New York Daily News
October 25, 2004

A Nurse's Call To Duty

By Clem Richardson

There are several of Consuelo Dungca's myriad accomplishments for which we should all be thankful. Any soldier serving in Iraq whose life is saved in field hospitals in Kuwait owes his or her good fortune partly to Dungca, and not just because she wrote the manual on how those units should be set up.

She also wrote "U.S. Army Nurse Corps Standard of Nursing Practices," a text for training Army nurses, and co-authored "Standards of Critical Care," a text used by health professionals in and out of the armed forces.

That's kind of appropriate because Dungca, a colonel in the Army Reserve's 8th Medical Brigade, is also the city Health and Hospitals Corp.'s senior assistant vice president for clinical affairs.

That means she oversees, among other things, nursing operations at the city's public hospitals.

And though her two roles sometimes clash, Dungca said she's sure to render unto HHC that which is HHC's.

"I'm careful to work for HHC when I am here," she said in her Worth St. office. "I do my work for the Army when I get home."

She has traveled to Germany, South Korea and other locales to consult and advise on medical unit deployment. When the war in Iraq began, it was Dungca who instructed the Reserves' medical unit, stationed at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn and deployed to Kuwait, what equipment would be needed for each field unit, from beds to lights.

She has traveled to South Korea three times this year, helping to write grim feasibility studies of how medical needs would be met if North Korean troops stormed across the 51st parallel. That meant deciding, among other things, what injuries could be treated at the site or in Army facilities in Japan or Hawaii.

"When people see me, if they don't know me they don't believe what I do," she said.

A native of the Philippines and a graduate of the University of the Philippines, Dungca earned two master's degrees and a doctorate in nursing education from Columbia University's Teachers College. Her doctoral dissertation was titled "Leadership Behavior Style and Job Satisfaction," and Dungca can easily rattle off the difference between transactional and transformational leaders.

She said she always has been picked for leadership positions because "I'm not afraid to work hard. Anything I don't know how to do, I'll learn how to do.

"My philosophy is you don't learn from your mistakes, you learn from your successes," she said. "As you succeed, you keep on succeeding. You make it a building block."

Dungca, who stands under 5 feet and brims with energy, knows how to be tough when she needs to be.

"I have an open-door policy in my office," she said. "If you don't agree with how I want it done, you are free to leave at any time."

Dungca was a clinical nurse specialist when she wrote "Standards for Critical Care" with Brenda Crispell Johanson, Denise Hoffmeister and Sara Jeanne Wells in 1981.

Dungca said she joined the Reserves in 1977 because "I was tired of school." By 1981, she was transferred to the Pentagon, where she was tapped by Surgeon General Everett Koop to write the "Army Nursing Corps Standards" book.

She said she takes great care in her Army work to "look out for the guy in the trenches because they are the ones defending us.

"When I'm on duty in the Army, I am a totally different person," she said. "I'm an officer and a soldier. It's a different kind of camaraderie than civilian life. You want to make sure that when you go to battle, that person will want to save your life. We only see each other once a month but it is always like we saw each other just the day before."

Consuelo Dandy is an expert marksman with a .45-caliber pistol. She can fire it standing, sitting, kneeling and lying down.

Women veterans tell what Veterans' Day means to them


by Rudi Williams
American Forces Press Service


Five women, one from each service, including the Coast Guard, told an overflow audience at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial's theater what being a veteran means to them during a special Veterans Day observance.

"Being in the military is an honor," said Maj. Ladda "Tammy" Duckworth of the Illinois Army National Guard, who lost her leg when an insurgent's rocket-propelled grenade slammed into her Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq. Doctors managed to save part of her right leg.

When Soldiers say, "I am an American Soldier and I serve the people of the United States," it captures the spirit of what it means to be a veteran and what an honor it is to wear a military uniform.

"So many have come before me who gave in their own way, whether it was being injured or the ultimate sacrifice," she said. "Whether you gave your son, your husband or your daughter, or whether you gave of yourself, it's always an honor to serve the United States."

Duckworth said the country is better when everyone pulls together and serves in whatever way they can. "Not everybody can put on the uniform. Not everybody has the capability or is afforded the opportunity to do so," she said. "What's important is that each one of us gives something back for all of the gifts we have for being Americans."

She received a standing ovation when she said she wouldn't hesitate to strap on her new, titanium legs and return to Iraq. "I, along with the rest of the Soldiers at Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] would strap on our new limbs, pick up our weapons and go right back, if we could," she said.

To those who say today's military members aren't on par with those from past generations, Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sgt. Rosemarie Weber had an impassioned response.

"They're wrong! Young men and women today are just as willing to serve as any ever were," she said. "And they're doing a fine job of it, all day, every day, right this very second in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places too numerous to mention."

Veterans Day isn't all about pride and honor, she said. "It's also about giving thanks -- thanking a military veteran for what they've done and what they're doing and for what they will do in the days to come," she said.

Ensign Vanessa L. Franada, a Naval Reserve nurse for the past year and a half, said she's quickly come to appreciate what it means to be a veteran.

"In that brief time, I've gained the experiences of being away from home, serving my country and humanity, enduring a deployment and regretfully, the loss of a friend and fellow shipmate," said Franada. She was deployed in the hospital ship, USNS Comfort, providing relief following Hurricane Katrina.

Franada said walking the halls at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda reinforces the pride she feels in her military service. That comes through whether she is serving long-retired veterans of past wars, or new veterans just returned from Iraq, she said.

Today's newest veterans defy the misconception that veterans are all "elderly, gray and male," she said. "Both men and women are serving with honor all across the battlefield, in all parts of the world," she said.

"Veteran's Day has always been a special day to me, because it's also my birthday," said Col. Linda McHale of the Air Force Reserve.

She said only after deploying to Iraq last year did she come to fully appreciate what it's like to serve in a war zone and the sacrifices veterans make.

Lt. Cmdr. Holly Harrison, the first Coast Guard women to be awarded the Bronze Star, said that less then three years ago, she didn't know what it meant to risk her life in defense of the nation.

"But that all changed as my shipmates and I steamed up the Khawar Abd Allah River into Iraq," Harrison said. "I now know what it means to be a veteran and with the insights I've gained, I've developed a much deeper, much more personal respect for those who've served."

Harrison said she's gained particular respect for her family members who served before her. Both of her grandfathers and father were in the military, but never talked much about their wartime experiences, she said. Now Harrison said she understands why. "When I got back from Iraq, all my friends and family wanted to hear stories about what it was like over there, but I wasn't in the mood to tell stories," she told the audience. "I figured it was because I was burned out, yet even now I still hesitate to tell stories about what happened in Iraq."

USA Today
April 28, 2005
Pg. 1

Women share dangers of combat

Female Amputees Make Clear That All Troops Are On Front Lines

Reality in Iraq has overtaken long-running debate at home

By Dave Moniz, USA Today

WASHINGTON — On June 19, Lt. Dawn Halfaker and soldiers from her military police platoon were on a reconnaissance patrol in Baqouba, Iraq, when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded inside their armored Humvee, grievously wounding two of the soldiers inside.

Dazed and covered in blood, Halfaker mustered the energy to give an order to her driver. “Get out of the kill zone!” she shouted. Halfaker's right arm was loosely connected to her torso.

In the front passenger seat, Staff Sgt. Norberto Lara was in worse shape. His right arm, Halfaker remembers, was severed, a devastating but not mortal wound.

Six days later, Halfaker was a patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here, about to lose her arm to a life-threatening infection. Today, as she completes her rehabilitation, Halfaker is considering several job offers in Washington and planning to attend graduate school at Georgetown University after leaving the Army.

She is one of five American military women at Walter Reed who have lost limbs from combat injuries in Iraq, a war that marks the first time large numbers of female troops have faced prolonged exposure to daily combat.

A decade ago — in the midst of a heated national debate over which military jobs women should occupy — Halfaker's story might have ignited a battle over whether women should experience the hazards of ground fighting. Today, she and other severely injured female soldiers say, reality has overtaken that debate.

Since the ambush that nearly took her life, Halfaker, 25, has done about 30 interviews and appearances, including segments on MSNBC and CNN, and has counseled cadets at West Point. She says she is sometimes asked, often by people her parents' age, whether women should be so heavily involved in fighting.

“Women in combat is not really an issue,” she says. “It is happening.”

Although women are eligible to fill most jobs in the military, they are barred from some of the most hazardous positions, including infantry troops, special operations commandos, tank crews and others that would place them in front-line ground combat.

But they can fly most aircraft, including fighter jets, and serve as MPs and in other jobs that put them in harm's way.

Guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — where front-line and rear-echelon troops often share the same dangers — have rendered the military's efforts to regulate risk difficult if not impossible.

“Everyone pretty much acknowledges there are no rear battle areas, no forward line of troops,” Halfaker says.

Since the Iraq war began two years ago, 35 U.S. women have died and 271 have been wounded. Although several hundred American women lost their lives in previous wars, the vast majority of them were nurses or auxiliary troops assigned to rear areas, many of whom died of disease and injuries unrelated to combat.

During Vietnam, the last prolonged ground war, a total of eight American women — all nurses — died.

U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, a New Mexico Republican who served as an Air Force officer in the 1980s, says the Iraq war seems to have largely answered questions about how Americans would react to seeing women return home in bandages and body bags.

“There have been casualties, men and women, and we grieve for them. But I think we have gotten beyond the point where losing a daughter is somehow worse than losing a son,” Wilson says.

To fly again

The most severely injured of the amputees is Maj. Ladda “Tammy” Duckworth, an Illinois Army National Guard pilot who lost both legs when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into her Black Hawk helicopter near Balad on Nov. 12.

Duckworth says doctors told her she survived because the heat from the explosion cauterized her leg wounds. That prevented her from bleeding to death after her co-pilot landed the aircraft.

Normally, Duckworth says, someone with her injuries might have died from blood loss in a matter of minutes.

Five months after the attack, Duckworth, 37, is recuperating at Walter Reed and learning how to perform life's most basic chores. She lost her right leg close to the hip and her left leg below the knee and is just now learning to walk with artificial legs.

For most who lose limbs, the recovery time — including physical and occupational therapy — is about one year.

Duckworth, a supervisor for Rotary International in her civilian job, says she hopes to resume flying helicopters someday, a plan that once would have seemed unimaginable. Her husband, Army National Guard Capt. Bryan Bowlsbey, supports her decision.

A number of severely wounded servicemembers have returned to active duty after losing limbs. One, Air Force Lt. Col. Andrew Lourake, resumed flying last fall after doctors amputated his leg following a motorcycle accident.

Lourake, who flies military VIPs on Gulfstream jets, says it will be difficult but not impossible for Duckworth to resume flying as a double amputee.

“The big thing is what your capabilities are. This is not the same Department of Defense as the Vietnam era,” he says. “If you lost a limb then, you were automatically discharged.”

Duckworth says she hopes to return to helicopter simulators sometime within the next year, the first step toward making it all the way back to the cockpit. She says it's unclear whether the Army will let her return as a pilot. If not, she will try to fly as a civilian.

She says she chose to fly Army helicopters for a simple reason: “I wanted to take the same risks as the guys.”

'Double clutch' for women

The public has long since gotten used to seeing men return home without arms and legs or otherwise mangled.

In the 1946 movie The Best Years of Our Lives, Harold Russell, a real World War II vet who lost his hands in a training accident, portrayed a young sailor who fought to overcome self-doubts when he returned to civilian life as a double amputee.

Russell was not trained as an actor but won an Oscar for his performance. Other male actors, including Tom Cruise (Born on the Fourth of July), Jon Voight (Coming Home) and Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump), have played disabled war vets in the movies.

But seeing images of severely wounded women is another story. Duckworth says she was told that some of the doctors and nurses treating her were unnerved when they saw what the explosion had done to her body.

“I think they had not seen a female that badly mutilated,” Duckworth says. “I've been told it was emotionally difficult for them.”

Besides her legs, Duckworth lost most of the back of her right arm. Doctors were able to save it by transplanting skin from her stomach to make her arm whole.

Jack Farley, a Vietnam War leg amputee and retired federal judge, says those who lose limbs go through adjustments that most people can't imagine.

One of the most difficult, he says, is getting used to people staring at you, something he suspects may be even more difficult for Duckworth and the other women.

“I think you do a double clutch when you see an amputee who is a woman,” says Farley, who visits Walter Reed often to counsel men and women amputees.

Juanita Wilson, an Army staff sergeant, lost her left hand Aug. 21 when an improvised bomb exploded near her Humvee on a convoy mission north of Baghdad. Wilson says her hand was “blasted wide open,” leaving only bones and tendons.

During eight months of recovery and rehabilitation at Walter Reed, Wilson befriended several of the other women there, including Duckworth.

The women seem to have a special bond, she says, and it has helped her cope with the difficulties of learning to dress and eat with one real hand and one artificial one.

“When Tammy came in, my heart dropped,” Wilson says, recalling how badly injured her friend was. “I went right up to see her.”

At the time, Duckworth was despondent. Wilson took sympathy cards lying around the room and arranged them on the wall. Then she washed Duckworth's hair.

Wilson's family — husband Charles and daughter Kenyah — has joined her at Walter Reed.

Wilson says the injury has motivated her to attend nursing school and one day, perhaps, return to Walter Reed as an Army nurse to “take care of soldiers.”

Wilson, 31, says she has observed one major difference among amputees at Walter Reed. The men, she says, care much less about their appearance and will often move about without their artificial limbs.

She won't.

“I just don't think America is ready to see a woman without an arm,” Wilson says.

The new reality

Connie Halfaker, Dawn's mother, says her daughter is doing remarkably well adjusting to her injury. She has learned to snowboard with one arm and even does backflips on a trampoline.

Halfaker, who was promoted to captain after returning from Iraq, is writing a first-person account of her experiences. Her mother says she is proud of her daughter, if surprised by what happened.

“I never worried about her. We have a son, and growing up in the Vietnam era, in the back of my mind, I knew it was a possibility that I would need to give up my son for a war,” Connie Halfaker says.

While women account for about 2% of all combat deaths in Iraq, they play a larger role in the all-volunteer military. About 15% — nearly one in six — of all active troops are female, nearly double the percentage from 1980.

Some critics of the military's gender rules say the pendulum has swung too far and women are doing too much.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a public policy organization in Livonia, Mich., says Defense Department rules needlessly put women at risk.

“I have nothing but admiration for those women who've been injured,” Donnelly says. “But I am critical of the Pentagon policymakers.”

Donnelly says the Army, wanting to create more opportunities for women and make them more promotable, is bending rules to push those in support units close to front-line combat in Iraq.

Pentagon: Rules are clear

The Pentagon denies that. Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman, says military rules are clear: Women are barred from units “whose primary mission is direct ground combat.”

Donnelly and those who don't agree with her point of view do concur on one thing. Servicemembers who have been killed or seriously wounded in Iraq — men and women — are often obscured from public view.

The Pentagon has barred cameras from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where caskets carrying the bodies of U.S. troops arrive back in the USA.

Connie Halfaker says the numbers of women killed or seriously wounded — compared with the numbers of men — are so low that they remain largely off the public's radar screen.

“I don't think the people realize what is happening. It's one of the reasons that Dawn has chosen to do some of the interviews,” she says.

Heather Wilson, the New Mexico congresswoman, says the military faced large hurdles in opening up jobs such as fighter pilot and military police to women. Within American culture, she says, there is a deeply rooted belief that women should be protected rather than be protectors.

“It's a moral and social argument about the role of women in the society,” Wilson says. “I think Americans have accepted that women make all kinds of contributions, as police, as astronauts.

“Those who are called to serve do it in a variety of ways, including protecting this country from its enemies.”

But many do Msladycop.

I have worked with hundreds of female military members from Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines.

They have my respect.

Times change only relunctantly and slowly.......but they DO change.

San Diego Union-Tribune
September 9, 2005

Female Soldiers In Equal Danger

Women serving in convoys see as much combat as infantrymen

By Richard Chin, Knight Ridder News Service

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SPEICHER, Iraq – Here's what happens when a nice woman from Minnesota – "Minnesota Nice" as the locals say – gets a .50-caliber machine gun and goes to war.

"I was not an aggressive person. I was the most passive person: 'It's OK, you go first,'" said Michelle Maxwell, who works in a nursing home in Austin, Minn.

Then eight months ago, the Army National Guard specialist, 21, was sent to Iraq, taught to operate the heavy machine gun turret of a Humvee and told to shoot or run over anybody who threatened the truck convoys she was assigned to protect.

"I said, 'There's just no way.' I put old people to bed. There's no way I could run over a kid," Maxwell said.

That was before she saw fellow soldiers in her transportation unit getting blown up on the roads of northern Iraq.

Now she talks about the "rush" of confronting insurgent attacks, forcing civilian traffic out of the way and stitching the pavement with her machine gun if another vehicle gets too close.

"You get here and you see what's going on. You see IED (improvised explosive device) holes, people sent to (the hospital in) Germany. You've got to clear the way. You have to. You just have to," she said.

