COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: Women
Women Take on Major Battlefield Roles
Associated Press
December 04, 2006
CHICAGO - A goodwill mission to deliver kerosene heaters to Iraqi schools erupts into the fiery chaos of a roadside bombing - and Maj. Mary Prophit shields a comrade so he can rescue a critically burned Iraqi soldier.A convoy outside Baghdad is ambushed by machine-gun wielding Iraqi insurgents - and Specialist Ashley Pullen races down a road to help an injured sergeant.
A Black Hawk helicopter is struck by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq - and co-pilot Tammy Duckworth, bloody and severely wounded, struggles to stay conscious until the damaged aircraft is down and her crew is safe.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, women warriors are writing a new chapter in military history, serving by the tens of thousands, fending off enemy fire and taking on - and succeeding in - high-profile roles in the battlefield and the skies as never before.
"The American public is beginning to realize that women are playing an equal part in this war and that they are facing the same risks," says Duckworth, who lost both legs in the 2004 insurgent attack.
More than 155,000 women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, according to the Pentagon, nearly four times the number during the Persian Gulf War. Females now account for 15 percent of the active duty force.
The number of women casualties - 68 dead and more than 430 injured - represents a tiny fraction of the total. Still, by one estimate, the deaths exceed the number of military women who lost their lives in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War combined.
There is no shared experience that binds together the women of war. Each has a different story, a reason why they're in uniform, an explanation of how their lives have changed.
Almost all serve anonymously, though a few have captured headlines back home, most notably Jessica Lynch. The former prisoner of war rocketed onto the nation's TV screens when she was portrayed as a guns-blazing, all-American heroine - a depiction she herself disavowed.
But Lynch's job - Army supply clerk in a maintenance company - illustrates one reality of the war: No place is safe. As the insurgency took hold, that became even more apparent. Front lines don't exist. Combat troops still face the heaviest losses and while women are mostly in support roles, a mortar or bomb can strike anywhere.
"I don't think the general public really sees what females are doing over there," says Capt. Mary Caruso, who served two tours in Iraq, one as a platoon leader in A military police unit. "We don't have a linear battlefield anymore. The enemy's everywhere."
Women are barred from units assigned to direct ground combat - the infantry, armor and artillery, for example. While many remain in traditional jobs, such as health care, they've also served as translators, commanded companies and flown jet fighters.
They've been heroes, too.
In a Kentucky National Guard's military police unit, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester became the first woman since World War II to win the Silver Star for her heroism in a battle against insurgents.
Specialist Ashley Pullen, also in the company, received a Bronze Star for valor, risking her life to help save a wounded Soldier in the same incident.
"We now know women can hold their own, they're brave, they do have the physical and mental stamina to face combat-like situations," says retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, director of the Women in the Military Project at the Women's Research and Education Institute in Washington, D.C.
Though women are widely viewed as essential with the nation's fighting forces stretched thin and they perform jobs off-limits to men for cultural reasons - searching Iraqi females, for instance - there still are critics.
"Engaging the enemy in this uncivilized thing we call war is a job for men, not women," Kate O'Beirne, a conservative pundit and Washington editor of the National Review, said in a radio interview this spring.
The Center for Military Readiness, a conservative think tank, contends the Army has ignored its rules that prevent female Soldiers from being in units that operate with ground combat troops.
Elaine Donnelly, the center's president, says that creates the potential for romantic involvement, morale problems and physical hazards. "Cohesion is what lives depend on," she says.
Last year, some members of Congress tried to curb the role of women in combat zones, but retreated after running into opposition from the Pentagon and lawmakers from both parties.
Capt. Christine Roney was tangled in the debate in 2004 when she was about to take command of a forward support company that would accompany a combat battalion. She says she was told several male captains fired off e-mails to members of Congress and the Center for Military Readiness opposing the move.
When plans changed and a man took command, Roney says she was disappointed at first, then reconsidered. "I probably did think having a female would have been disruptive in some sense," she says.
Roney, who ended up commanding a logistics company that conducted more than 500 missions in the streets of Baghdad, thinks gender walls will crumble as more women and men work together.
"Sometimes," she says, "they need to get females in the unit to see they have some of the same abilities, the same competencies as the male Soldiers."
That already has happened.
Capt. Tara Stiles was a platoon leader in a military police company supporting the Marines. She says after some initial reservations, "they'd rather have my platoon versus one of the others led by males. .. They needed their backs covered and we were there. And vice versa."
Stiles' company was commanded by Capt. Terri Dorn, who says some Marines were uncomfortable dealing with females, but she didn't detect resentment. "Maybe there was some hesitancy to make sure they acted the right way," Dorn says. "I never felt like someone was trying to tell me we're in the wrong place."
For decades there have been questions about men and women bunking in the same quarters and serving together without distractions. While problems such as sexual harassment and assault remain, some say gender lines blur when lives are on the line.
Lt. Col. Cheri Provancha, who commanded a support battalion in Iraq with 700 Soldiers, says: "It didn't matter if you were male or female. You're going through the same thing as your buddy. That creates a bond."
While women have served in every U.S. military conflict, relatively few have fallen from enemy fire. Accidents and illnesses have been far more common.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, more than a third of the deaths have been non-combat fatalities but the nature of the war has placed women at greater risk than in previous conflicts.
Maj. Tammy Duckworth - who recently lost a bid for Congress - says when she joined the Illinois Army National Guard, she picked aviation because it was a combat position open to women.
"I wanted to be treated equally to the males in my unit ... and I felt part of that was accepting the same kind of risks," she says.
She says she proved her mettle long before Iraq, but other women say they feel pressure - some of it self-imposed - to demonstrate their physical strength and mental toughness.
Alicia Flores says she earned the respect of male comrades in her Army' company by hauling bodies, cleaning up feces, doing everything men did. "I had a lot of guys look up to me and say, 'How could you be out here doing this?' "
Aneta Urban says she was the only women in her Marine police company during training in Camp Pendleton, California.
"When it's 100 guys and you're the only girl, it's like proving yourself every day," she says. "When you're doing rifle training, close combat training, they're looking at you a lot more closely. They're wondering: Can she do it? Can she handle it?"
By the time they arrived in Iraq, she says, "They knew they could depend on me."
Even a longtime member of the military like Maj. Mary Prophit, part of a four-member Civil Affairs team, says she felt internal pressures.
"I knew if I screwed up, someone would say, 'That's why we shouldn't have women in the military,'" says Prophit, an Army reservist for two decades.
In January 2005, Prophit's convoy she was attacked by a roadside bomb, ripping into the truck behind her that was carrying Iraqi soldiers.
With ammunition exploding from the blazing truck, Prophit used her body as a shield so a medic could tend to a badly burned Iraqi. Later, she laid down fire at a mosque where insurgents were hiding.
"My performance was a testament that women can be in combat," she says. But she doesn't think they belong in the infantry. "It's not because they're not mentally strong enough or physically strong enough," she says. "If you mix genders, that alters the dynamic of the group."
After the war ends, there will be renewed discussion in the military and in Congress on what combat is, but any changes involving women will likely be incremental, not dramatic, says Manning, the military expert.
For now, though, she says, "the public accepts that women are in the military, that there are going to be shootings, that they're going to be dying, and that's fine - with most people."
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