Ranbir Kaur

RANBIR KAUR - FIRST SIKH GIRL TO JOIN US ARMY

born US citizen Ranbir Kaur is first Sikh girl to join the US army when she was 17 years old.She is 20 no. Ranbir Kaur of the US National Guardshad hit headlines in 2003 after becoming the first Sikh girl to join the US armed forces that consists of over 200,000 women soldiers.

Born in Nijjran village of Jalandhar district, the young warrior reached the US as a seven-year-old after her father Mahan Singh, pursuing dollar dreams, secured a green card in 1990

Brought up in an isolated town, Earlimart, in California, her brush with the uniform dates back to 2001 when she was a freshman (Grade IX) in high school at Delano, which was the closest city.

In 2003, this daughter of a Jat Sikh grape grower faced the ire of white supremacists, who posted spam emails terming her recruitment as a means to seek citizenship. But she was already a US citizen, and the young girl set about proving her detractors wrong through hard training.

During the 2005 Katrina hurricane in New Orleans, the devout Sikh was instrumental in the recovery of the Guru Granth Sahib after the New Orleans gurudwara was submerged.

United Sikhs, an organisation, had sought her assistance and Ranbir had got everybody moving after she announced that the living Guru of the Sikhs was under water. Amid random shootings, air force rescue experts David Cruz and Tom Bausmas had rescued the scriptures in an operation that lasted 22 hours.