Pvt. Monica Brown And The Silver Star

Private Monica Brown is only the second woman to be awarded the Silver Star since World War II. She's an Army medic who risked her own life to save two critically wounded paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan.

Under Army regulations, women cannot be assigned to frontline combat units. But, as correspondent Lara Logan reports, in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq today, that's exactly where they often end up.

Some male soldiers aren't so happy about that, including members of Pvt. Brown's own unit. But her superior officers say she is a hero - a hero who earned one of the military's highest awards for exceptional valor when she was only 18 years old.

"I mean you've been treated like a superstar, really. And you're just a kid," Logan remarks.

"Yeah. I am just a child," she acknowledges.

It all started on April 25, 2007. Brown was temporarily attached to a paratrooper unit in Paktika Province, a hostile and remote area. The unit was headed back to base after searching for weapons in a village. None of them had any idea they were driving straight into a massive ambush until a roadside bomb exploded under the last Humvee and hidden enemy fighters unleashed mortars and machine guns on the convoy.

Brown had just four months of medic training at the time, and it was her first firefight. "They stopped the convoy. And my platoon sergeant got out of the truck and said, 'Doc, let's go,'" she remembers.

Brown was the only medic at the scene.

"There was a ball of fire that went into the truck and burned all five crew members. The gunner was actually almost blown out of the turret," remembers Michael Greene, who was Brown's sergeant major with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Asked what Brown did and what was so remarkable about her actions, Sgt. Maj. Greene tells Logan, "She grabbed her aid bag, got out of the truck and made her way back to the vehicle. And through small arms fire, intense small arms fire and mortar fire."

"As I'm runnin' I see guys rollin' in the dirt tryin' [to] put their uniforms out 'cause they're burnin'," remembers Sergeant Jose Santos, who was running with Brown towards the casualties through a hail of enemy bullets and mortar fire.

Sergeant Aaron Best, a gunner in the lead Humvee, was firing back at the enemy, while Specialist Jack Bodani, only lightly wounded, managed to crawl out of the burning Humvee.

"Thought I lost my entire crew; at that point in time I didn't see anybody," Spc. Bodani remembers.

Bodani knew that his best friend, Specialist Stanson Smith, was still trapped inside the burning vehicle that was packed with high explosive ammunition. "Couldn't get him out 'cause he was tryin' to crawl in the flames. And he's disoriented and got adrenaline pumpin'," Bodani remembers.

"And he's been hit at this point, right? His head is hit quite badly?" Logan asks.

"Blood all over his face and burned skin, and his lips were messed up," Bodani says.

"The truck is carryin' the MK19, which has 40 millimeter grenades. So you're talkin' about a thousand grenades inside that truck," Sgt. Santos explains.

Santos says they all started going off.

"It sounded like firecrackers, at first," Brown remembers. "And then, it was pretty heavy after that. 'Cause you could hear all the 50 cals (calibers) going off and stuff like that."

As the firefight raged on, Brown focused on the two most seriously wounded men - Specialists Larry Spray and Smith.

"I see Smith, he's laying there, you know, he's rockin' back and forth. And I'm, like, lookin'. Like, 'Oh crap.' You know, 'He's dead.' Spray, his hands are all burned up. And his face is burned up," Sgt. Best remembers.

"And in all of this, I mean, you were never scared? Not even for a moment?" Logan asks Brown.

"I wasn't scared for my life. I was scared because I was afraid I wasn't gonna be competent and able to do my job. Because I knew the people that were hurt," Brown says.

Asked if she was afraid of failing, Brown says, "Yeah."

Brown's instincts kicked in with bullets whizzing by and mortars exploding around her. This young woman, who was not even supposed to be in front line combat, threw her body over the wounded paratroopers to protect them. "It was an uncontrollable situation," she remembers. "And I just dove over Spray, 'cause Spray can't defend himself. It's not like he can go anywhere to take cover. So, I dove over him. Make sure he didn't get any shrapnel or anything from it."

Then, while still under fire, Santos and Brown dragged the injured men into a pick-up truck. Brown once again covered them with her body as Santos drove them to an area where they could be treated.

"At first, I thought that Smith was the most critical. Because, you know, he had a laceration on his forehead. And it was pretty deep. And I didn't know if he had any brain injury," Brown says.

Smith, she says, was in a lot of pain. "Did some pain control on him at first. And then went over to Spray. I didn't have enough gauze in my aid bag to wrap up as many burns as he had. That's how bad it was. "

Brown says Spray could have died.

Asked what happened next, Brown tells Logan, "The MedEvac bird came in. And then it all hit me. You know, what had just happened. And, you know, I could've died. And those guys could've died. And I can't believe this just happened. All this stuff was just, like, rushing to me."

"And what did you do?" Logan asks.

"I threw up," Brown admits, laughing.

"I have a daughter her age and it kind of floors me at times to think about my daughter in that situation. And Monica's just a genuine and fantastic person," says Greene.

