Good thing American girls know how to play catch!
Staff Sgt. Gina Gray, a broadcast journalist assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade, found herself in the unusual position of playing doctor, nurse and midwife to an Iraqi mother too poor to afford a trip to the hospital to give birth. "Thank god I’ve watched ’E.R.,’" was about all she could mutter as she emerged, from the building holding a baby boy. The newborn, Zuher Ahmed Mohowed, was not even an hour old.
| Good thing she didn't watch American Idol. She'd have sung them a song... |
While searching a house in Kirkuk Nov. 17, the paratroopers of Company B, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry (Airborne) were asked by the house owner not to disturb one of the rooms. Further investigation with an interpreter only revealed that there was a ’sick woman’ inside. The commander in the area, trying to be sensitive to the owner’s wishes while still wanting to conduct a thorough search, sent for the only female soldier in the area, Gray. Putting her video camera aside, she approached the house and was told to see if everything was ok in there and "oh, by the way, see if there are any weapons in the room while you’re at it."
"Explosives? Nuclear weapons? Bubonic plague..."
"Piss off! I'm havin' a baby in here!" |
"I really had no idea what to expect," Gray said. "When I went in there, the baby had just finished coming out. She, the mother, was just laying there in pain and the other women were wiping the baby down."
| "Hey! That kid wasn't in the room a minute ago!" |
"I just didn’t want all of you coming in there," she said with a grin to the male soldiers. "I didn’t want any of the tough infantry guys fainting." |