The two soldiers crept along the trench line, bullets thumping into the dirt around them. One was a lanky family man, 36, with two young sons and a 15-year career at International Paper. The other was a petite, single woman, 23, the floor manager at a Nashville shoe store.

Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester handed Staff Sergeant Timothy Nein a grenade. He had the better arm. Sergeant Nein hurled it at the insurgents, who were crouched in the same trench, spraying their AK-47s at the Americans in the early afternoon.

Sergeants Hester and Nein inched forward, the two recalled, Sergeant Hester firing her black M-4 assault rifle next to Sergeant Nein’s ear. By the time the soldiers climbed out of the trench, their lips were chapped from the heat, their faces smeared with dirt, and four insurgents lay dead or dying nearby.

“I really don’t know who killed who,” said Sergeant Hester, who stands 5 feet 4 inches, speaks with a twang and walks with a swagger.

The American military handed out combat citations last week for this March 20 battle, in which a military police squad of two women and eight men from the Kentucky Army National Guard killed 27 insurgents and wounded six in an orchard south of Baghdad. Sergeant Hester earned the Silver Star. She was the first woman to receive the award for exceptional valor since World War II and is believed to be the first to be cited for close combat.

This account of the 25-minute firefight, near the town of Salman Pak, is based on interviews with squad members (three were wounded and are still recovering) and their commanders, and a brief video that ends abruptly with the insurgent cameraman’s death.

Sergeant Hester killed at least three enemy combatants, according to her account and the citation, including two in the orchard before she and Sergeant Nein plunged into the trench together to take on the last insurgents.

The battle occurred immediately before the recent controversy in Congress over the suitability of women in combat. Sergeant Hester’s squad and commanders derided the debate as insignificant and absurd. “It kind of makes me mad,” Sergeant Hester said. “Women can basically do any job that men can.”

“I sit here in amazement that Congress would debate this issue when we’ve been doing it for so long,” said Command Sergeant Major Joseph Shelley of the 18th Military Police Brigade, which oversees Sergeant Hester’s squad.

The squad, called Raven 42, presents a vivid portrait of the diverse American fighting force in Iraq. The squad includes not only women, but also black and Hispanic soldiers, and others who are nearly twice the age of their comrades.

The military awarded three Silver Stars, three Bronze Stars, and two army commendation medals to the squad last week. Receiving the Silver Star, along with Sergeants Hester and Nein, was a platoon medic, Specialist Jason Mike, a 5-foot-9-inch, 250-pound former fullback at Jacksonville University in Florida.

In the middle of the battle, Specialist Mike, who is 22, fired two weapons in opposite directions after three of the four soldiers traveling in his Humvee were struck by bullets, according to him and other members of the squad.

A Bronze Star was awarded to Specialist Ashley Pullen, a 5-foot-2-inch Humvee driver from Edmonton, Ky.

Specialist Pullen, 21, smiles constantly, occasionally paints her toenails pink, and tilts her head back to see over the dashboard of her vehicle. As bullets pelted her Humvee’s armored skin that day, Specialist Pullen backed up the truck to provide cover for Sergeant Joseph Rivera, 39, who lay bleeding with a stomach wound. Specialist Pullen then helped treat Sergeant Rivera while still under enemy fire.

Captain Todd Lindner, who commands the 617th Military Police Company, which includes Raven 42, said Sergeant Hester and Specialist Pullen “shouldn’t be held up as showpieces for why there should be woman in combat. They should be held up as examples of why it’s irrelevant.”

A 1994 Pentagon policy bars women from serving in smaller units most likely to see combat. But many women serve in support units that put them in the same free-fire zone as combat units. The dangers facing these women were evident last week when a suicide car bomber struck a Marine convoy near Fallujah; at least two were killed, including one woman, and 11 of the 13 injured were women. The women were in a support unit. The 617th Military Police Company is also technically a support unit. Overall, 20% of roughly 150 soldiers in the company are women, said Captain Lindner.

In Iraq, the company protects convoys and conducts round-the-clock patrols on supply routes leading in and out of Baghdad. Since November, Raven 42 has encountered roughly 30 roadside bombs, about two-thirds of which have detonated near the squad, soldiers said. The same week that the squad received its citations, a soldier from the 617th Military Police Company was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack.

In interviews, the squad and its commanders described how the battle on March 20 unfolded. Raven 42 was patrolling north near Salman Pak, about 12 miles southeast of Baghdad. A convoy of 30 tractor-trailers passed in the other direction. Sergeant Nein decided to turn the squad around to shadow the trucks until they were safely out of the area. The squad was in three Humvees.

Within minutes, the convoy abruptly stopped. Up ahead, Sergeant Nein, seated in the passenger seat of the first Humvee, could see the half-mile line of trucks suddenly brake erratically. Specialist Casey Cooper, in the gunner’s hatch, said he could see it, too.

“They’re taking fire!” he screamed. “Go! Go!” The squad’s three Humvees roared toward the firefight. Some of the trucks were already in flames. Sergeant Nein ordered his driver, Sergeant Dustin Morris, to get between the ambush and the convoy.

Sergeant Morris found an opening between two trailers, the squad drove through it and emerged in the middle of the kill zone – where gunfire is most heavily concentrated during an attack.

A blizzard of small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades followed.

“Flank ’em down the road!” Sergeant Nein yelled. Just ahead was a paved side road. Sergeant Morris accelerated to make the turn. But before he could, Specialist Cooper, exposed in the turret, saw a rocket-propelled grenade coming toward him. “I saw smoke and a black dot,” he recalled.