In Bravo Company, 50th Main Support Battalion, Maxwell finds herself in a conflict with no front line, where the enemy's weapon of choice is the improvised roadside bomb. The once-safe rear echelon job in a truck company is now one of the most dangerous, and female soldiers see as much combat as infantrymen.

Newly armored vehicles are saving lives, but the soldiers still face danger from a determined enemy using deadlier bombs that engulf their big, slow-moving trucks in flames.

Bravo Company describes itself as the wheels of the 42nd Infantry Division, its truck convoys moving food and prisoners, even tanks, to about two dozen forward operating bases throughout northern Iraq.

The company has about 250 soldiers, mostly from the Minnesota National Guard. About a fifth are women. The dozens of trucks that make up a convoy are inviting targets to insurgents.

"It is what a lot of people say is the most dangerous job in the division," said Maj. Jeff Howe, a St. Cloud, Minn., resident and the company commander. "The infantry division, they are the ones doing the hunting. We kind of feel we are the hunted."

A bomb killed one of the unit's soldiers this summer, Sgt. Manny Hornedo, 27, of Brooklyn, N.Y. About a dozen have been wounded.

The company's most dangerous route is a 170-mile round-trip run from its home base at Forward Operating Base Speicher near Tikrit to Forward Operating Base Warrior near Kirkuk.

That's where a bomb caught Spc. Anne Hanson's truck on Aug. 6.

"It started on fire almost immediately. It blew the fuel tank and both sides were on fire. My window broke and flames came in," said the 24-year-old Litchfield, Minn., nursing student.

"The heat inside the cab was so intense you couldn't breathe," said her fellow driver, Sgt. Matthew Perrier, 45, a school bus driver from Richfield, Minn.

Perrier got shrapnel in his foot and suffered burns to his face. Hanson got shrapnel in the foot, burns to her leg and a broken arm.

Hanson is believed to be the first woman in the history of the 42nd Infantry Division to get the Purple Heart.

"I wish like I had a dollar for every time I heard that," Hanson said. "It's an honor, but I don't think they should make such a big deal about it."

The truckers said many of their vehicles had only "hillbilly armor" – improvised metal plates – for the first six months of their deployment.

They started getting improved armor on all their trucks in June, just as "it started getting nasty, real nasty," Howe said. "It has saved countless lives."

On a recent trip back from Warrior, Spc. Jessica Klein, a 20-year-old nursing student from Litchfield, Minn., drove the first big truck in the convoy, a gigantic vehicle called a Heavy Equipment Transport.

"When you first start, the trailer is hard to get used to, but after that it's fun to drive," she said, waving at a kid by the side of the road.

The convoy owns the road. Truckers drive aggressively, right down the middle of the highway. Despite the morning rush hour, the Humvees force all the civilian traffic on both sides to the shoulders. They don't obey traffic laws and stop moving only if a bomb is detected.

If a civilian car ventures too close, Klein will swerve right at it until the driver decides not to play chicken with a truck capable of hauling a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank.

"She makes me feel safe," said Spc. David Wolfley, 33, a St. Cloud resident who rides with Klein.

I have never been able to understand why this society values a womans life more than a mans. If we are to continue to live as free people, conflicts will arise which necessitate protecting our freedom. Thus, why shouldn't women share in the responsibility since we also benefits from being a free people. I don't care to touch the "picture issue" other than to say that this in no way demeans the sacrifices these woman have made, including losing their lives. Some people still just don't get it.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
March 15, 2005

Women In Armed Forces Saluted

By Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- Women in uniform are doing their share in the Iraqi and Afghanistan war zones -- and taking their hits.

A Pentagon spokesman said that 23,409 women were deployed in the two countries in support of U.S. operations as of last Dec. 31.

A total of 31 servicewomen have given their lives, and 254 women have been wounded in those theaters of action.

Women in uniform are bravely taking their chances. They are not fighting on the ground, but they fly planes for the Air Force and Apache helicopters for the Army. Women have helped in all previous wars. Even Gen. George Washington called for women nurses to assist doctors in the Revolutionary War. The Army officially established a nursing corps in 1901.

Women also served in both world wars as clerks, radio operators, electricians, chemists, accountants and telephone operators.

Two women who served in Iraq -- both from West Virginia -- became high profile for different reasons. The Pentagon hype on the rescue of Jessica Lynch gave new meaning to the expression that truth is the first casualty of war.

Lynch, of Palestine, W.Va., was a clerk with an ordnance maintenance unit that was ambushed. Nine of her comrades were killed, and Iraqi soldiers took her to a local hospital. Reports that she had stab and bullet wounds turned out to be false, though she suffered shoulder and leg injuries and trauma in the melee.

The Iraqi doctors insist she was well treated at the hospital, a claim that Lynch later confirmed. The Pentagon says U.S. Special Forces troops staged a dramatic rescue.

The other woman -- whose name also became a household word -- is Pfc. Lyndie England of Fort Ashby, W. Va., who was photographed holding a leash on a naked prisoner at Abu Ghraib, the notorious prison near Baghdad. That memorable picture was published worldwide. She is facing court martial charges.

Both women are victims of war.

The Alliance for National Defense, a non-profit, non-partisan organization representing women in the military, keeps tab on women in the military.

In its most recent newsletter, the Alliance asked for special remembrances for two other women.

One was Sgt. Jessica M. Housby, a motor transport operator, who was killed last month when an explosive device was detonated near her convoy while on the way to Baghdad Airport.

Lt. Archie Rose of the Illinois National Guard said Housby was at the top of her class of 187 troops because of her "hard work, enthusiasm and responsibility." She received an award in 1999 after taking part in a training exercise at Fort McCoy, Wis.

Among the more recent casualties was Pfc. Megan Adelman-Tenning of Alliance, Ohio, who was in the final week of paratroop training at Fort Benning, Ga., when both her primary parachute and the back-up failed to open.

The Alliance also paid tribute to the recent passing of Army Col. Mary A. Hallaren, 97. She was the legendary pioneer who commanded the first battalion of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) to serve in Europe in World War II.

She was another reminder of today's unsung heroines.

The much-decorated Hallaren headed the largest unit of women to serve overseas in World War II.

She lobbied to win the Women's Armed Services Integration Act, which made women part of the regular armed services.

A schoolteacher when World War II broke out, the diminutive Hallaren decided to join the Army in 1942 after her brothers enlisted. She stood on her toes to meet the height requirement.

The recruiter was doubtful but she won him over when she told him, "You don't have to be 6 feet tall to have a brain that works."

Women were formally taken into the service when Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels asked in 1917 if there were any regulation that specified that a Navy yeoman had to be a man. Of course, there wasn't, and within months women were enlisting in the Navy for non-combat jobs.

Some 90,000 women served in World War I and more than 400,000 in World War II.

In a speech in England in 1945, Hallaren told the WACS that everyone had bet they could not endure Army discipline.

"Everyone who voted against you lost," she said.

I think I remember all of the warfighters that The Big Irish posted were part of my team in Vietnam. That's why our morale was so high, and most of us earned the Navy Cross.

Prepared for battle

I joined the National Guard when I was 23 years old, with a 3-year-old daughter at home, and a college degree. For the writer of “Sending women to war wrong” (Aug. 15) to say that I “didn’t know what I was getting myself into” is infuriating.

I did not join the Army to sit behind a desk somewhere and read about “real soldiers” getting killed, while I’m safe and sound. I did not join for college money; I already had my degree. I did not join for an extra paycheck, because, quite honestly, when I enlisted I didn’t realize we get paid for drill weekends in the National Guard.

I joined to be a soldier, to defend my country and kill bad guys, just like the men.

I am currently serving in Iraq, where the battlefield is all around us. Wherever the Army takes me, I am prepared to fight. Sure, the dangers in Iraq can be scary, and I don’t intend to come across as a hard-core 11B wannabe; I’m just a communication troop in a small unit. But I would not turn tail and run when faced with danger, because I’m not made like that.

The American government has not forced me into harm’s way. I eagerly sought it out. I would not change the fact that I joined, I would not change being in Iraq, and I would support any draft that included females, as we are capable of sharing the load and should do our part to defend freedom just as males have all these years.

With all the stories of soldiers getting killed over here, I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror if I was not over here, doing “my fair share to keep alive the principles of freedom for which this country stands.” It’s only fair.

Spc. Donna J. Smith
Camp Cooke, Iraq

Woman’s place in Army

In response to “Sending women to war wrong,” the writer should fast forward to 2004. Women are capable of much more than cooking, cleaning and looking good. I am an anti-feminist with the firm belief that women do have their place, but men have their place, too.

