ARLINGTON, VA -- The National Guard is mourning its first female Soldier ever to be killed in action.
Spc. Michelle Witmer, a military police specialist from the Wisconsin Army National Guard, died in Iraq April 9. Witmer, 20, was killed in Baghdad by an improvised explosive device and small arms attack, according to an April 12 casualty report from the Department of Defense.
Michelle Witmer and her two sisters, including twin sister Charity, from the Milwaukee suburb of New Berlin, Wis., have all been serving as Army Guard Soldiers in Iraq.
Michelle Witmer joined the Wisconsin Army Guard in January 2002 and was serving in Iraq with her older sister, Rachel, a specialist in the 32nd Military Police Company from Milwaukee. Sgt. Charity Witmer, Michelle’s twin sister, is a member of Company B, 118th Medical Battalion.
Witmer was the 17th female Soldier to die during Operation Iraqi Freedom, an Army spokesperson said. Eleven have been killed from improvised explosive devices or other forms of hostile fire.
She is the National Guard’s first woman to ever be killed in action, said Renee Hylton, an Army National Guard historian.
“The Army National Guard had eight female casualties during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, but none of them died as a result of hostile fire,” she explained.
Women were first authorized to serve in the Guard as commissioned nurses in 1956, Hylton said. Women were authorized to join the Air National Guard’s enlisted ranks in 1968 and to enter the Army Guard as enlisted Soldiers in 1971.
Witmer was among 70 Guard members who had been killed or died of other causes, as of April 14, while taking part in the global war against terrorism since April 2002.
She was also the first member of the Wisconsin National Guard to be killed in action since World War II, said Lt. Col. Tim Donovan, the state public affairs officer.
Witmer was remembered in mid-April as a dutiful Soldier whose heart went out to the Iraqis, especially to the children she encountered on patrols.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Laurel Walker paid tribute to Witmer in an April 12 column based on a conversation last December with the young Soldier who came home to spend an early Christmas with her family.
"… she described the affection she felt for the children, like the half-dozen Iraqi boys surrounding her in a picture, one of them playfully tapping her helmet,” Walker wrote. “ ‘You’re a celebrity to the kids,’ she said. ‘You get to know the kids, and they become your pals.’"
“She was determined not only to complete her mission and protect her unit, but also to make a difference in the lives of the Iraqi people she met,” said Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle.
“Specialist Michelle Witmer is a hero whose service to Wisconsin and to her nation will never be forgotten,” said Maj. Gen. Albert Wilkening, the state’s adjutant general, who ordered the flags at all Wisconsin National Guard facilities to be flown at half-staff from April 12-14.
“I hope the Witmer family knows just how proud Wisconsin is of Michelle, how thankful we are for her service and how saddened the entire [9,900-member] Wisconsin National Guard family is for her tragic loss,” Wilkening added.
The Witmer family has requested that memorial donations be made to the Michelle Witmer Fund at the Tri-City National Bank, 14075 West North Ave., Brookfield, Wis., 53005. Contributions will support the Sisters of Charity Orphanage of Baghdad, an Iraqi orphanage for disabled children that Witmer’s Army Guard unit has adopted.
