‘They All See Me as a Soldier Now’

In the capital, where workaholics look upon a 40-hour workweek as part time and a suntan is an accident that happens when one is running from the parking lot to the subway, there is a perception of the so-called California girl: a beach-bronzed, mall-addicted, cappuccino-addled airhead in a convertible.

Those of us born and bred in the Golden State, of course, recognize this as fool’s wisdom--the airhead part, anyway. Nevertheless, one grows a little tired of explaining to Washington types that it is a demographic improbability that every female Californian under 25 grew up in the San Fernando Valley.

So it was all the sweeter when a 23-year-old Army sergeant named Heather Lynn Johnsen, raised in Fremont near San Francisco Bay, took her place in history as the first woman in 48 years to guard the Tomb of the Unknowns in Washington’s Arlington National Cemetery.

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The difficulty of this triumph cannot be overstated. Basically, the guards stand watch 24 hours a day, seven days a week, over a white marble sarcophagus that marks the graves of four unidentified soldiers, from both world wars, Korea and Vietnam. They keep their vigil in record-breaking blizzards, on Christmas night and in the summer’s blistering heat, which, with the humidity, can raise the temperature in their wool dress blues to the equivalent of 130 degrees. (Great big Marines have been known to pass out on the White House lawn under such conditions.)

Sweat pours from their faces. Bugs get stuck in the sweat. Bees sting them. Hail pelts them. Squirrels dance around them as if they were statues. They are not permitted to flinch, smile, shiver or scratch. One guy broke an ankle after clicking his heels with unusual gusto; he finished his half-hour watch, then went to the hospital.

Her family thought she was nuts when Johnsen informed them she was joining the Army. Then she rose to the ranks of the prestigious 3rd U.S. Infantry, otherwise known as the Old Guard, and became only the 389th soldier in 38 years to earn the silver tomb guard badge. Not to mention the only woman. All of a sudden her cousins are signing up for the military.

Reporters turned up on the lawn of her parents’ house in Roseville, near Sacramento, when she broke the male barrier and became something of a local hero. Even today, little girls in Roseville want to know everything from her favorite color to her favorite sport.

And when she goes home in November she may find herself a celebrity--albeit a reluctant one.

“I went from black sheep to role model,” she acknowledges, lifting one big black boot to cross the legs of her camouflage pants between shifts at the quarters of the tomb guard, not far from where John F. Kennedy was laid to rest.

Not all of her male comrades were thrilled to have a woman break their time-honored ranks. “If I cared what other people thought, I don’t think I would have made it. I just go after what I want,” she said. “I have noticed they all see me as a soldier now.”

Who wouldn’t? She says she can outrun and out-push-up three-fourths of them, and can do more sit-ups than any of her fellow guards. Seventy percent of the men who apply for her post drop out. This is not a great surprise, considering that guards are required not only to pass a grueling physical fitness test, but also to memorize seven pages of cemetery trivia and endure “composure training”--a little exercise in which instructors jump up and down like monkeys, make faces and generally carry on. The penalty for laughing goes as high as 100 push-ups, which may help explain why Johnsen can stare straight ahead without blinking even when tourists blow kisses, profess their love and propose marriage.

But all of those challenges pale when considering the unit’s obsessive commitment to an utterly flawless personal appearance.

“See that scratch right there? See it? See it?” a staff sergeant moans. He is poring over a rack of crisp blue uniform jackets, which this reporter thought to be impeccably maintained until the sergeant began steaming up a gold button with his hot breath, revealing a scratch the width of an eyelash.

“Ugh,” he groans in disgust.

It is at this moment that one wonders why a strikingly pretty, 5-foot-10, blue-eyed classic specimen of a California native would submit to a level of scrutiny that requires her to French-braid her hair and spray it six times a day.

“I’ve always been a perfectionist,” Johnsen explains. “If I found one misspelled word in my homework I would retype the whole thing. And I was always tucking something in.”

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But the result of this attention to emotional, physical and intellectual detail is a round-the-clock display of sheer pageantry in a city that seems to be falling apart. While the people of Washington drag out mattresses to cover crater-size potholes and the mayor tries to assure the population that the drinking water isn’t poison, Johnsen and her comrades are snapping their heels in synchronicity, in an eternal ceremony designed to ensure that the remains of four nameless young soldiers are never left alone.

“At night is when you think about why you do what you do,” Johnsen said in a reverent whisper as her fellow soldiers performed the 6 p.m. changing of the guard one rainy evening. “They gave up everything, even their identity, for their country. The least I can do is give them my best.”