Afghanistan: First Woman Soldier Killed

She was young, blond, and pretty – married in 2005. Corporal Sarah Bryant was a highly educated Pashtu-speaking member of the British Intelligence Corps. The female soldier was part of a team working with Afghan police 10 miles east of Lashkar Gar. She analyzed intercepts of enemy radio communications, coordinated with local people, and searched women for weapons. She had served in Iraq.

Sarah Bryant is also the first woman to die in the British Armed Forces in Afghanistan.

On her third tour of duty in a conflict zone, she and her three comrades died, with a fifth injured, when a device exploded and blew up her Land Rover in Helmand province near their base at Lashkar Gar, as they returned from an operation.

The number of British servicewomen killed in Afghanistan and Iraq now stands at seven. Of the nearly 8,000 British forces in Afghanistan, about 700 are female. A number of those serving in Helmand and Kandahar are members of the Intelligence Corps and fluent in Pashtu, while others are based in Kabul with a proficiency in Dari, the language of the Tajiks and Uzbeks.

In total, there are 187,060 members of the British armed forces. 9.4 percent of them, or 17,620, are female. Of those women, 3,760 are officers.

Corporal Sarah Bryant’s death revives the old arguments about whether women are suited to the battlefield. It also affirms that gone are the days when women at war were nurses, cooks, or drivers.