Former Eagles cheerleader turned US Army soldier Rachel Washburn (18 Photos)

Former Eagles cheerleader turned US Army soldier Rachel Washburn (18 Photos)

 

As a Philadelphia Eagles cheerleader, Rachel Washburn toted pom-poms. As an Army intelligence officer with a special ops combat unit in Afghanistan, she carried an assault rifle and pistol. She was a pioneer on a special mission to relate to local women in ways that would be culturally inappropriate for male troops — including helping deliver an Afghan baby in a snowstorm.

 

She made the team and cheered for the Eagles from 2007 to 2009. In 2008, she went on a military goodwill tour with the cheerleaders to Iraq and Kuwait. In her case, it also was a military internship.

 

She didn’t join the Army on a whim. During her three seasons with the Eagles, Washburn was an Army ROTC student and history major at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Her father was an Army helicopter pilot and an Air Force fighter pilot. She figures she moved 17 or 18 times growing up, but she calls Philadelphia home even though she just attended college there.

 

Prior to her first eight-month tour in Afghanistan in 2011-12, she became part of a new “Cultural Support Team” program to attach women to special ops units to relate to Afghan women.

 

Near the end of her first deployment, on the day her unit was supposed to leave a village, a snowstorm hit. She and her partner learned a local woman had gone into labor. Her husband was unable to get her to a midwife. The husband did not want male troops to see her.

 

Washburn and her partner took the woman in a military vehicle to their unit’s mud hut. on an Army radio, a special ops medic helped them deliver the baby.

 

“Everything was successful,” Washburn said. “Her husband gave us a little trinket. He was so grateful to have a boy.”

 

Washburn returned from her second tour in Afghanistan on Nov. 17. In those nine months, she had a different role as a platoon leader of an Army intelligence unit.

 

According to Washburn, her military awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Combat Action Badge, Airborne Badge and Air Assault Badge.

 

Washburn said she has about a year left in the Army, but she is considering signing on for a few more years. “There are some opportunities that are enticing me.”