MEHTARLAM, AFGHANISTAN — The older soldiers called themselves the Gray Brigade, but Sgt. 1st Class Merideth Howard never talked about her age. Soon, no one asked.

In training, the Corpus Christi native ran as hard as men much younger. She became a gunner on a Humvee at a military base here, building a wooden box to stand on so she could see over the turret. She was only 5 feet 4 inches tall.

"We started talking about the time she got shot at," said the cook, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Marlin McDaniel, 42. "I said I'd probably duck. I wouldn't know what to do. But they both basically said at the same time, 'When it's your time to go, it's your time to go.' "

The next day, Howard and Paul made a supply run to a U.S. military base near the Afghan capital. They never made it back, dying in a fiery suicide bombing in Kabul on Sept. 8.

At 52, Howard, who had gray hair and an infectious smile, became the oldest known American woman to die in combat. A 52-year-old nurse died in Vietnam, but from a stroke.

The fact that she was even here, serving as a gunner on a Humvee, shows the drain that two wars have put on an all-volunteer military. She was the new face of the military's civil affairs units, which do reconstruction and relief work. Constant deployments have tapped out the regular Army reservists who most often filled those jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Howard had never been deployed before, not since joining the Reserve on a whim in 1988. After her medical unit was disbanded in 1996, she was assigned to the Individual Ready Reserve, for soldiers without a unit. She still went to monthly drills but mainly handled paperwork.

But as a stopgap — and in a first for the U.S. military — provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan were being filled by a mix of Navy, Air Force, Army, National Guard and Reserve soldiers.

And many in the Reserve were like Howard, in the Individual Ready Reserve, home also to retired officers and soldiers who had recently left the Army.

In 1991, she started dating Hugh Hvolboll, who made fireworks for a living. In 2004, the couple moved to Waukesha, Wis., for his job. They never felt the need to get married, not until she got called up in December 2005.

In late April, the nine members of Howard's civil affairs team arrived at the Mehtarlam base in eastern Laghman province. They formed the core of the provincial reconstruction team.

In May, Howard was filmed for a U.S. military video highlighting reconstruction work. She is serious, with no evidence of her normal laugh. She stands in a village near the Mehtarlam base, the wind blowing through her hair.

"We have a good relationship with the people here in the village," she says. "And of course, as (with) everybody in Afghanistan, they are in need."

On missions in Afghanistan, Paul was the driver and Howard was the gunner. For Afghans in this conservative tribal area, where most women wear burqas that cover everything, it must have been a bizarre sight: a gray-haired woman in a helmet on top of a Humvee.

"That's why Sgt. Howard loved the turret," said Air Force Senior Airman Brenda Patterson, 26. "She wanted to give little girls dreams of their own."

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