Jennifer Moreno (1988, San Diego, CA - 5 October 2013, Afghanistan) was a nurse part of the Army Special Operations Command cultural support team created by the USA army during the Gulf War. [1] Moreno was posthumously promoted to the rank of Captain, awarded the Combat Action Badge, Bronze Star Medal, and the Purple Heart after her death on the line of duty. [2]
Captain Jennifer Moreno grew up in Logan Heights and graduated as a top marksman and leader in the JROTC program at the San Diego High School. Later she obtained her nursing degree from the University of San Francisco on a ROTC scholarship and decided to serve after graduation as a nurse in the U.S. Army. She completed the Army Airborne training in 2009 and, while stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., she volunteered to serve as a Cultural Support Team member attached to the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment.
Moreno, alongside the members of the female led Cultural Support Team, was an essential mediator for the Special Operations units. The main task of the unit was to help soldiers in the front lines to communicate and mediate with Afghani women, whose interactions with men could be seen as inappropriate in their culture. Critically, the Cultural Support Team put women on the front lines during a time when they were still barred from full-time combat jobs in the military.
Captain Moreno died on October 5, 2013 during a Special Operations raid in Zhari District (Afghanistan), when a suicide bomber initiated an ambush in the compound the army team was entering. During the twelve additional blasts that injured 30 Rangers and killed three, Moreno chose to not follow stand-by procedure in order to give essential medical assistance to a fellow soldier trapped nearby, which resulted in the triggering of another IED that led to her death at the age of 25. [3]
In March 2022 President Joe Biden signed a legislation which renamed the San Diego Veterans Affairs medical center in honor of Capt. Jennifer Moreno. [4] The bill was written by Rep. Mike Levin and it changes the name of the veteran dedicated San Diego medical center to “Jennifer Moreno Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center.” [5]
In 2022 Jennifer Moreno became the subject of the award-winning documentary Ultimate Sacrifices Cpt. Jennifer Moreno directed by filmmaker, scholar and veteran Daniel L. Bernardi. [6] The documentary received lots of critical attention and it screened at the opening night of the 2023 GI Film Festival San Diego, where it won the Best Local Documentary award. [7] Ultimate Sacrifices Cpt. Jennifer Moreno opened the film festival alongside another documentary of women in the military directed by Daniel Bernardi, a short film centred on Navy captain Kathleen Byerly tiled: Time for Change: the Kathy Bruyere Story. [8]
Captain Eurípides Rubio was a United States Army officer and one of nine Puerto Ricans who were posthumously awarded the United States' highest military decoration for valor, the Medal of Honor, for actions on November 8, 1966, during the Vietnam War. Rubio was a member of the United States Army, Headquarters & Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, Republic of Vietnam.
The Battle of San Pasqual, also spelled San Pascual, was a military encounter that occurred during the Mexican–American War in what is now the San Pasqual Valley community of the city of San Diego, California. The series of military skirmishes ended with both sides claiming victory, and the victor of the battle is still debated. On December 6 and December 7, 1846, General Stephen W. Kearny's US Army of the West, along with a small detachment of the California Battalion led by a Marine Lieutenant, engaged a small contingent of Californios and their Presidial Lancers Los Galgos, led by Major Andrés Pico. After U.S. reinforcements arrived, Kearny's troops were able to reach San Diego.
Sir! No Sir! is a 2005 documentary by Displaced Films about the anti-war movement within the ranks of the United States Armed Forces during the Vietnam War. The film was produced, directed, and written by David Zeiger. The film had a theatrical run in 80 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada in 2006, and was broadcast worldwide on: Sundance Channel, Discovery Channel, BBC, ARTE France, ABC Australia, SBC Spain, ZDF Germany, YLE Finland, RT, and several others.
Kathleen Mae Bruyere was a captain in the United States Navy. She was one of the twelve women named by Time magazine as Time Person of the Year in 1975, representing American women. In May 1975, she became the first female officer in the Navy to serve as the flag secretary to an admiral commanding an operational staff. In 1977, Byerly was one of six officers who sued the United States Secretary of the Navy and the United States Secretary of Defense over their being restricted from serving on combat aircraft and ships. This led to the 1948 Women's Armed Services Integration Act being struck down as unconstitutional.
The GI Film Festival (GIFF), a 501c3 non-profit organization founded by Army veteran Laura Law-Millett and her husband Brandon Millett, is "dedicated to preserving the stories of American veterans past and present through film, television and live special events."
Daniel Leonard Bernardi is a professor of Cinema at San Francisco State University, founder and President of El Dorado Films and Commander in the United States Navy Reserve. Bernardi earned a Bachelor of Arts in Radio-TV (1984) and a Masters of Arts in Media Arts (1988) from the University of Arizona. He went on to earn a PhD in Film and Television Studies from UCLA (1994) and he completed a University of California postdoctoral research fellowship in 1997.
