043 - Ashley’s War
“If you’re the best, nothing else matters.”
Episode 043 remembers and honors 1st Lt Ashley White Stumpf with some of the people who knew her well: Brian Porter, Doug Baker and Molly Donahue. Ashley served as a member of a Cultural Support Team (CST) attached to a Joint Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan. She was killed during combat operations in Kandahar Province in Afghanistan on October 22, 2011 when the assault force she was supporting triggered an improvised explosive device.
The story of the CSTs is eloquently told in Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Lemmon. This episode is more about telling the personal stories of Ashley’s life, how she touched everyone she met and served with, and how her relentless spirit lives on through them.
Brian, Ashley’s recruiter at Kent State, recalls how Ashley insisted on a home visit to make sure that her folks and family understood and supported her in what she was already determined to do. Doug details how they enlisted and “grew up” together at Kent State as part of a tight-knit group of diverse friends. He describes Ashley constantly encouraging her team and growing into a confident leader, at home in both a sorority house and on the ROTC training field. He shares how despite her small size she consistently proved herself, and even bested him, in training -- overscoring on PT tests and going above and beyond in the gym -- forever changing his ideas of what women are capable of. Molly served with Ashley in 6th Platoon at Basic Officer Leadership Course (BOLC) in 2010 and relates how “Little White” proved herself to herself first and foremost, and also left a lasting legacy with whom she served — not just for her prowess planning water balloon raids during training (see below for video).
Ashley was commissioned in the U.S. Army as a Medical Service Corps Officer after graduating from Kent State in 2009. “She wanted to help people,” says Doug. She was assigned to the 230th Brigade Support Battalion, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, North Carolina National Guard, Goldsboro, NC. She volunteered to be one of the first CSTs serving in Afghanistan and was the first killed in action. She was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, and the Combat Action Badge. She is survived by her parents Robert and Deborah White, twin sister Brittany and brother Josh, all of Alliance, Ohio, and her husband Cpt. Jason Stumpf of Raeford, N.C.
Links:
History of Cultural Support Teams (including the recruitment poster)
Learn more about GORUCK
Operation: Water Balloons