Major Mary Jennings Hegar was doing something she wasn't officially allowed to do.
Posted by Christopher Blackwell on November 8, 2025, 4:17 pm
The Inspireist · Follow enortpoSsdt1 t3leYic056lh0635ia6utue6h066A0M s 15yr9faatd:fa
July 29, 2009: Her helicopter was shot down. She was bleeding from shrapnel wounds. She climbed onto the skids of a rescue chopper—exposed to enemy fire—and kept shooting. The military said women weren't allowed in combat. She sued them anyway.
Major Mary Jennings Hegar—"MJ" to everyone who flew with her—was doing something she wasn't officially allowed to do.
She was flying into combat.
It was July 29, 2009, in the mountains of Afghanistan near Kandahar. The call came through the radio: three American soldiers pinned down by Taliban fighters, taking heavy fire, bleeding out in the dust.
They needed immediate evacuation or they would die there.
MJ was co-piloting an HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter—a medevac bird designed for exactly this kind of mission. Her crew included her pilot, a flight engineer, and a pararescueman. They'd flown dozens of rescue missions together.
But this one would be different.
The landing zone was hot—military speak for "actively being shot at by people trying to kill you." Taliban fighters had the high ground. They had RPGs. They had heavy machine guns. They knew a helicopter was coming.
MJ knew it too. And she flew toward it anyway. As they descended toward the wounded soldiers, the world exploded.
Bullets ripped through the helicopter's windshield. The distinctive crack of AK-47 rounds punching through metal filled the cabin. Shrapnel from an RPG tore through MJ's right arm and leg. Blood immediately soaked through her flight suit. Pain screamed through her body—the kind of pain that makes people freeze, shut down, go into shock.
MJ's hands stayed steady on the controls.
"I can still fly," she told her crew, her voice calm despite the chaos erupting around them. The helicopter touched down just long enough for the pararescueman to sprint out, grab the wounded soldiers, and pull them aboard. MJ provided covering fire through the open door while her crew worked.
Seconds felt like hours. Every moment on the ground was another chance for an RPG to turn the helicopter into a fireball.
They lifted off. They'd done it. The wounded were aboard.
Then the fuel tank exploded.
Not a Hollywood-style explosion—but a critical hit that meant the helicopter was dying mid-air. Power dropped. Control systems failed. The Pave Hawk was going down whether MJ wanted it to or not. She fought the controls, trying to guide the crash, trying to keep them from slamming into a mountain or flipping over or breaking apart completely.
The helicopter hit the ground hard.
Everyone survived the impact. But they were no longer in a flying ambulance—they were sitting ducks in enemy territory, surrounded by Taliban fighters who knew exactly where they were.
MJ and her crew grabbed their rifles and set up a defensive perimeter. They were injured, outnumbered, and pinned down with wounded soldiers who needed immediate medical attention.
For what felt like an eternity but was probably minutes, they held their ground. Returning fire. Protecting the wounded. Waiting for rescue. Then they heard it: the distinctive sound of OH-58 Kiowa helicopters—smaller, faster, used for reconnaissance and attack. Two Kiowas had diverted from another mission to extract MJ's crew.
But there was a problem.
Kiowas are tiny. Two-seaters. There was no way to fit everyone inside.
The most critically wounded went into the cockpits. The rest of the crew would have to hold on—literally—to the outside of the aircraft.
MJ was still bleeding from her arm and leg wounds. She'd just survived a helicopter crash and a firefight. Any reasonable person would have been in shock.
She climbed onto the skids. The external platforms on the sides of the helicopter, normally used for maintenance, became her seat. She strapped in as best she could, rifle in hand, exposed completely to the wind and enemy fire.
The Kiowa lifted off.
And that's when MJ saw him: a Taliban fighter, about seventy yards away, raising his weapon, aiming at the helicopter.
At her.
She was hanging from the side of a moving aircraft, wounded, exhausted, and she did what she'd been trained to do.
She raised her rifle, braced it against the helicopter's frame, and fired.
The Taliban fighter went down.
MJ kept her rifle ready, scanning for threats, until the Kiowa reached safety and her crew could finally get medical attention.
Every single person—wounded soldiers, helicopter crew, everyone—made it home alive that day.
For her actions, Major Mary Jennings Hegar received the Purple Heart for wounds received in combat and the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor, one of the military's highest honors for extraordinary heroism in flight.