I love to clean, shop and play with children, but there is much more to me than that. I am also capable of shooting just as well as a man, running just as fast, and fighting just as hard. But is this really about that? I am not a female in the Army, I am a U.S. soldier.

When I got deployed to Iraq, I came when I could have gotten out of it — and I know countless males who found ways to go home. I knew what I was getting into when I joined the military. My first reason to join had nothing to do with the educational benefits. It had everything to do with me being a fighter, loving the thrill of a challenge, and wanting to serve my country. Women are not as naïve as the writer makes them out to be. College money was just a great added bonus. I, along with countless other women, would give my life freely to protect my country, or to protect the soldier next to me.

We are in 2004, where terrorists attack people based on their origin, not sex. Bullets know no gender. Let women defend themselves as men do, let us fight for our country. If you don’t like it, leave the United States.

And for the record, women were not sent here because of a severe manpower shortage. We were sent here because our nation is at war and we answered the call.

Laura Johnston
Al Taqaddum, Iraq

America’s finest

After reading “Sending women to war wrong,” I was left speechless by the author’s comments. I am a five-year veteran of the U.S. Army, currently serving in Iraq. During my time in the Army, I have had the distinct honor and privilege of serving with some of this nation’s finest females.

Females have served and died for their country during times of conflict in every war we have fought. From being nurses during the Civil War to fighter pilots in today’s battles, women have bravely put their country above themselves. They serve a vital part in our nation’s armed forces and have done so long before this “severe manpower shortage.”

The author says that we have a national policy that purposely places women in combat. While the vast majority of jobs in today’s military are open to women, they are still restricted from combat arms units. I have served with women who, if given the chance, would jump at being in combat units. In an age when women have made great advances to be considered equals with men, we should allow a woman to serve her country in any way she sees fit.

Before the letter writer says women have no business being placed in harm’s way, I suggest he first face harm himself. Then I would suggest that he stop and ask these women who willingly volunteer to face danger.

Don’t trash the dedication these fine Americans show when they serve, and certainly don’t blemish the sacrifices they make when they give their life in combat. Having served with one, Pfc. Karina Lau, who gave her life in Iraq in November 2003, I can tell you firsthand that these women know the risks that they take, and are very willing and proud to face them.

Sgt. Troy Ward
Camp Cooke, Iraq

Sisters in arms

To the writer of “Sending women to war wrong” I ask: Is it wrong for a woman to want to defend her own freedom, or that of her family and friends?

I am not only a proud military spouse, but also the mother of a young female solider and a female JROTC cadet who plans to join her sister in the military.

The women of the U.S. armed forces are proud to serve their country, and I should think that anyone living in the United States would be just as proud to have them serve, whether it be on the battlefield or the parade field. I know I am.

And while it is a great loss to our country to lose any of our servicemembers, the life that we live wasn’t given to us. It has been paid for, and will continue to be paid for, with the sweat and, yes, the blood of those who answer the call of freedom — male and female alike.

What bothers me most is that it took the loss of a female solider from the writer’s home state to bring this war “closer to home” for him, while there are so many Americans who live and breath the war every day.

Those of us living in and around the armed forces don’t see male and female, but simply the camouflaged uniforms of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guard members who wear them. We stand behind them all 100 percent, and we mourn when the ultimate price is paid by one of them, regardless of their sex.

Cindy Bell
Heidelberg, Germany

Birmingham (AL) News
September 24, 2004

First Black Female POW Soldiers On

By Jeff Hansen, News staff writer

All Shoshana Johnson wanted to do was be a soldier. Put in her 20 years just like her dad, then retire with honor.

She didn't get the 20.

She got a bullet in the ankle, 22 days in captivity as a prisoner of war in Iraq, three medals and a medical discharge from the Army. She also gained widespread renown as the first black woman to become a prisoner of war.

Johnson came to Birmingham Thursday to tell her story at a fund-raising dinner for the Birmingham Association of Black Journalists. At a news conference before the dinner, she said that retelling her story is hard.

She remembers the fear of the ambush in Nasiriyah, and also those in her unit who died that March day in 2003.

"It does take a toll on me," she said. "Every time I tell it ... All of the people who gave their lives that day went down with honor. We were a support group and I think we did pretty well."

Johnson was a cook, and her unit was trained to change tires and repair vehicles. They were not supposed to be in combat.

But after they ended up in the wrong place, an ambush led to 10 soldiers killed, nine wounded and six captured, including Spc. Johnson and Pfc. Jessica Lynch. Spc. Lori Piestewa also was captured, and later died of her injuries. One of the dead was Pfc. Howard Johnson Jr. of Mobile, the first Alabama soldier killed in the war.

Piestewa was the first female soldier killed in the war. Like Johnson, she was a single mother.

The three women caught in the ambush and vaulted into world attention were a cross section of America. Piestewa, from Arizona, had Hopi Indian heritage. Johnson, from El Paso, Texas, was black and Hispanic - her family moved to the United States from Panama when Johnson was 5. Lynch, white, hailed from a small town in West Virginia.

Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi hospital. Later, Johnson and six other POWs were rescued in the city of Samara.

Unwelcome fame

Johnson, 31, has now won a measure of fame. She has appeared before small groups and large, the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses, major league sports events and the like. She has been interviewed by U.S. and international major media. She's been on shows such as "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," and she appeared with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in January to drop the ball at Times Square that counts down the seconds to the New Year.

"I hate it," she said of the recognition. "It's very nice sometimes but this is not the life I planned. I had planned to do 20 years."

But Johnson needs to tell the story for her unit, in her plain-spoken, firm voice, and with her direct, calm gaze.

She said that during the ambush she thought she was going to die. She said her captors treated her with more respect and dignity than she expected. She said her sister is still in the Army, and two cousins also served in Iraq.

"They had close calls," she said. "One survived two ambushes. My family is very lucky."

Asked about leaving a child behind when she went to war, she said, "You sit down with your children and tell them to the best of your ability. ... I remember being a child left behind when my daddy went to the first Gulf War."

‘Not my job’

Johnson also sets limits in what she says.

Asked Thursday about possible political solutions in Iraq, she replied, "I'm not a politician. That's not my job. I was a soldier in the United States Army."

Johnson cannot stand for long periods, and she receives payments for a 50 percent medical disability. But being a POW has taken her to places and people she never expected.

Last November, she and her friend, fellow female POW Lynch, were named as women of the year by Glamour magazine. The magazine sent them to the Golden Globe movie awards early this year.

They got to sit for a photo with Queen Latifah. Later, Johnson looked around and spotted Sarah "Fergie" Ferguson, the Duchess of York.

"Lynch, look," she said to her quiet friend, standing near her side. "We're with royalty!"

Jack Kelly is an idiot.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
April 17, 2005

G.I. Jane Is Here To Stay

There is no longer any doubt that women can serve in combat

By Jack Kelly

On the outskirts of Salman Pak a little southeast of Baghdad on March 20, a convoy of 30 tractor-trailers driven by third-country nationals was attacked by a force of 40 to 50 insurgents armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

The convoy was escorted by three Humvees. But one was in the kill zone, and the three soldiers in it were wounded immediately. The soldiers in the other vehicles were pinned down by heavy fire. Insurgents with handcuffs moved toward the wounded soldiers, intending to take them prisoner.

But a squad of 10 MPs in three Humvees had been shadowing the convoy, and arrived in the nick of time. The MPs drove across the kill zone, shielding the convoy from enemy fire, turned up an access road at a right angle to the main road, and stopped next to a field across which a squad of insurgents was advancing. In front of them was a line of seven sedans with doors and trunks open, the insurgents' getaway cars.

The second vehicle in the squad was hit immediately by an RPG which knocked the gunner unconscious. All three soldiers in the third Humvee were wounded by machine gun fire.

The driver of the middle vehicle sprinted to the third to take up the machine gun from the fallen gunner there. The squad leader, in the second vehicle, revived the dazed gunner and then, with the team sergeant from the first Humvee, moved into a ditch in which many of the insurgents were hiding. The two sergeants fought their way up the ditch, throwing grenades and firing their carbines.

The two sergeants cleared the ditch. The team sergeant had five confirmed kills, the squad leader two. The gunners on the three vehicles also were effective. The 10 MPs together killed 26 guerrillas, and captured another in what was the biggest battle in Iraq since the assault on Fallujah the preceding November.

The first thing to note is the MPs were from the 617th MP company of the Kentucky Army National Guard. Our "weekend warriors" fight just as well as our regulars, who fight very well indeed.

