drop. You will never be faulted for doing that," she says.
In Iraq, all of her combat missions were at night. Her carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was based in the Mediterranean, and her task was to fly through Turkish air space to hit targets across northern Iraq, including Saddam's home city of Tikrit.
One mission took her to within sight of the capital. "I saw Baghdad at dawn below me," she says. "It was the place that ever since the first Gulf war people had been talking about, it was the place that this was all about, and, personally and professionally, to see it when I was on a combat mission was huge."
For Ashley, her days at sea, and probably her days of combat, are almost over. In April, three years of being based on carriers ends and she will move to a shore posting. She hopes to stay in Norfolk, Virginia, her present base, perhaps teaching rookie pilots.
With only four years left of her contract, Ashley is also beginning to think about life outside the armed forces. She declines to say much about her private life - beyond admitting that she is "working on a special someone - he's American and he's very nice" - but admits that the prospect of motherhood appeals.
"Down the road I would like to have a family and all that stuff," she says. Her mother interjects with a smile: "A calmer career would be nice.".
Despite her hope that Ashley will now pursue a less dangerous life, Carolyn, who restores china and breeds budgerigars, has justifiable pride in her daughter's achievements.
"She needed an action job," she says. "She wouldn't have been able to sit at a desk. I have always wanted my children to follow their dreams and Ashley has certainly done that. It has been very stressful and we do a lot of worrying, but we are very proud of her and she has achieved an enormous amount."
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Did she marry her brother? Don't you have to stay in Louisiana for that?
If you look at the results of the World Aeorbatics Championships, you will see that women handle a plane at high G at least as well as men.
Killer instinct? If you don't think some women have it, you haven't been in the bars I've been in.
So9
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