Photos by Sascha Pflaeging | Courtesy of the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University

Lance Corporal Layla Martinez, U.S. Marine Corps: "A lot of people see the war side of it, but you don't see people being injured, missing body parts. Even Iraqi children, babies were going in there. ... I'm pregnant. I think I'll go back out again, probably next year."

Staff Sergeant Shawntel Lotson, U.S. Army: "You have to learn how to handcuff the detainees, how to search them, tell them what to do, how to touch them, how not to touch them ... I mean, you have detainees who come through who are so scared because they don't know what's going to happen to them. You know what? We're here to do our job."

Sergeant Jocelyn Proano, U.S. Marine Corps: "I got married and had a baby. ... The mommy mentality left me as soon as we got on that bus. All of a sudden, the Marine hit me and I'm like, all right we've got combat training. I'm thinking we're going to go up there, and we're going to start shooting."

Colonel Jenny Holbert, U.S. Marine Corps (ret.): "I got to do the second fight in Fallujah as the Public Affairs Director. ... I made decisions that would impact perhaps on a global scale. In some ways, that was exciting. In some ways, oh boy, you just wrack your brain. You're trying so hard to make sure that this is the right thing to do when, in fact, you don't know."

Staff Sergeant Connica McFadden, U.S. Army: "My daughter was six months old. She lost her mom and dad for nine months going over there to fight the war ... The first time we came back, my daughter didn't recognize me or my husband. She wouldn't come to me. She just was looking at us like, 'Who are these people?'"

Captain Gabriela Ordonez-Mackey, U.S. Army: "9-11 is actually what sparked my interest in joining the military. I was at home, studying to pass the Utah Bar I said to my husband, who was in school but still active duty, 'If they're going to send you away, I'm going with you.'"

In one of the large photographs, a slender brunette in fashionable clothes peers back at the viewer. The plaque beside her photo identifies her as Sgt. Paigh Bumgarner, Virginia Army National Guard, retired. Beneath her name, in her words, she talks about the convoy she commanded in Iraq that was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades.

She describes giving the order to kill the attackers, and learning afterward that one of her own men didn't survive the confrontation. "I looked in the back, and there was my buddy completely in pieces. So I got the body bag and put him in there."

In 2006, Richmond writer Laura Browder and photojournalist Sascha Pflaeging set out to understand the realities of military life for female veterans. The images and interviews they gathered became "When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Woman Combat Veterans," 40 photographs measuring at least 30 by 40 inches with accompanying texts, now showing at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University.

Museum director Amy Moorefield said she contracted Browder and Pflaeging's show for a number of reasons. It ties into the statewide initiative "Minds Wide Open: Celebrating Women in the Arts." Holding the show at Hollins also puts it in close proximity to many school ROTC programs, and to Virginia Military Institute, which began admitting women in 1997.

The stories illuminate the military experience for women from a variety of perspectives, including balancing motherhood with soldiering and the sometimes conflicting loyalties between the family at home and the unit that becomes like a second family after deployment. "This is an extremely empowering exhibit," Moorefield said.

A book that collects the photos and stories has just been released, and a documentary film is in the works.

Capturing what's real

When it comes to women in combat, portrayals in popular culture range from 19th-century pulp novels of ladies cross-dressing to follow their beloveds into battle to modern calendar girls in camouflage bikinis wielding oversized firearms.

But these romanticized and distorted images fall worlds away from the realities experienced by the thousands of women in the U.S. military stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 220,000 women have served in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom and more than 100 women deployed in those campaigns since 2001 have died.

"Everyone had been expecting that the American public would be horrified at the idea of women dying in war," said Browder. And yet news of female U.S. soldiers perishing in combat has not sparked the anticipated outrage.

Though official U.S. military policy bars women from combat, Browder asserts that the lack of defined front lines in the recent wars renders that ban meaningless.

"More than in any previous conflict in our history, American women are engaging with the enemy, suffering injuries, and even sacrificing their lives in the line of duty," she writes in the exhibit's introduction.

The portraits show the women in casual poses, often at the military bases where they were interviewed. Pflaeging, a freelance photographer who lives in both New York and Richmond, said the idea wasn't to create artificial scenes. "It was a lot more about basically letting them be."

Pflaeging didn't take photos during the interviews, which often became emotional for the veterans, because he felt his presence would be counterproductive.

Soldiers first

When Browder and Pflaeging began the project, they had a magazine article in mind, but then Visual Arts Center of Richmond curator Ashley Kistler talked them into creating an exhibit instead.

As they started conducting interviews, another one of their original ideas went by the wayside. Browder and Pflaeging had planned to hone in exclusively on women who had been wounded in combat. But an Iraq war veteran told them, "You need to expand your focus because no one comes home from war without wounds," Browder said.

With permission obtained from all branches of the U.S. military, Browder has talked to veterans at Fort Lee in New Jersey, Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and Langley Air Force Base, student veterans at Virginia Commonwealth University and others. Browder, who has no military background, said the conversations shattered many of her own preconceived notions.

"I had thought women would dread deployment, would not want to go," she said. But many of the soldiers she spoke to described it as the high point of their lives, something they volunteered to do and looked forward to with excitement.

Also, there is a popular perception that women in the military are marginalized, but that's not how the female veterans perceive themselves. "They often saw themselves as soldiers first and women second," Browder said.

Rank often made a radical difference in how they perceived the war, as did background. The encounters Browder and Pflaeging had ranged from teen mothers who joined the military in order to better their lives to foreign nationals from countries such as Germany and Grenada who came to the U.S. specifically to enlist.

Another surprise for Browder: the loyalty women felt for their fellows and their pride in their service had little connection to whether or not they agreed with the reasons for the current wars. "There were many women who you could tell were very much opposed to the war and yet wanted to go back."

What's most important

Moorefield had a personal interest in the exhibit as well, she said. She described herself as a "Navy brat" and said she knew from being the daughter of a naval officer how military duty keeps family members from spending time at home. "When Janey Comes Marching Home" explores that dynamic from the other side.

In one particularly moving interview, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Connica McFadden discusses how she and her husband were both deployed when their daughter was six months old. "The first time we came back, my daughter didn't recognize me or my husband. She wouldn't come to me. She just was looking at us like, 'Who are these people?' "

The interviews touch on numerous hot button issues regarding women's rights and military service. U.S. Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sgt. Constance Heintz talks about being sent to Honduras as the only woman among 2,200 Marines. In her frustration, she told her superior, "You don't need to tiptoe around me. I can use a bush just like you use a bush, and if you're not going to shower, I don't need to shower either."

Retired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Jenny Holbert expressed admiration and sympathy for the Iraqi people. "They suffer so much; they don't deserve the situation they are in. They're just normal people like everybody else, and they have a horrible existence."

Holbert provides perspective on her role as the public affairs director during the Second Battle of Fallujah in 2004.

"It was probably one of the biggest events of my life, other than birthing two children," Holbert said. Compared to bringing two human beings into the world, "that's probably the next most important thing I've ever done."