The second thing to note is that the team sergeant who took the lead in clearing the ditch was Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, 23, who sells shoes at a store in Nashville in civilian life.

Nearly as courageous as Sgt. Hester was Spc. Ashley Pullen, who treated the wounded under fire.

Sgt. Hester and Spc. Pullen pretty much close for me the debate over women in combat. No, I'm not in favor of lifting the restrictions in the Army and Marine Corps that keep women out of infantry, armor and Special Forces units. The combat arms exclusion exists for sound reasons which ought not to be ignored to please a few feminists who would never dream of enlisting themselves. But anyone who says women can't pull their load on the battlefield should take it up with Sgt. Hester. But not when she's mad.

Neither the Army nor most women who serve in it have any desire to lift those restrictions, but Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness, is in high dudgeon over the chief of staff's plan to collocate support units in which women do serve with infantry and armor battalions.

I think her objections are foolish. In this war, women already are in combat. Insurgents in Iraq are far more likely to attack support units, in which women serve, than the combat units in which they do not. The reorganization that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker has proposed makes enormous tactical sense, and ought not to be sidetracked because women might serve in forward support companies.

We cannot do without women in the military. The Army has missed its recruiting goals for two consecutive months, and is likely to fall short again this month. There'd be no hope of meeting goals without female recruits. And women soldiers are a big reason why soldiers have higher IQs and more education than the youth population as a whole.

The Army does some silly things with its women. Coed basic training is a foolishness imposed during the Clinton administration which lowers the readiness of both male and female soldiers. The Army would be wise to follow the lead of the Marine Corps, which segregates the sexes during boot camp. But G.I. Jane is here to stay, and that's mostly a good thing.

Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio

Woman Soldier Receives Silver Star for Valor in Iraq
By Sgt. Sara Wood, USA
American Forces Press Service


WASHINGTON, June 16, 2005 – For the first time since World War II, a woman soldier was awarded the Silver Star Medal today in Iraq.

Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester of the 617th Military Police Company, a National Guard unit out of Richmond, Ky., received the Silver Star, along with two other members of her unit, Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein and Spc. Jason Mike, for their actions during an enemy ambush on their convoy. Other members of the unit also received awards.

Hester's squad was shadowing a supply convoy March 20 when anti-Iraqi fighters ambushed the convoy. The squad moved to the side of the road, flanking the insurgents and cutting off their escape route. Hester led her team through the "kill zone" and into a flanking position, where she assaulted a trench line with grenades and M203 grenade-launcher rounds. She and Nein, her squad leader, then cleared two trenches, at which time she killed three insurgents with her rifle.

When the fight was over, 27 insurgents were dead, six were wounded, and one was captured.

Hester, 23, who was born in Bowling Green, Ky., and later moved to Nashville, Tenn., said she was surprised when she heard she was being considered for the Silver Star.

"I'm honored to even be considered, much less awarded, the medal," she said.

Being the first woman soldier since World War II to receive the medal is significant to Hester. But, she said, she doesn't dwell on the fact. "It really doesn't have anything to do with being a female," she said. "It's about the duties I performed that day as a soldier."

Hester, who has been in the National Guard since April 2001, said she didn't have time to be scared when the fight started, and she didn't realize the impact of what had happened until much later.

"Your training kicks in and the soldier kicks in," she said. "It's your life or theirs. ... You've got a job to do -- protecting yourself and your fellow comrades."

Nein, who is on his second deployment to Iraq, praised Hester and his other soldiers for their actions that day. "It's due to their dedication and their ability to stay there and back me up that we were able to do what we did that day," he said.

Hester and her fellow soldiers were awarded their medals at Camp Liberty, Iraq, by Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, Multinational Corps Iraq commanding general. In his speech, Vines commended the soldiers for their bravery and their contribution to the international war on terror.

"My heroes don't play in the (National Basketball Association) and don't play in the U.S. Open (golf tournament) at Pinehurst," Vines said. "They're standing in front of me today. These are American heroes."

Three soldiers of the 617th were wounded in the ambush. Hester said she and the other squad members are thinking about them, and she is very thankful to have made it through unscathed. The firefight, along with the entire deployment, has had a lasting effect on her, Hester said.

"I think about it every day, and probably will for the rest of my life," she said.

When it comes to standing behind our female troops...I'm there.

San Diego Union-Tribune
May 18, 2005

Women In War

Restrictive legislation is not the answer


In one capacity or another, American women have served their country on or near the battlefield since the Revolutionary War. During the Civil War, some women even disguised themselves as men and served as soldiers.

By World War II, women serving as nurses were killed by Nazi and Japanese warplanes. In the first Gulf War, women died in missile attacks. Eight military women died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon.

Women's roles have evolved in our military and in the wars they fight. In the current war in Iraq, 35 had died and 279 had been wounded as of last week.

Military leaders have been highly supportive of women in Iraq, where they are serving in a range of roles, from truck drivers to explosive ordnance disposal experts. Under a 1994 law, women still are prohibited from direct combat roles such as special forces, the infantry, armor, artillery or attack helicopters.

To accomplish their missions, some military leaders have bent the rules on women in combat, and it goes without saying that policies should be obeyed. But Congress may be about to go too far in overruling its military leaders. It is seeking to bar women from thousands of jobs they now perform, in the process placing obstacles in their paths to advancement. Last week, a House subcommittee approved a bill that would ban women from certain support units in an effort to keep them further from combat. The legislation has the backing of influential House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon.

The measure has particularly angered many of the 20,000 women serving in Iraq, and a number of the men serving with them. They say the realities of the insurgency there make it impossible to keep women out of harm's way.

If Congress wants to prove a point with military commanders, the proposed legislation may achieve that goal. If, however, Congress wants military leaders to effectively carry out their assigned missions, perhaps the best thing to do is work together to formulate workable and fair policies on women in combat.

Washington Times
October 22, 2004
Pg. 1

Female Soldiers Eyed For Combat

Army seeks end of 1994 ban

By Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times

The Army is negotiating with civilian leaders about eliminating a women-in-combat ban so it can place mixed-sex support companies within warfighting units, starting with a division going to Iraq in January.

Despite the legal prohibition, Army plans already have included such collocation of women-men units in blueprints for a lighter force of 10 active divisions, according to Defense Department sources.

An Army spokesman yesterday, in response to questions from The Washington Times, said the Army is now in discussions with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's staff to see whether the 10-year-old ban in this one area should be lifted. The ban prohibits the Army from putting women in units that "collocate" with ground combatants.

"When that policy was made up, there was a different threat," said Lt. Col. Chris Rodney, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. "We imagined a more linear combat environment. Now, with the nature of asymmetrical threats, we have to relook at that policy."

Col. Rodney cited the fighting in Iraq as typifying the new threat whereby all soldiers, support or combat, face attack by rockets, mortars, roadside bombs and ambushes.

"Everybody faces a similar threat," he said. "There is no front-line threat right now."

Since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Army has suffered 793 combat deaths, including 24 female soldiers.

The Army is not seeking to lift the ban on women in direct combat units, such as infantry or armor.

What is being examined is the part of the exclusion rule that says mixed-sex support companies may not be positioned with ground combat teams.

In the disputed instance, the transformation plan of Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, calls for creating Forward Support Companies, which are made up of men and women. These companies would collocate with reconnaissance squadrons, which are combat units and are part of larger brigade "units of action."

The problem is a 1994 ban signed by then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin that excludes women from land combat units. Mr. Aspin added an additional restriction. Women could not serve "where units and positions are doctrinally required to physically collocate and remain with direct ground combat units that are closed to women."

Some Pentagon officials, who asked not to be named, said the proposed Forward Support Companies are at the least "skirting" the existing ban if not violating it. They suspect the new units are a way to inch women closer to land combat despite Congress' prohibition against it.

Elaine Donnelly, who leads the pro-military Center for Military Readiness, says Congress needs to be informed of the Army's plans.

"There is a law requiring notice to Congress that has not happened, and there are regulations that forbid the Army from taking infantry units and collocating gender-integrated units with them," said Mrs. Donnelly, who opposes women in combat. "If they are doing this, putting women in land combat units would be a violation of law and policy."

The Pentagon long has banned women from combat roles. In the early 1990s, the new Clinton administration changed the rules by allowing women for the first time to serve on combat ships and pilot combat aircraft, such as jet fighters and helicopters.

But the Pentagon retained the ban on women participating in direct combat and issued the new Aspin rules.

