Blanket Party in Desert Storm - Paperback

by Darnnell D. Reese (Author), Deidra Wilson (Author)

Blanket Party In Desert Storm: From Beatdown and Spiritually Broken to Eternally Blessed is a raw, unflinching testimony of survival, faith, and the cost of saying no. As one of the only Military Intelligence soldiers-and one of the only Black women-authorized to wear the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment's combat patch, she was there. She served. She fought. But for decades, her story was erased. Speaking for thousands of women who've been silenced, this mother-daughter memoir exposes the battles Black women soldiers fought that history tried to erase-and proves that even in the darkest desert, God's hand never lets go.

At seventeen, she joined the U.S. Army to escape poverty and chase a dream of college. At nineteen, she found herself pregnant in the Saudi Arabian desert-in firing range of The Battle of 73 Easting, one of the largest tank battles in history, hiding her condition from a chain of command that had already shown her what happened to Black women who stepped out of line.

When her supervisor sexually assaulted her in the back of a Humvee, she said no-and paid the price. Transferred, isolated, and systematically punished, she dug foxholes, hauled water, and stirred burn pits full of human waste while carrying a secret that could get her court-martialed. When she tried to report what happened, she was told it would be "her word against his." That she should forget it ever happened.

But God had other plans.