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Slain MP is state's 1st female casualty
Woman had 6 weeks left on her Iraq deployment
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
BY WAYNE WOOLLEY
Star-Ledger Staff
Lt. Ashley Henderson Huff, a Montgomery High School graduate who was due to leave Iraq in just over a month, was killed by a suicide bomber, becoming the first woman from New Jersey to die in the war.
Huff, 23, was the 60th service member with ties to New Jersey to die in Iraq and is believed to be the first woman from the state killed in combat. Overall, 65 of the nearly 2,700 troops to die in Iraq have been women.
Members of Huff's family -- including her parents, Mark and Janet Henderson, and her husband, Brian Huff -- joined soldiers from her unit, the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, at a memorial service yesterday at Fort Stewart, Ga.
Brian Huff said his wife, a military police officer who was training the Iraqi police, was due to come home in six weeks. The couple had been married for 13 months, and she had been deployed for most of that time.
"All she wanted to do was come home," Huff told the Savannah Morning News. "We had so many plans and hopes and dreams for the future."
Huff moved with her family to Belle Mead in Somerset County from Baton Rouge, La., during her sophomore year of high school.
Judy and Bob Otterbein, her former neighbors on Cobblestone Court, said Huff kept a horse on a nearby farm and occasionally would ride the animal into the neighborhood, much to the delight of her younger sister, Abby.
"She was just a happy and loving girl, and her younger sister adored her," Judy Otterbein said.
When Huff graduated from high school, her father proudly told neighbors she'd decided to go to the University of Georgia. The latest update before her parents moved to Georgia was that Huff had accepted an Army ROTC scholarship.
Mark Henderson said his daughter chose military service after watching the 9/11 terrorist attacks on television at the Sigma Kappa sorority house, where she was a member.
"She was very proud of her service, but you never would have thought she was in the military," Mark Henderson said. "Her sorority had all these Southern belles, and then she'd walk in (in camouflage) and face paint."
After graduation, Huff was commissioned as a second lieutenant and chose the Military Police Corps.
Huff was assigned to the 549th Military Police Company. She was stationed in the restive northern city of Mosul, performing a mission fraught with risk, training the fledgling Iraqi police. Her duties required her to accompany the police, who are often targeted by insurgents, on their patrols.
Although women are prohibited by law from serving in units that engage the enemy as their main mission, they are allowed into a number of specialties where contact with the enemy is always possible in Iraq, a situation that has alarmed some Washington lawmakers.
Military police units perform some of the most dangerous missions in Iraq. MPs are responsible for protecting convoys and often back up ground troops on operations to hunt insurgents.
Huff was on patrol with an Iraqi police unit on Sept. 19 when a suicide car bomber pulled up alongside her Humvee and detonated the explosives. Huff was killed, and two other soldiers in her Humvee were injured
She was acutely aware of the dangers she faced.
Two months before Huff shipped out, Lt. Noah Harris, a close friend from her ROTC program, was killed during fighting in Baquba, Iraq. She fought back tears as she spoke at his memorial service on the University of Georgia campus.
"Noah made me realize how important it is to see my friends and value my relationships," Huff said, according to an account of the service in the campus newspaper.
Before Huff left for Iraq, she didn't have time to replace her maiden name with her married name on her uniform. But she had told her sister that she couldn't wait to come home and greet her husband with Huff sewn on it.
Her husband said the couple talked by phone every day. Even separated by thousands of miles, he felt their relationship was going stronger because of those conversations.
"It was a difficult thing to spend your first year on the phone, but I felt like this situation did more to bring us together than anything could," he said. "She was always so strong, the strongest person I have ever met. I feel she is helping me get through this right now."
Star Ledger staff writer Bev McCarron and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1159248751224510.xml&coll=1
Woman had 6 weeks left on her Iraq deployment
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
BY WAYNE WOOLLEY
Star-Ledger Staff
Lt. Ashley Henderson Huff, a Montgomery High School graduate who was due to leave Iraq in just over a month, was killed by a suicide bomber, becoming the first woman from New Jersey to die in the war.
Huff, 23, was the 60th service member with ties to New Jersey to die in Iraq and is believed to be the first woman from the state killed in combat. Overall, 65 of the nearly 2,700 troops to die in Iraq have been women.
Members of Huff's family -- including her parents, Mark and Janet Henderson, and her husband, Brian Huff -- joined soldiers from her unit, the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, at a memorial service yesterday at Fort Stewart, Ga.
Brian Huff said his wife, a military police officer who was training the Iraqi police, was due to come home in six weeks. The couple had been married for 13 months, and she had been deployed for most of that time.
"All she wanted to do was come home," Huff told the Savannah Morning News. "We had so many plans and hopes and dreams for the future."
Huff moved with her family to Belle Mead in Somerset County from Baton Rouge, La., during her sophomore year of high school.
Judy and Bob Otterbein, her former neighbors on Cobblestone Court, said Huff kept a horse on a nearby farm and occasionally would ride the animal into the neighborhood, much to the delight of her younger sister, Abby.
"She was just a happy and loving girl, and her younger sister adored her," Judy Otterbein said.
When Huff graduated from high school, her father proudly told neighbors she'd decided to go to the University of Georgia. The latest update before her parents moved to Georgia was that Huff had accepted an Army ROTC scholarship.
Mark Henderson said his daughter chose military service after watching the 9/11 terrorist attacks on television at the Sigma Kappa sorority house, where she was a member.
"She was very proud of her service, but you never would have thought she was in the military," Mark Henderson said. "Her sorority had all these Southern belles, and then she'd walk in (in camouflage) and face paint."
After graduation, Huff was commissioned as a second lieutenant and chose the Military Police Corps.
Huff was assigned to the 549th Military Police Company. She was stationed in the restive northern city of Mosul, performing a mission fraught with risk, training the fledgling Iraqi police. Her duties required her to accompany the police, who are often targeted by insurgents, on their patrols.
Although women are prohibited by law from serving in units that engage the enemy as their main mission, they are allowed into a number of specialties where contact with the enemy is always possible in Iraq, a situation that has alarmed some Washington lawmakers.
Military police units perform some of the most dangerous missions in Iraq. MPs are responsible for protecting convoys and often back up ground troops on operations to hunt insurgents.
Huff was on patrol with an Iraqi police unit on Sept. 19 when a suicide car bomber pulled up alongside her Humvee and detonated the explosives. Huff was killed, and two other soldiers in her Humvee were injured
She was acutely aware of the dangers she faced.
Two months before Huff shipped out, Lt. Noah Harris, a close friend from her ROTC program, was killed during fighting in Baquba, Iraq. She fought back tears as she spoke at his memorial service on the University of Georgia campus.
"Noah made me realize how important it is to see my friends and value my relationships," Huff said, according to an account of the service in the campus newspaper.
Before Huff left for Iraq, she didn't have time to replace her maiden name with her married name on her uniform. But she had told her sister that she couldn't wait to come home and greet her husband with Huff sewn on it.
Her husband said the couple talked by phone every day. Even separated by thousands of miles, he felt their relationship was going stronger because of those conversations.
"It was a difficult thing to spend your first year on the phone, but I felt like this situation did more to bring us together than anything could," he said. "She was always so strong, the strongest person I have ever met. I feel she is helping me get through this right now."
Star Ledger staff writer Bev McCarron and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1159248751224510.xml&coll=1