Mr. Aspin said in a January 1994 memo to the services that "women should be excluded from assignment to units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground." The policy then defined direct combat as "engaging an enemy on the ground with individual or crew-served weapons, while being exposed to hostile fire and to a high probability of direct physical contact with the hostile force's personnel. Direct combat takes place well forward on the battlefield while locating and closing with the enemy to defeat them by fire, maneuver, or shock effect."

Mr. Aspin then went further in denying collocation of mixed-sex and combat units. The Army accepted the limitation, documents show.

The 3rd Infantry Division, which played a major role in the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, is scheduled to return to Iraq early next year. It would be the first division to be reconfigured into "units of action" that would contain the new mixed-sex Forward Support Companies.

In all, Gen. Schoomaker is increasing the number of combat brigades from 33 to 48, and naming them "units of action." The brigades are being married up permanently with support units so they can move out more quickly to war zones, instead of waiting for the additional personnel to arrive.

Early in the Bush administration, Mrs. Donnelly successfully persuaded the Pentagon to restrict female soldiers from certain reconnaissance units after Army planners had penciled them into those new units.

No problems here Matt w/ those pics....

Washington Post
May 13, 2005
Pg. 1

For Female GIs, Combat Is A Fact

Many Duties in Iraq Put Women at Risk Despite Restrictive Policy

By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer

MOSUL, Iraq -- Jennifer Guay went to war to be a grunt. And the 170-pound former bartender from Leeds, Maine, with cropped red hair and a penchant for the bench press, has come pretty close.

It was mid-February and Guay, 26, an Army specialist who was the first woman to be assigned as an infantry combat medic, was spending 10 hours a day on missions with the 82nd Airborne Division, dodging rockets and grenades in the crowded streets of Mosul.

"Break-break-break: U.S. soldier down!" a hard-edged voice came over the radio. A gun battle had just broken out.

In less than five minutes, Guay was at the scene. She dashed to Sgt. Christopher Pusateri, 21, who was lying on the ground, a bullet through his jaw. "I was in charge of this man's life," she recalled. Pusateri had "a massive trauma injury, and I had to get him off the middle of the street."

Day after day, Guay has faced situations that would test the steel of any soldier. And female soldiers like her -- as well as Army officers who support them -- are seizing opportunities amid Iraq's indiscriminate violence to push back the barriers against women in combat. As American women in uniform patrol bomb-ridden highways, stand duty at checkpoints shouldering M-16s and raid houses in insurgent-contested towns, many have come to believe this 360-degree war has rendered obsolete a decade-old Pentagon policy barring them from serving with ground combat battalions.

"The Army has to understand the regulation that says women can't be placed in direct fire situations is archaic and not attainable," said Lt. Col. Cheri Provancha, commander of a Stryker Brigade support battalion in Mosul, who decided to bend Army rules and allow Guay to serve as a medic for an infantry company of the 82nd Airborne. Under a 1994 policy, women are excluded from units at the level of battalion and below that engage in direct ground combat.

"This war has proven that we need to revisit the policy, because they are out there doing it," Provancha, a 21-year Army veteran from San Diego, said from her base in what soldiers call Mosul's "mortar alley." "We are embedded with the enemy."

Dozens of soldiers interviewed across Iraq -- male and female, from lower enlisted ranks to senior officers -- voiced frustration over restrictions on women mandated in Washington that they say make no sense in the war they are fighting. All said the policy should be changed to allow, at a minimum, mixed-sex support units to be assigned to combat battalions. Many favored a far more radical step: letting qualified women join the infantry.

But Congress is moving in the opposite direction. A House subcommittee, seeking to keep women out of combat, passed a measure this week that would bar women from thousands of Army positions now open to them. In Iraq, female soldiers immediately denounced the vote.

"I refuse to have my right as a soldier taken from me because of my gender," Guay wrote in an e-mail. "It is my right to defend my country. . . . I am well aware of the danger. . . . Let me (us) do our job."

For many inside Army camps, the disconnect between Washington officialdom and the reality that female troops confront in Iraq was epitomized by President Bush's Jan. 11 declaration of "No women in combat."

"That's an oxymoron!" said Sgt. Neva D. Trice, who leads a female Army search team that guards the gates of Baghdad's Green Zone, where many U.S. and Iraqi government facilities are located. "If he said no women in combat, then why are there women here in Iraq?"

Several male Army officers also dismissed Bush's statement as woefully uninformed. "The president got blindsided. The president didn't understand what the policy really was," said one officer, who requested anonymity because he was questioning the commander-in-chief. He and others urged Army leaders to push for new policies that reflect women's expanded role.

"I'm ashamed," he said, "that the Army has not taken this on."

Valor Under Fire

In sheer numbers, women are essential to the American military effort in Iraq -- where tens of thousands have served -- and are playing a bigger role than in any previous U.S. conflict. Historically, women's involvement in the military has surged in wartime. Today, that pattern is amplified by the all-volunteer U.S. military's growing share of women, which has steadily expanded in recent years to 15 percent of the active duty force.

Moreover, in contrast to their roles in past wars, women are serving in a widening variety of Army ground units -- from logistics to military police, military intelligence and civil affairs -- where they routinely face the same risks as soldiers in all-male combat units such as infantry and armor.

"We live and work with the infantry," said Maj. Mary Prophit, 42, who heads a four-person civil affairs team with a Stryker battalion in Mosul. An Army reservist and librarian from Glenoma, Wash., Prophit handles security duties from the hatch of a Stryker armored vehicle, watching houses during searches and returning fire when shot at. "Civil affairs teams have to be prepared to perform infantry functions, because at any time we could be diverted," she said.

In January, Prophit was delivering kerosene heaters to a Mosul school when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb as her convoy passed, fatally wounding three Iraqi soldiers. Prophit moved to shield the medic treating the wounded, firing at insurgents who were shooting at them from a mosque across the street. "Women in combat is no longer an argument," she said matter-of-factly at her camp near the Mosul air field. "There is no rear area."

At least as often as insurgents attack all-male infantry forces, they strike targets such as military supply convoys, checkpoints and camps where U.S. servicewomen are often present. As a result, hostile fire in Iraq has taken a proportionally larger toll on servicewomen than in any prior U.S. conflict, killing 35 and wounding 279.

"You can't tell me I'm not being shot at. You can't tell me I can't handle combat," said Provancha, who has nearly been hit by road bombs, rockets and the chow hall suicide bombing that killed 22 in December. "That was pretty frickin' direct fire if you ask me," she said, holding up a piece of shrapnel.

Far from shrinking from the fight, women in Iraq are winning medals for valor under fire.

Spec. Shavodsha Hodges, 29, of San Antonio, says she joined the Army because her GI husband encouraged her to. She is a veteran of the 2003 Iraq invasion and well into her second year in a war zone. She and about 100 other women make up 20 percent of Provancha's logistics battalion in Mosul. They serve as truck and Stryker drivers, medics, mechanics and supply soldiers like Hodges who conduct between 50 and 70 convoy missions a month. Ferrying critical goods from Mosul to outlying bases on the precarious roads of northern Iraq, Hodges has developed keen instincts.

On Oct. 29, she was in a supply convoy heading out of the hostile town of Tall Afar, near the Syrian border. "We were told to watch out for an Iraqi national in black," she recalled. "Within seconds we were hit with an IED," or improvised explosive device, the military's term for a roadside bomb.

As her Humvee began to roll over, Hodges reached over and grabbed the legs of Pfc. Gregory Burchett, who was manning a .50-caliber machine gun. She pulled him down from the hatch and into the vehicle just before it flipped, saving him from being crushed.

Burchett was disoriented and moaning in pain. His face was bleeding from multiple shrapnel wounds and he couldn't move his arm. Hodges helped him out of the vehicle, but almost as soon they climbed out they came under small-arms fire from insurgents 200 yards away.

"Stay down!" Hodges yelled. Cradling Burchett's head in her lap, she lay forward over his upper body to shield him from the bullets. "Don't get up!" she said, twice sheltering the gunner from enemy rounds.

Meanwhile, the Humvee's commander, Staff Sgt. Armando Mejia, had his hand trapped under the vehicle. After the shooting stopped, Hodges and other soldiers pushed it up enough to free him. Only later did she realize that she, too, was injured.

For her quick thinking and bravery in the ambush, Hodges became the first woman in her brigade to be awarded the Army Commendation Medal with "V" device, for "valorous conduct" that "saved the lives of her fellow soldiers."

Between missions at her camp in Mosul, Hodges said she had no doubts about women's abilities in the war zone. "I think a woman is just as capable of dealing with this as a man," she said. "You think fast, and you react fast," she said, her tone confident but sober. "You have to be prepared at any moment, for anything."

