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An India-born Sikh teenager from California is among the women who will join the US military in Iraq.
Ranbir Kaur, 19, is a part-time college student from the obscure San Joaquin Valley town in California's Earlimart.
By the end of summer, she expects to put her textbooks aside and serve as a supply clerk in Iraq.
It was the limitations of life in a comatose San Joaquin Valley farm town that spurred Kaur to join the California National Guard in late 2002, two days after her 17th birthday. A year before she had graduated from Delano High.
The USD 3,000 bonus she got for enlisting was yet another important factor.
The daughter of Sikh grape farmers, Kaur emigrated at the age of seven from India to the Bay Area, then moved to Earlimart, a dusty burg of 6,600.