The young women who study hard every day at Notre Dame Academy in Park Hills and wonder how far life will take them might want to think about the skies over Afghanistan.

        There, they will find one of their own.

        Every other day for the past several months, a 27-year-old Notre Dame Academy graduate from Edgewood, Ky. — a captain in the Marine Corps — has climbed into the back seat of an F/A-18D Hornet fighter jet at the U.S. air base near Manas, Kyrgyzstan, to make the long flight to Afghanistan in support of ground troops battling al-Qaida terrorists.

        “It would have been hard for me to have imagined back then being in this position now,” said Amy, whose last name is being withheld at the request of the Marine Corps.

        “But I wouldn't want to be anywhere else at a time like this.”

        The captain is one of about 180 Marines stationed at the former commercial airport in the Central Asian nation, one of the former Soviet republics.

        Kyrgyzstan is one of three former Soviet republics that have opened their borders to the U.S. military for bases in the war on terrorism.

        The base at Manas has been up and running since January, with pilots and ground crews from eight allied nations rotating in and out.

        Amy's mission is an open-ended one; she and her fellow Marines have no idea when they will be rotated out.

        “We're way too busy to think about it that much,” Amy said. “We put in some very busy, very long days.”

        Her home now is a tent at the air base she shares with other female service members.

        Amy, a trained fighter pilot, takes the back seat on the Hornet on her missions over Afghanistan, acting as the weapons system operator, or WSO.

        Being the WSO in a Hornet means being responsible for a six-barrel, 20mm cannon and air-to-air missiles on the fighter jet's nine wing positions.

        And she is one of a select few — there are only six female fighter pilots and WSOs in the Corps.

        “It's still a pretty rare thing to see in the Marines,” said Staff Sgt. Troy Ruby, a public information specialist at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego.

        Amy said she knows of one other female pilot at Manas, but said she hasn't met her.

        Flying, she said, “is something I think I first started thinking about when I was 15. It was my dream.”

        Three of her uncles were Marines, which helped fuel that dream.

        After graduating from Notre Dame Academy in 1993, she received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

        She was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Marines, and was a paratrooper and member of the Marine women's soccer team. Then came a year of F/A-18 training and some time assigned to a base in San Diego.

        After the terrorist attacks on the United States last September, she knew it was just a matter of time before she would be involved in Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S. military response.

        For security reasons, she can not talk in detail about the missions she flies over Afghanistan, but she said they are “long and hard.”

        Life on the base is not luxurious, she said, “but we get by OK.” She can freely communicate via e-mail with friends and family back home, although she is careful not to talk about military operations.

        “There's a gym tent to work out in; there are all kinds of activities,” Amy said.

        “The fact is, though, we really don't have much free time over here. You end up pulling duty on a lot of off days.”

        Whether this experience she describes as “incredible” leads to a career in the Marines is not a question she is ready to answer yet.

        “Right now, I have a job to do,” she said.

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