'Attached,' Not 'Assigned'

Many commanders in Iraq say they see a widening gap between war-zone realities and policies designed to limit women's exposure to combat.

Although the Army is barred from assigning women to ground combat battalions, in Iraq it skirts the ban with a twist in terminology. Instead of being "assigned," women are "attached in direct support of" the battalions, according to Army officers familiar with the policy. As a result, the Army avoids having to seek Pentagon and congressional approval to change the policy, officers said.

"What has changed? Nothing," said Lt. Col. Bob Roth of the 3rd Infantry Division. "You just want someone to feel better by saying we don't allow women in dangerous situations."

A debate over the policy erupted in Washington last year. As the Army began reorganizing its combat brigades, the 3rd Infantry attempted to assign mixed-sex forward support companies to combat battalions. Capt. Christine Roney was on the verge of taking command of one of those companies when a soldier in her unit e-mailed Congress and opponents of women in combat. The Army reversed itself.

Eventually, the Army sidestepped the problem by making the forward support companies "attached" instead of "assigned," officers said. But Roney was nonetheless denied the job.

"A week before I was supposed to take command, they pulled me into the office and told me I couldn't be assigned," said Roney, of Loudonville, Ohio, now in Baghdad. "It was very disappointing." Instead, she was given a company in a noncombat battalion.

Roney and other Army officers interviewed in Iraq agreed overwhelmingly that the Army's ban on locating female support soldiers with combat battalions was meaningless and should be lifted. The bigger question raised by the Iraq conflict, they said, is whether women should be allowed into combat units such as infantry and armor.

"I'm for it, because I think we can do it," said Pfc. Laura Springer, 20, of Odessa, Tex., one of only three women in her brigade licensed to drive the Army's Stryker vehicle. "At first all the infantry guys were staring at me. But I'm a good driver -- I haven't hit anything -- the same or even better."

Male and female soldiers said many women in Iraq were performing well in risky jobs that require infantry skills -- from military police and civil affairs troops to female search teams that go on raids with Army and Marine infantry units. On raids, a woman is "as much infantry soldier on the ground doing the duties as anyone else," Roth said. "She may not have been the person who knocked the door in, but she's with the next stack getting ready to come in."

Most soldiers and officers interviewed also agreed that women need tougher physical fitness standards to perform well in infantry jobs, but that many could meet those standards. For some, the impact of pregnancy on readiness was a concern. Commanders of mixed-sex units in Iraq said that from 5 percent to 15 percent of their women became pregnant and did not deploy to Iraq, but one said health and family issues kept a similar percentage of men home.

From Mosul to Ramadi to Baghdad, women such as Guay, who spent three months with the 82nd Airborne, have shown that they can be valuable players in combat units.

Guay was a student, engrossed by the moral dilemmas of war, when she decided to enlist in the Army in September 2002 to test her beliefs. "I called an Army recruiter. I wanted to be as grunt as possible," she said.

She lifted weights and studied combat medical skills. Once in Iraq, she actively sought missions "outside the wire" of the Mosul camp. When the 82nd Airborne arrived and needed a medic, Guay wanted to go. Provancha, whose team of medics is 40 percent female, assigned her.

"She wanted to be part of breaking the barrier down," Provancha said. Provancha took full responsibility for her decision, informing superiors rather than asking permission.

"Think of the fallout if she had gotten wounded or killed," Provancha said. "I probably would have been brought up on charges for defying Army policy." But that didn't happen. Instead, she said, Guay "did magnificently."

Initially, the 82nd questioned the move. At first, the grunts watched Guay. Then, in a casual sign of acceptance, they began calling her "Doc." A few firefights later, she became their "kick-ass medic." She was one of them.

"I was always working out and being strong and proficient," said Guay, proud of the fact that she could "out-bench some of the guys." She lived, ate and went on daily missions with the paratroops, bonding with the men whose lives could at any moment be placed in her hands.

When the soldiers fell, as Pusateri did in the firefight that gray day in February, Guay gave them her all, even when hope was slim. Recalling how she knelt at the mortally wounded sergeant's side, she said she would never forget being the last person with him, and the profound respect it engendered.

She quickly inserted an IV and ran a tube into his throat, pumping a bag every five seconds to put precious air into his lungs.

"Squeeze my hand," she told him. He did. She pumped the bag again. Pusateri was stable, but slowly losing consciousness. "You're so brave," she said, rubbing his head as everything around them faded into a blur. "You're amazing."

Washington Times
May 17, 2005
Pg. 18

Women On The Front Lines?

By Robert L. Maginnis

"I just don't think America is ready to see a woman without an arm," said Juanita Wilson, an army staff sergeant who lost her hand to an improvised explosive device that destroyed her vehicle while on a mission in Iraq. Despite this statement, it seems that many in the United States have been coarsened to the killing and maiming of young women and are ready for more of the same. Thirty-five women have died and 271 have been wounded in Iraq.

Sgt. Wilson is one of five American military women at Walter Reed hospital who have lost limbs during combat in Iraq.

The sight of young women maimed in combat will become more common unless action is taken. Military bureaucrats, members of Congress and the media seem to be lusting for a more-women-in-combat policy that could lead to conscripting our daughters if a draft becomes necessary.

Rep. Heather Wilson, a 1980s Air Force veteran and New Mexico Republican, suggests the killing and maiming of young women in combat is now accepted by Americans. She told The Washington Post, "We have gotten beyond the point where losing a daughter is somehow worse than losing a son."

But Connie Halfaker, the mother of one of those women at Walter Reed recovering from a lost limb, trusted the Army's promise to keep women out of direct combat and never worried about her daughter going to war, although she told a reporter, "I knew it was a possibility that I would need to give up my son for a war." Lt. Dawn Halfaker, who lost her right arm on a military police patrol last year in Ba'qubah, Iraq, explained, "Women in combat is not really an issue. It is happening."

Although President Bush has said, "No women in combat," the enemy doesn't discriminate. Insurgents target every American, whether male, female, combatant or noncombatant.

The fact is that the war in Iraq is unlike a conventional war. It is a struggle against well-armed insurgents with no clearly defined battle lines. It is a classic example of guerrilla warfare where no participant is safe.

Today, 15 percent of the active army are women. They pepper the ranks of all but direct combat units. Though as of 1994, women were barred from "units and positions required to collocate and remain with direct ground combat units assigned to direct ground combat missions," the Pentagon policy actually increases the danger for servicewomen.

Recently, Army Secretary Francis Harvey told Congress his women-in-combat policy doesn't need to be changed to comply with the 1994 provision. Perhaps, but the Army is assigning women to forward combat companies, which are in direct support of the 3rd Infantry Division's new brigade combat teams now serving in Baghdad. This potentially makes them increasingly vulnerable to attacks by insurgents.

Even though women are not supposed to serve in combat they do fly Army helicopters in hostile areas. Maj. Ladda Duckworth lost both legs when a rocket-propelled grenade downed her Black Hawk helicopter last fall. Women also serve in multiple-launch rocket, reconnaissance and Stryker units. The line defining combat is getting very fuzzy.

The only way the United States can eliminate women from dying or being maimed in direct combat is to remove them from the battlefield. "That would be politically untenable," said a powerful congressman to this writer, and besides, it would force male soldiers to serve more frequent combat tours. The Army is dependent upon the large female force to perform global missions.

That fact sheds light on a hard reality. Our Army is straining for more soldiers to sustain operations across 120 nations with more than 303,000 forward deployed. The global war on terrorism is expected to last many years. Even though no one wants to conscript young people, the seriousness of the threat and the military's faltering recruiting efforts may intersect and lead inevitably to the drafting of women. The legal stage for such a scenario is being set as more and more women become engaged in combat. Conscription has always been an emergency provision to fill the military's ranks with combatants.

The coarsening of the United States on this issue is pitiful. Our young women are no longer valued as the bearers and nurturers of future generations -- they are now interchangeable with men and expendable. I am pessimistic that Congress, which is constitutionally responsible for military personnel issues, will listen.

Congress didn't listen when it was warned that introducing a small number of women into military units would cause disruption, lower morale and damage unit cohesion. Sexual misconduct in mixed-sex units has become the elephant in the living room for the modern military, but don't ask the PC brass.

Congress didn't listen when it was warned that young women have two-thirds the cardiovascular fitness and half the upper body strength of the average man. Our elected representatives allowed the Pentagon to gender norm physical requirements, producing a less ready force.

This nation should be ashamed it has bowed before political correctness and allowed the removal of barriers that protect our young women. There is no compelling national security reason for our daughters to serve in combat. There are many compelling reasons to deny them this deadly "opportunity."