The projectile exploded on the armored lip above the rear passenger’s side window. The Humvee fishtailed and Specialist Cooper dropped with a thud into the cab. His limp body lay across the steel platform where he had stood moments before. His head bobbed facedown in the footwell. Sergeant Nein said he reached back and shook him.

“Believing he was dead, I began to climb up on top of him to get up on the weapon,” Sergeant Nein said. Specialist Cooper suddenly bolted upright.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Specialist Cooper said he told Sergeant Nein. He climbed back into the turret. Sergeant Morris made the turn; incredibly, the Humvee was still running. Bullets poured into the grill. Oil spurted up onto the windshield. He stopped about 200 yards down the road. The second Humvee, with Specialist Pullen driving and Sergeant Hester in the passenger seat, stopped about 50 yards behind. The third Humvee made the turn and stopped just beyond the corner.

Specialist Mike, the hulking medic, looked out from the third Humvee. What he saw stunned him, he recalled. About 16-20 insurgents lined a trench parallel to the main road. Dozens more were firing from an orchard. Still more lined a trench that ran parallel to the side road.

The ambush was seven times larger than anything the squad had seen. The third Humvee was parked directly in front of the main trench where most of the insurgents were concentrated.

Sergeant Nein peered out his own window. Lining the side road were seven cars – BMWs, Caprices, Opel sedans – the insurgents’ escape vehicles. The doors and trunks were open; they apparently planned to take hostages.

Sergeant Nein feared the squad was about to be overrun. Instead of dismounting on the driver’s side – away from the shooting – he opened the door and walked directly toward the gunfire.

Sergeant Hester, watching Sergeant Nein from the second Humvee, did the same. Sergeants Nein and Hester, followed by Sergeant Morris, ducked behind a four-foot berm that overlooked the orchard. Insurgents fired AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, and RPK machine guns from behind trees and mounds of dirt. Sergeant Nein shot one insurgent in the head as he peeked from behind a tree. Sergeant Hester trained her “aim point”- a red dot that fixes the target – on the chest of an insurgent firing an RPK from behind a knoll.

“I just put that little dot on him and squeezed the trigger,” she said. “It hit him and he fell down. I was like, ‘Whoa, I just killed somebody.’ Before that first one, it was almost like it wasn’t real.”

Sergeant Hester shifted her aim to another insurgent. She pulled the trigger. He fell down. The most dangerous spot was near the third Humvee, parked overlooking the main trench and in the line of fire of more than a dozen insurgents. Within minutes, three of the Humvee’s four occupants had been hit.

Specialist Bryan Mack was struck in the left shoulder.No sooner had Specialist Mike bandaged him and put him in the Humvee, Sergeant Rivera was hit, too, the bullet apparently entering his lower back and exiting through his stomach. The bullets were now coming from two directions – not only the trench but also from a 10-foot berm on the other side of the Humvees. It was only one or two insurgents, but the squad was pinned down. Specialist Mike treated Sergeant Rivera’s wound and shoved him underneath the Humvee as far as he could for protection.

Specialist Mike focused on the source of the fire. With the other soldiers out of action, Specialist Mike set up a M-249 light machine gun, also known as a Squad Automatic Weapon or SAW, on the Humvee’s trunk. With his right hand, he fired it into the main trench. With his left, he gripped an M-4 assault rifle and shot in the other direction at the insurgent firing from atop the 10-foot berm.

Specialist Cooper informed Sergeant Nein that the squad was now taking fire from the rear. Sergeant Nein grabbed a grenade, ran at the berm and lobbed it over. The firing stopped.

Specialist Pullen ran over to Sergeant Nein and told him Sergeant Rivera had been seriously wounded. Sergeant Nein ordered her to treat him. The fighting was still heavy. Specialist Pullen, concerned Sergeant Rivera was exposed, returned to her truck and backed it up to where Sergeant Rivera lay on the ground. Specialist Pullen placed a bandage over the wound and applied pressure. Sergeant Rivera screamed and rocked; he said he couldn’t feel his legs. “Think about your son,” said Specialist Pullen, recalling Sergeant Rivera had a young boy.

The shooting had begun to subside, but with Sergeant Rivera needing to be evacuated as soon as possible, Sergeant Nein believed he was running out of time. Below him, in the trench that ran along the side road, four insurgents were still firing up at the squad and then ducking for cover behind a berm.

He looked at Sergeant Hester, now crouching next to him. “We’ve got to go in there,” he said.

Sergeant Nein rolled over the berm into the trench, Sergeant Hester following behind. The trench was uneven, and they took cover in the small spaces. The insurgents, clustered about 30 yards down and spaced five yards apart, poked out their heads and fire their AK-47s in bursts. “I could see the bullets kicking up the dried dirt and I remember thinking, ‘I can’t believe that’s stopping them.'” Sergeant Nein said.

The soldiers tossed grenades as they moved closer. Sergeant Hester saw one insurgent about 15 yards away. She lobbed a grenade toward the figure, then pressed her body into the side of the trench to avoid the blast. Soon, only one insurgent was still firing. Sergeant Nein lobbed another grenade. The shooting stopped. Sergeants Hester and Nein climbed out the trench. Bodies littered the orchard and the trenches. The only sounds were the cries of the wounded.

Other units arrived. Specialists Mike and Pullen helped transport the wounded to a makeshift landing zone for medevac helicopters.

“I think about March 20 at least a couple times a day, every day, and I probably will for the rest of my life,” Sergeant Hester said last week. “It’s taken its toll. Every night I’m lucky if I don’t see the picture of it in my mind before I go to sleep, and then even if I don’t, I’m dreaming about what we did.”