All I Could Be

Miyoko Hikiji, a young woman from Iowa tells it just the way it was when, as a young woman in the Iowa National Guard, she was deployed to Iraq after the invasion ten years ago and discovered that the peaceful world she knew amid the Midwestern farm land had been replaced by the wind driven sand dunes of Iraq. Peace she discovered had become a pleasant and distant memory. Armed with an M16 and the equipment of the modern warrior, Miyoko was told to take her weapon into the cab of a truck, sit behind the wheel, and join a series of convoys. Each day she drove deeper into enmy territory and each night was a nightmare in the making. .It is my war story, writes Miyoko, it is part military history, part personal revelation, part therapy, the stuff of so many war stories that have become a vital part of the great American tradition. Her book is a new chapter in that great tradition: the recognition of the woman warrior in America.