Woman broke down gender barriers throughout Army career

Tell Patricia Frost “no” and she will only keep going.

When Frost joined the Army In 1974, she was surrounded by men, men and more men. It wasn’t common for women to join in those days, but she and her family weren’t common — she was following two of her older sisters who had joined.

She grew up a middle child of 11 on a farm in Gettysburg, South Dakota. Frost originally had other plans before turning to the Army.

“My two older sisters joined the Army in the late 60s so that was always in the back of my mind, my Plan B,” Frost said. “My Plan A was to go to college … I graduated second in my high school class, but we didn’t have any money for college.”

And to the army she went.

Frost didn’t care where she was placed, as long as it was the least amount of time possible and not overseas. But 25 years later and with stops in a handful of few countries along the way, she finally retired and left the Army. Not exactly a short time of service.

“My goal was to go back home and go to college,” Frost remembered. “I joined for two years and they sent me to school in New Jersey for radio operator, which really isn’t a job anymore. After my two years, I was in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and I realized, ‘You don’t have a plan to get out.’”

But instead of finding a way out, Frost reenlisted. She moved to Germany and attended her first leadership school.

“I realized I really liked this and I’m good at it,” Frost said. “I think that is when I decided I was going to stay. I was probably 22 at that point. From then on, everything was military oriented.”

She went through these military leadership schools and worked with race relations, a military occupational skill that is now it is known as equal opportunities.

After marrying and having her daughter in Germany, Frost first moved back to Fort Campbell and then to New Jersey, where she worked as a drill sergeant. But there was always a next step for her and a new skill to learn.

“I went from the hardest job in the Army — well, I thought — to one of the best,” Frost said. “I went to language school in Monterey, California. The Defense Language Institute.”

Frost wanted to learn Russian or Chinese, thinking she could use those language skills forever. Instead, she learned Polish, or at least started to.

While training for a marathon and exploring a national park, Frost herniated a disc in her lower back, leaving her out of school for six weeks.

“I didn’t finish the Polish, but I eventually went to Spanish,” Frost said. “The Army agreed to send me to Spanish school.”

Of course, the schooling didn’t stop there. Frost traveled to Arizona and attended interrogation school in the 1980s.

Instructors told her she probably would not pass the class this late in her career because people are typically too stuck in their ways to learn the proper skills in class, but Frost fought through and passed.

The negative talk and views of her didn’t stop.

After passing she was sent to Fort Bragg, where she was supposed to be on a special force’s unit.

“Somebody saw my name on the board and said, ‘I know her. She’s a girl,’” Frost said. “They told me they erased my name right off the board because they were not taking women at that time.”

She had difficulties finding a job at Fort Bragg simply because she was a woman. Her experience and training speak for itself, she maintains, making her well qualified for jobs.

Luckily, a former classmate from Spanish school was also at Fort Bragg. He directed her to go to psychological operations, now known as military information support.

Frost continued to add onto her list of skills. While in psychological operations, she became a platoon leader and went through jump school, earning her second set of wings, the first one from air assault.

She worked her way up the ranks in psychological operations, noting that being a woman in this division did not obstruct her path, for the most part.

A sergeant major kept telling Frost she was going to get the advanced individual training job and at the last minute, he said no because of her gender.

“I was just devastated,” Frost said. “That kind of told me that now you’re limited because you’re a woman. This was in the 90s. It’s not like now. Now it’s great!”

Following this incident, Frost knew it was time to get out as she reached a point where she could no longer move up.

But looking back, she does not think bad about the Army and how she was looked down upon. Instead, she recalls her favorite memories that took her all over the world.

In December of 1989, she was deployed and helped with “Operation Just Cause,” the invasion of Panama, to remove dictator Manuel Noriega.

“That was my first deployment,” Frost said. “My first actual, real-life deployment to a hostile area. I went down for the end of the initial invasion. The initial invasion was all men and they jumped in.”

Her Spanish classes came in handy while in Panama. She remembers it as a truly fun time.

Shortly after Panama, Frost was off to Saudi Arabia for six months.

“I think the hardest thing for a woman leader at that time was, and we’re talking about in ’91, I felt I wasn’t trained as well as my counterparts,” Frost said while recounting a story of her team almost crossing paths with the Iraqi Army on this tour of duty.

Frost had heard rumors throughout the night about a mile-long convoy of Iraqi forces and how they wanted to “annihilate all Ally forces.” The convoy was going North to South, while Frost and her team were traveling East to West with only about four or five vehicles.

“It was on that ride that I remembered what I had learned as a drill sergeant, first of all,” Frost said. “I also had been through the survival evasion resistance and escape course at Fort Campbell. I was only the sixth woman that went through that course … You had to use teamwork and my team did not like me because I was a woman. Again, a woman. Nothing else, just a woman.”

Her memories of completing that course in Kentucky and her basic training flooded her brain at that moment in Saudi Arabia. Instead of turning back and waiting, she decided they should just go.

“While we’re on this hours long drive, I’m thinking about all this stuff,” Frost said. “Then it turned out the Allie forces decimated that convoy. We never even saw it, but I learned I’m just as good as any other leader.”

Frost wouldn’t change her career for anything. Throughout her years, she never stopped learning or taking classes. She jokes with people saying, “Why get a degree in four years when you can get it in 19!”

She recalls her experience of learning, traveling and meeting people of other cultures as something you cannot get in any other job.

After retiring in 1999, Frost worked as a Junior ROTC instructor in Anson County, where she has been ever since.

Frost received her Master of Education from the University of North Carolina Charlotte and continued working in Anson County schools. She was an English as a Second Language teacher, plus other courses here and there, until officially retiring from everything in October of 2019.

After all her years of serving and teaching, Frost is enjoying the retired life where she can get up any time she wants, learn new projects and visit her family.

Her two kids followed in her footsteps to serve. Her daughter joined the Army and her son, the Air Force.

Looking ahead, Frost hopes to teach English abroad one day, just one item on her bucket list. Her never ending spirit of exploring will continue on throughout her retirement.

Her 25 dedicated years in the Army showed woman can also serve. The no’s and nonbelievers never stopped her.

“I’d like to think the things I went through, the things we did, helped paved the way for women now,” Frost said.

There is no telling what new trail she’ll be blazing from here on out.