An India-born Sikh teenager from California is among the women who are set to trade their makeup kits for an M-16 rifle so as to join the US military in Iraq. Nineteen-year old Ranbir Kaur is a part-time college student from the San Joaquin Valley town of Earlimart in California. By summer's end, she expects to put her textbooks aside and serve as a supply clerk in Iraq. It was the limits of life in a sedate San Joaquin Valley farm town that spurred Kaur to join the California National Guard in late 2002, two days after her 17th birthday and more than a year before she graduated from Delano High. The $3,000 bonus she got for enlisting was yet another important factor. The daughter of Sikh grape farmers, Kaur emigrated at age seven from India to the Bay Area, then moved to Earlimart, a dusty burg of 6,600, about 40 miles from Bakersfield, 70 miles from Fresno.
| Thank you, Lioness, and stay safe! |
|