By Rachael Tolliver

Editor/writer

Accessions Command

If she was dressed in flip-flops, tank top and skirt, hair down, strolling through the mall you might think she was any young adult starting college.

But Stephanie Patterson is not like any other young adult.

She is a private in the U.S. Army Reserve and is assigned to the 591st Transportation Company, based out of Chattanooga, Tenn., as a truck driver.

Currently the 591st is training at Camp Atterbury, Ind.

The unit is about to deploy to Iraq—where Patterson will be the only woman amid 22 brothers-in-arms. But she said she doesn’t like people focusing on the fact she is the only woman—to her she is just one of the guys, and just does her job.

And as if that isn’t enough of a challenge, the unit is not deploying as truck drivers. They will deploy as 88Ns, or Transportation Management Coordinators—something they must all train-up to do.

Additionally, she is the unit’s squad automatic weapons gunner. She racked up an expert score while training up with the unit in California.

By the time Patterson, who stands about five feet tall, said she finished her basic training in Fort Jackson, and her advanced individual training as a truck driver, it was February when she returned to her unit. And although she was due to start school in May 2008, the fact that her unit announced its upcoming deployment soon after her return meant that her education in neo-natal nursing was on hold until further notice.

Patterson, who lives 30 miles south of Chattanooga in Dalton Ga., said she joined the Army Reserve because she “wanted to do something.”

“I was just sitting around the house. My sister and I went to the mall and decided to see a recruiter there—we have a cousin who is in Iraq so my sister was thinking about joining and she’s not 18 yet,” Patterson recalled. “So we went to see a recruiter together—he won me over. He didn’t lie to me and he’s been spot-on (about life in the Army). Joining also helps with college.”

She said that joining the Army is a small departure from her normal interests because she is, “all girl” and the Army doesn’t have a female persona.