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She grew up a girl next door. Outgoing, athletic, snowboards and cheerleading. She joined the Army to pay for college. Then someone taught her to jump out of perfectly good airplanes.

Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said. After the explosion, which wounded five soldiers in her unit, Brown ran through insurgent gunfire and used her body to shield wounded comrades as mortars fell less than 100 yards away, the military said.