Greene and Colonel Martin Schweitzer, Monica Brown's former brigade commander, both recommended that she be awarded the Silver Star. What impressed them as much as her bravery was her modesty.

"We asked Specialist, then Private Brown, you know, 'Why'd you do it?' Just tryin' to get inside her psyche that, you know, she put herself in that kind of risk," Col. Schweitzer remembers.

Asked what she said, Schweitzer says, "Her answer was just plain as day, and looked at me and Sergeant Major like we were crazy to even ask that question. And she said, 'It's my job.' And it's just powerful, powerful."

But female soldiers are not supposed to be 'doing their jobs' in front line combat units, according to the Army's own regulations. To get around that, the Army says it temporarily attaches women to combat units, but does not permanently assign them.

"Women are not supposed to be, according to the strict guidelines, are not supposed to be…on [the] front line of combat," Logan points out.

"We do not assign our female soldiers to the infantry and the armor. We do attach female soldiers to units for a specific mission for a specific period of time, absolutely in accordance with Army policy," Schweitzer explains.

"Basically anywhere you are in Iraq or Afghanistan…is the front line," Logan remarks.

"That's a great question. Anywhere you go outside of the forward operating base you can, you know, run into the threat, or a threat," Schweitzer replies.

"The Army has very strict rules about women not being on the front line. And, I mean, there's no question that you were on the front line," Logan tells Brown.

"There is no front line in Afghanistan or Iraq. You go out on missions. Whether it be humanitarian aid or, you know, help building schools, or pulling support for another unit while they're building roads, or searching for Taliban. You go out there and you do your job. And you don't know what's gonna happen. Anything could happen," Brown says.

More than 100 American women have died so far in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 600 have been wounded and countless more, like Monica Brown, have been tested on the battlefield.

"What did you think when you heard that she covered the wounded with
her body?" Logan asks.

"It's just incredible. You just look back and you're just in awe," Schweitzer says.

"Do you think the two most critically wounded, Smith and Spray, do you think they are alive today partly because of Monica's actions?" Logan asks.

"Without a doubt," Greene says.

"Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely," Schweitzer adds.

But both of those men, Smith and Spray, declined to give 60 Minutes an interview. When we asked why, Smith said flat out women have no business being on the front line. The men who did talk to us did not feel that way, and said Brown performed as well as any man on the battlefield.

"Did you feel like, 'Okay, she can handle this'?" Logan asks.

"Definitely. Definitely," Santos says.

He says she was very calm and focused the entire time.

But these men all questioned whether Brown acted any more heroically than the men that day, and they suggested she may have been awarded her Silver Star because she is a woman.

"People ask, you know, like, 'Was she a superhero? Did she do anything, you know, super woman, super heroic?' No, she did her job," Best says. "And she did a very, very good job doing it. Now, that fact that she was 18 and, you know, a female and all, you know, that adds something to it."

Brown says she never heard any complaints from the men in the unit, and says she never asked for or expected special treatment. "I never expected them to carry my bags. I can carry my own weight. I expected to be treated like one of the guys. So, that's how I got treated, like one of the guys," she says.

"You are just like any of the other guys," she says.

"Some of the guys may not feel that way," Logan remarks.

"I've never heard any difference," Brown says.

"Her performance and her actions that day were phenomenal, they were heroic and they were properly acknowledged. Those kids are alive today. I think that says it all," says Schweitzer.

Vice President Cheney presented Brown with her Silver Star in Afghanistan, and later President Bush took time out to meet with her.

"I got really nervous before he walked in. And he sat down on the couch. And he's, like, 'So, Specialist Brown. I hear you're from Texas.' I was, like, 'Yes, sir.' I was, like, 'I actually played your hometown volleyball team in high school.' And he's like, 'Really?' And that's, kind of what sparked the conversation," Brown says.

She says she enjoyed meeting the president. "It was awesome."

Meeting the president was not something this young girl ever thought would happen to her, especially after the rough start she had growing up in a small town in Texas. She was raised by her grandmother and barely knew her parents, moving around a lot as the family struggled to get by.

She attended nine different schools growing up.

Asked if her early life was kind of unstable, Brown tells Logan, "Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I don't have a really good relationship with my mom."

Brown says she doesn't have a really good relationship because she and her mother weren't close when she was growing up. She didn't meet her father until she was 13 years old because he had been in jail for drug use and dealing.

With her father in jail and her mother rarely around, Brown's grandmother was the one who was there for her - just as she was this past summer, when their hometown of Lake Jackson threw a huge celebration in Brown's honor.

"They flew me all around town," she remembers. "And then I got to land next to the school. They threw a parade for me. They had a parade. And people are, like, 'Oh, we're so proud of you.' It's just weird for me. I don't want any special treatment. I don't even care for recognition. I don't expect any of those things. I did my job. I didn't ask for this award. You know, if I could take back that entire day I would."

Produced by Tom Anderson and Jeff Newton