In the Thick of It:

SrA. Alanna Jolley is a network administrator with the 1st Air and Space Communications Squadron at Ramstein AB, Germany, but she deployed to Afghanistan “in lieu of” a soldier to provide radio support to convoy teams. She completed combat skills training before deploying, but Capt. Erin Dorrance reports that Jolley had been told that there hadn’t been any attacks at the forward operating base in the southeast for two years. On her second week, an attack began as she was working a communications upgrade in the FOB’s operations center. She got out of the building just as it exploded, grabbed her weapon and climbed onto the roof of another building to install communications for an alternate ops center. She was in plain view as rockets continued to strike the base. US Air Forces in Europe has nominated Jolley for the US European Command Service Member of the Year.