FORT CAVAZOS, Texas — The U.S. military is filled with proud service members from around the world, and many of them are serving in the Army — soldiers like Specialist Marina Lana, a female soldier proudly serving as an Infantryman in the Army’s 3rd Cavalry Regiment.
Though she is now an American soldier stationed at Fort Cavazos, her story began thousands of miles away in her original home of Ukraine.
”Beautiful, nice, people nice, food very delicious, winter is cold, summer is hot, we have all four seasons,” Spc. Lana said.
When she was 17, her mother married someone new, bringing Marina and her sister along to the U.S. and starting a new but scary life — far from the only home she ever knew.
”I didn’t want to go honestly,” Spc. Lana said.
"It's leaving behind so much family, friends, all the things that I know, and I didn’t even know a little bit of English.”
That didn’t stop her from working hard to learn the new language, and several others in the process.
After working for a few years in the restaurant industry she wanted to something more from life and began a hard road to enlist in the U.S. Army.
”I went to the recruiter and failed my ASVAB horribly,” Spc. Lana said.
“Yes — no English. I was still working. My tutor took me in and was like 'Okay, we're going to grind ASVAB,'".
This paid off, and now she serves as an Infantryman in the Army.
A job only available to female soldiers in recent years, and according to her commander, she proves it should have come sooner.
”If you got just a quarter of a second to meet someone like Specialist Lana, or any of our service women serving in combat arms, you would understand that they are more that capable, just as any man is,” said Cpt. Alexander Clamp, Spc. Lana’s Commanding Officer.
Spc. Lana is serving in the U.S. Army while a war rages on in her home country of Ukraine, and she has a message to her family, friends, and fellow Ukrainians fighting to protect the home she grew up in.
”We always fight for our freedom,” Spc. Lana said.
“We always fight for our family, friends, and we always try to do our best and we always do it. I believe in us. I believe that one day we will actually win this war and everyone will have a peaceful future life.”
Specialist Marina Lana is a proud U.S. Army Infantryman and hopes to take the fighting instinct and her love of languages to a new role as a Human Intelligence Voice Interceptor in the near future.