The United States Army Nurse Corps (USANC) was formally established by the U.S. Congress in 1901. It is one of the six medical special branches of officers which – along with medical enlisted soldiers – comprise the Army Medical Department (AMEDD). The ANC is the nursing service for the U.S. Army and provides nursing staff in support of the Department of Defense medical plans. The ANC is composed entirely of Registered Nurses (RNs) but also includes Nurse Practitioners.
The San Diego International Film Festival is an independent film festival in San Diego, California produced by the non-profit San Diego Film Foundation. The main event has traditionally been held annually in the autumn at venues in the Gaslamp Quarter, La Jolla and Balboa Park.
San Diego Pride, also known as San Diego LGBT Pride, is a nonprofit organization which sponsors an annual three-day celebration in San Diego, California every July, focusing on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. The event features the Pride Parade on a Saturday, preceded by a block party in the Hillcrest neighborhood the night before, and followed by a two-day Pride Festival on Saturday and Sunday in Balboa Park. Pride Weekend is believed to be the largest civic event in the city of San Diego. The parade has more than 200 floats and entries and is viewed by a crowd of nearly 200,000 people.
The Concerned Officers Movement (COM) was an organization of mainly junior officers formed within the U.S. military in the early 1970s. Though its principal purpose was opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, it also fought for First Amendment rights within the military. It was initiated in the Washington, D.C. area by commissioned officers who were also Vietnam Veterans, but rapidly expanded throughout all branches and many bases of the U.S. military, ultimately playing an influential role in the opposition to the Vietnam War. At least two of its chapters expanded their ranks to include enlisted personnel (non-officers), in San Diego changing the group's name to Concerned Military, and in Kodiak, Alaska, to Concerned Servicemen's Movement.
Jodi Cilley is an American college professor and film producer known for founding Film Consortium San Diego and San Diego Film Awards.
GI's Against Fascism was a small but formative organization formed within the United States Navy during the years of conscription and the Vietnam War. The group developed in mid-1969 out of a number of sailors requesting adequate quarters, but coalesced into a formal organization with a wider agenda: a more generalized opposition to the war and to perceived institutional racism within the U.S. Navy. Although there had been earlier antiwar and GI resistance groups within the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era, GI's Against Fascism was the first such group in the U.S. Navy. The group published an underground newspaper called Duck Power as a means of spreading its views.
The Movement for a Democratic Military (MDM) was an American anti-war, anti-establishment, and military rights organization formed by United States Navy and Marine Corps personnel during the Vietnam War. Formed in California in late 1969 by sailors from Naval Station San Diego in San Diego and Marines from Camp Pendleton Marine Base in Oceanside, it rapidly spread to a number of other cities and bases in California and the Midwest, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Long Beach Naval Station, El Toro Marine Air Station, Fort Ord, Fort Carson, and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center.
On Two Fronts: Latinos & Vietnam is a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) documentary by producer Mylène Moreno of Souvenir Pictures, Inc., which takes a comprehensive look at the Latino experience in both the home-front and the battle grounds during the Vietnam War. The documentary, which aired nationwide on PBS on September 22, 2015, is part of PBS Stories of Service.
The court-martial of Howard Levy occurred in 1967. Howard Levy was a United States Army doctor who became an early resister to the Vietnam War. In 1967, he was court-martialed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for refusing an order to train Green Beret medics on their way to Vietnam. He said it "became clear to me that the Army [was using medics] to 'win hearts and minds' in Vietnamese villages - while still burning them to the ground in search-and-destroy missions." He considered the Special Forces "killers of peasants and murderers of women and children".
The court-martial of Susan Schnall, a lieutenant U.S. Navy nurse stationed at the Oakland Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, took place in early 1969 during the Vietnam War. Her political activities, which led to the military trial, may have garnered some of the most provocative news coverage during the early days of the U.S. antiwar movement against that war. In October 1968, the San Francisco Chronicle called her the “Peace Leaflet Bomber” for raining tens of thousands of antiwar leaflets from a small airplane over several San Francisco Bay Area military installations and the deck of an aircraft carrier. The day after this “bombing” run, she marched in her officer’s uniform at the front of a large antiwar demonstration, knowing it was against military regulations. While the Navy was court-martialing her for "conduct unbecoming an officer", she was publicly telling the press, "As far as I'm concerned, it's conduct unbecoming to officers to send men to die in Vietnam."
Sue Vicory is an American writer, producer and filmmaker known for producing films and documentaries in Kansas City and San Diego.
Jonathan Hammond is an American film director, film editor, screenwriter and film producer known for Expect A Miracle: Finding Light in the Darkness of a Pandemic, Isabel, Kathy and We All Die Alone.
Larry Poole is an American actor, film producer, wrangler and former vice president of SAG/AFTRA San Diego Local known for his performances as Wiley in Last Shoot Out, McCabe in A Soldier's Revenge and Chester Hammond in The Final Wish. He is executive producer for A Rodeo Film and won Best Actor at GI Film Festival San Diego for his portrayal of Tom Horn in Once Guilty, Now Innocent, But Still Dead.