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War Over Women in Combat
By Jesse Leavenworth
The Hartford Courant
Tuesday 18 March 2008
Despite medals, debate persists about whether
they should join men in ground units.
U.S. servicewomen are flying jets and helicopter gunships, driving and fixing
trucks, searching suspected terrorists, patching the wounded and, in some cases,
killing the enemy up close.
As the nation's warriors finish their fifth year in the Iraq war this month,
more women are on the battleground than at any time in U.S. history. They now
make up about 10 percent of the forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Reality is, we can't fill [forward support companies] without females,"
one Iraq veteran told the U.S. Department of Defense for a recent report on
the assignment of women. Another said flatly that American forces "can't
accomplish the mission without women."
However, the debate continues about whether women should serve an even greater
role by joining men in ground combat units. Are women strong enough, mentally
and physically? Will they kill when they have to? Can men and women work together
at the grueling pace of combat operations?
The nature of the current wars and conflicts means those questions have been
answered, for some.
With no front line and 360 degrees of threat, the Iraq war has blurred the
meanings of "enemy," "forward position" and "combat."
One soldier interviewed by the Rand Corp. for the Department of Defense report
said soldiers are "forward" as soon as their air transport takes off
from Kuwait.
Soldiers in Vietnam experienced similar nonlinear warfare, but today many more
women are in hostile territory. Although they are barred from the infantry,
armor and other attack forces, women often work closely with those combat units.
That means that a female truck driver or military police officer can expect
to be attacked - and is expected by her superiors and her male buddies
to fight back.
Some women have done so. In 2005, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, an MP with the Kentucky
National Guard, became the first woman to win the Silver Star since World War
II (a second woman has won the medal in Iraq since).
In a fight south of Baghdad, Hester was credited with killing three of the
27 insurgents slain. Two of her fellow soldiers, both men, also won Silver Stars
for their roles in the firefight.
Asked later about the significance of being the first woman to win the prestigious
medal in more than 50 years, Hester said, "It really doesn't have anything
to do with being a female. It's about the duties I performed that day as a soldier."
U.S. Army Capt. Rose Forrest, a Glastonbury native who now lives in Maryland
and serves with the National Guard in that state, was in Iraq in 2005-06 as
a mortuary officer attached to an infantry brigade. Forrest also participated
in the "Lioness" program, in which U.S. servicewomen take part in
patrols to root out insurgents and stashes of weapons.
Some Iraqi women opened up to female interrogators because their culture forbids
them to speak to men they don't know. Forrest said the Iraqi women in Ramadi
often gave Lioness members valuable information that they would not have given
to male soldiers.
As for whether women are worthy of combat duty, Forrest said female soldiers
in her unit won Purple Hearts and Combat Action badges.
"I saw women serve valiantly, and I think women can do whatever they want
to do," Forrest said.
Sources differ slightly on the number of American female service members who
have died in Iraq and Afghanistan so far, but the total is more than 90 and
includes Army Pfc. Melissa Hobart of East Haven, who collapsed while on guard
duty in Iraq in 2004 and died of a still undetermined cause, and U.S. Army Spc.
Tyanna Avery-Felder, 22, of Bridgeport, killed in April 2004 after a bomb hit
her convoy vehicle.
By comparison, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., includes
the names of eight women among the more than 58,000 dead.
Retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning of the Women in Military Project of the Women's
Research and Education Institute in Washington, D.C., said American women have
proved their mettle.
They have shown in Iraq and Afghanistan that they are brave and that they have
the physical and mental stamina to face combat and emerge from one firefight
to do it again, Manning said.
"All the old arguments are gone, and now the only thing that's left is,
do we want mothers to be killers, which is a fair question," Manning said.
Others, however, say questions persist.
"When you put a single female or a few females into a large group of men,
in an isolated area, for long lengths of time, you are asking for romantic relations
to possibly flourish, whether right or wrong, wanted or not. What soldier or
Marine will be able to focus, knowing his girlfriend or wife is on a patrol
next?" retired Marine 1st Sgt. Ben Grainger asked.
He served as the chief noncommissioned officer for Plainville's Charlie Company,
1st Battalion, 25th Marines, which returned to Connecticut from Iraq in 2006.
Grainger's comments, made in an e-mail, echo the concerns of others who oppose
women in combat units.
"It's the needs of the military that come first," said Elaine Donnelly,
director of a Washington, D.C., think tank called the Center for Military Readiness.
"In direct combat, women do not have an equal opportunity to survive or
to help other soldiers survive."
Concerns include fears that sexual integration would lead to relationships
that would cause jealousy among men competing for the female soldiers' attention,
weakening the close bond and teamwork needed in front-line units. Opponents
also have said that women might not hold up psychologically under the rigors
of war.
A Pentagon study released last year, however, showed that female soldiers coped
as well as their male colleagues.
"We found no evidence that female soldiers are less able than male soldiers
to cope with the stressors and challenges of serving in combat," a team
of military mental health experts concluded in the report, based on extensive
surveys of troops in Iraq. "When discussing the role of the female soldier
in combat, the focus needs to move away from one of weakness and vulnerability,
to one of strength and accomplishment."
The most often cited reason for continuing to exclude women from combat is
their physical strength, compared with men. An infantry soldier, for example,
must carry a heavy weight for long distances.
As authors Sara L. Zeigler and Gregory G. Gunderson write in their 2005 book
"Moving Beyond G.I. Jane," evidence presented to the Presidential
Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces in 1992 showed that
the top 20 percent of female military personnel received scores equivalent to
those of the bottom 20 percent of men in the Army's physical fitness test and
that only one woman in 100 could meet a physical standard met by 60 of 100 men.
Grainger wrote in his e-mail that soldiers in combat depend on each other's
physical capabilities.
"I have run races and marathons, and can still feel the butt-kicking weight
of 70-plus pounds of combat gear when on long patrols, and especially when rushing
around under fire," Grainger wrote. "The possibility of having to
carry others' gear to help them keep up or to have to slow down, making yourself
an easier target, are not acceptable under real world combat conditions."
However, Zeigler and Gunderson write that women have made great strides in
physical fitness, and that new technology, including lighter weapons and the
development of exo-skeletons, will change the nature of combat forces In any
case, a woman who can meet the demands of combat duty should not be denied the
opportunity, the authors write.
"The opponents of women in combat fail to make their case that all women
should be barred from combat positions due to the inabilities of some women,"
Zeigler and Gunderson write.
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