But here's the thing: according to official U.S. military policy in 2009, MJ wasn't in combat.
Because women weren't allowed in combat.
The "combat exclusion policy" officially barred women from serving in ground combat units or certain combat aviation roles. Never mind that women like MJ were flying rescue missions into active firefights. Never mind that they were getting shot, returning fire, and earning valor awards.
Officially, they weren't in combat. They were just "attached" to combat units or performing "combat support."
It was bureaucratic nonsense designed to maintain a fiction that women weren't already doing exactly what MJ had done.
And MJ was done pretending.
In 2012, she joined three other female service members in a federal lawsuit against the Department of Defense: Hegar v. Hagel, challenging the combat exclusion policy.
The lawsuit argued what MJ had proven in Afghanistan: women were already serving in combat, risking their lives, and earning recognition for valor—but they were being denied career advancement and opportunities because the military refused to officially acknowledge their service.
The Pentagon fought the lawsuit. They argued that lifting the ban would compromise unit cohesion, that women weren't physically capable, that allowing women in combat would damage military readiness.
MJ's response was simple: "I've already been in combat. I've got the bullet wounds and the medals to prove it."
In January 2013—partly because of lawsuits like MJ's, partly because of mounting evidence that the policy was indefensible—Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that the combat exclusion policy would be lifted.
All military occupations, including ground combat roles, would be open to women.
It took until 2016 for the policy to be fully implemented, but the change was irreversible. Women can now serve in infantry, armor, special operations—every role the military offers. Not because bureaucrats decided to be progressive, but because women like MJ proved they'd already been doing the job.
MJ wrote a memoir about her experiences called Shoot Like a Girl (2017). The title comes from an insult she heard throughout her career—"you throw/shoot/fight like a girl"—turned into a badge of honor.
She ran for Congress in Texas in 2018 and 2020, bringing her military experience into the political arena, advocating for veterans and service members.
But when people ask MJ about that day in Afghanistan—about hanging from a helicopter, bleeding, shooting at enemy fighters while exposed to fire—she doesn't talk about courage or heroism. She talks about her crew.
"I wasn't thinking about medals," she said. "I was thinking about my crew."
That's what defines a hero—not the uniform or the rank, but the heart that refuses to leave anyone behind.
MJ had every reason to give up that day. She was wounded. Her helicopter was shot down. She was surrounded by enemies who wanted her dead. But giving up would have meant abandoning her crew, the wounded soldiers they'd rescued, the mission they'd committed to.
So she didn't give up.
She kept flying. She kept fighting. She climbed onto the outside of a helicopter and shot back at the people trying to kill her.
And then she came home and fought a different battle—to make sure the military finally acknowledged what women like her had been doing all along.
July 29, 2009, was supposed to be a routine medevac mission.
It became the day Major Mary Jennings Hegar proved that heroism doesn't care about gender, that courage looks like holding on when every instinct says let go, that sometimes the most important battles aren't the ones you fight in the mountains of Afghanistan—they're the ones you fight when you come home.
MJ flew into combat when the military said she wasn't allowed.
She got shot down and kept fighting. She hung from a helicopter and kept shooting. She came home and kept pushing for change. That's not just a hero.
That's a warrior.
And her legacy isn't just the lives she saved that day in Afghanistan.
It's every woman who now has the opportunity to serve in roles that were closed to them, because MJ refused to accept that her service—and her sacrifice—didn't count as combat.
She didn't wait for permission. She didn't ask for recognition. She just did the job.
And when they told her the job didn't exist for women, she proved them wrong—with bullets, blood, and a lawsuit that changed military history.
Major Mary Jennings "MJ" Hegar. Pilot. Warrior. Hero.
And the woman who hung from a helicopter skid, bleeding and shooting, because her crew needed her.
That's the kind of hero worth remembering. ChristopherBlackwell
And now we have the likes of trump and hegseth who want to turn the clock back and put women and other ‘minorities’ BACK ‘in their place’… in order to bolster their own fraudulent and fragile egos. What a shame they are next to the real heroes, like MJ.
Quite heroic and extraordinary. Not because she's a woman, but because that situation took guts, willpower, skill, and raw courage for anyone to experience and uktimately succeed - male, female, or some other configuration.
on November 8, 2025, 4:17 pm