Robert L. Maginnis is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, a national security and foreign affairs analyst for both radio and television networks, and a senior systems analyst with BCP International, Ltd., in Alexandria.

Female gunners protect Iraq convoys
By Spc. Jennifer Fitts

May 18, 2005

BAGHDAD (Army News Service, May 18, 2005) – Three Humvees cruised slowly down a Baghdad street, and disinterested neighborhood residents merely glanced at them, until one of the turret gunners abruptly shouted and gestured. Immediately heads snapped around and jaws dropped when the residents heard the sound of female voices and noticed the feminine features of the Soldiers behind the machine guns.

With an increased operations tempo, female Soldiers are stepping up to take on some of the roles traditionally filled by males such as providing unit and convoy security.

Some units, including military police, are using an increasing number of females for patrols outside the wire. Despite this, there’s often only one female gunner in a particular convoy or patrol at a given time.

Women man all turrets for civil affairs unit

What makes the New York-based U.S. Army Reserve unit, A Company, 403rd Civil Affairs Battalion different is that it doesn’t have just one female turret gunner, but three. In fact, all of the turret gunners for this particular 10-person civil affairs team are females.

“They point, they look, they’re very surprised to see females,” said Spc. Amanda N. Godlewski, a chemical observation specialist assigned to the civil affairs unit, recounting the reaction many Iraqis have to seeing a woman in the turret.

“They (the Iraqis) used to get really confused,” said Spc. Robyn L. Murray, a civil affairs specialist from Niagara Falls, N.Y. “I was the first. I volunteered on the second day we were here.”

The civil affairs team that Murray was assigned to needed a gunner who knew how to use a squad automatic weapon. Murray said she jumped at the opportunity to “man” the machine gun in the turret.

Soon after volunteering to take the gunner’s position, Godlewski, from Syracuse, N.Y., said she enjoyed being up on top of the humvee, shrugging off the thought of feeling exposed.

Fellow female gunner Spc. Lilly R. Withers, the unit’s mechanic, agreed with Murray and Godllewski.

“I wouldn’t do anything else,” she said.

Gunners get positive reactions

Withers said the reactions from other U.S. Soldiers occasionally mirrors the initial confusion of the locals. She said most of the other troops she’s encountered are receptive to the idea of female gunners and have voiced their support to her.

“I do get a few questions,” Withers said. “The infantry thought it was strange they (the unit) chose to put us on the guns.”

The women’s presence in the turrets has had a positive effect during their civil affairs missions.

“They turn a lot of heads, civilian and military,” said their team chief, Capt. Timothy H. Wright, of Jamestown, N.Y. “They get a positive reaction from the civilian populace.”

Withers said Iraqi women have been very friendly toward her and by judging from their reactions and gestures, she feels they are supportive of female Soldiers. She said after the women figure out she’s not a man “then, they want to come talk to me, see my eyes and hair,” said the blonde Cortland, N.Y. native.

The reactions the female gunners get from the public can be very helpful in stressful situations since they get a lot of attention, said Wright.

“They get the point across and people listen to their voices,” he said.

`Outside wire’ in 43 muhullahs

Wright’s 10-person team is larger than a standard civil affairs team since it consists of two teams combined into one due to the team often being outside the relative safety of the forward operating base. Venturing outside the wire is something the female gunners accept.

“I get kind of scared sometimes,” said Withers, “but I like to be in control to keep my team safe.”

“People call us when they need to go somewhere,” said Wright.

With mission tempo in full swing, going “somewhere” is merely a moment away. This means that Wright’s civil affairs team covers a lot of ground. Patrolling an area that covers nearly 70 square miles, the Soldiers are out on a daily basis, sometimes running more than one mission a day.

“We have the largest operating area in the al-Rashid district,” said Wright. “We are helping out in 43 ‘muhullahs’ or towns.”

Team assesses projects, attitudes

The civil affairs team stays very busy performing such diverse tasks as identifying and assessing needed projects in their area, helping coordinate U.S. Army work efforts with key Iraqi leaders and collecting data on local attitudes.

Wright said the overall positive reactions resulting from the female gunners’ presence has contributed to the success of their missions.

Although the civil affairs team may get a few sideways looks at times, the unit commander has nothing but praise for his female Soldiers.

“I’m proud of them,” said Wright. “They listen well and they react when it’s needed. They’re as motivated and dedicated as any male Soldier I’ve ever worked with.”

(Editor’s note: Spc. Jennifer Fitts serves with the 100th MPAD.)

Washington Times
January 12, 2005
Pg. 1

Despite Pressure, Bush Vows 'No Women In Combat'

By Rowan Scarborough and Joseph Curl, The Washington Times

President Bush's policy on women in ground combat takes just four words to articulate: "No women in combat."

Despite extended tours of duties in Iraq for soldiers and an Army examination of women's roles, the president told editors and reporters of The Washington Times yesterday in an interview in the Oval Office that he has no intention of sending women into ground combat, a mission for which they are banned under Pentagon policy.

Some retired generals and commentators have called on the president to increase significantly the 150,000 troops in Iraq. Mr. Bush said he is relying on his generals not the pundits to dictate the makeup of the force.

"The troop size in Iraq is not driven here in the White House," he said. "It is driven by the decisions and the recommendations the recommendations of John Abizaid and Gen. George Casey . And it's really important that that's how a war be fought, that and I would hope it brings great comfort to you as a concerned citizen the commander in chief makes the military decisions based upon the recommendations from the field."

The active force is about 1.4 million troops. The Army has added 30,000 soldiers, using emergency powers, to exceed 500,000.

"As far as the overall force structure and the relationship between the active-duty unit and the Guard and reserve, for example, that's part of the transformation of our military," Mr. Bush said. "In other words, transforming our military to meet a whole new set of threats. And the debate I hear is not overall size, necessarily, but the relationship between the Army to the Air Force and the Navy."

Asked about reports of putting women closer to land combat, the president said:

"There's no change of policy as far as I'm concerned. No women in combat. Having said that, let me explain, we've got to make sure we define combat properly: We've got women flying choppers and women flying fighters, which I'm perfectly content with."

The question came up in light of the Army's transforming its 10 active-combat divisions and re-examining women's roles. Instead of the normal three brigades per division, each division will have four or more "units of action." They are being designed to train and deploy as one modular unit, with combat and support units as one.

Therein lies the potential problem. Pentagon policy not only bans women from direct combat brigades, such as infantry or armor, it also says they cannot join support units that collocate with those units.

But The Washington Times has reported on internal Army memos that show some officials are pushing the Pentagon to lift the ban so that mixed-sex forward support companies (FSC) can collocate with armor and infantry battalions within a "unit of action."

A Nov. 29 briefing for senior Army officers at the Pentagon stated, "The way ahead: rewrite/eliminate the Army collocation policy."

An Army spokeswoman said, "It is my understanding that the November 29 briefing was predecisional. There are a number of Army policies under review."

An earlier Army briefing in May, labeled "draft close hold," stated that one option putting FSCs outside a combat brigade in an organizational chart "could be perceived as subterfuge to avoid reporting requirements."

Congress requires that any change in women-in-combat rules first be presented to lawmakers.

The May briefing portrayed the Army as in a bind. If it collocates FSCs with combat teams and keeps them men-only, then it "creates potential long-term challenge to Army; pool of male recruits too small to sustain force," the Army documents stated.

In 1994, after reports of women excelling during Operation Desert Storm, the Clinton administration lifted bans on women in combat aircraft and ships. But it retained the prohibition against women in ground combat units and collocation.

Any change is opposed by Elaine Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness. In a letter to House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, California Republican, Mrs. Donnelly said, "Female soldiers, including young mothers, should not have to pay the price for Pentagon bureaucratic blunders and gender-based recruiting quotas that have caused apparent shortages in male soldiers for the new land-combat brigades."

USA Today
July 25, 2005
Pg. 8

Army Women Defy Insurgents, Taboo

General says Iraqi military needs female soldiers, but they face opposition from foes — and even family

By Rick Jervis, USA Today

BAGHDAD — When Sondos' sister was murdered by insurgents for working with the Iraqi army, the 30-year-old exacted her revenge: She signed up for the military.

“We can't walk the streets anymore. When you sleep, you know you're not safe,” she says. “I have four kids. That's not the life I want for them.”

Sondos is part of a class of 29 female recruits who recently completed the Iraqi army basic training course at Camp Justice in Baghdad, home to the Iraqi army's 1st Brigade, 6th Division.

The women — mothers, widows, divorcees and housewives — have joined the army despite death threats by insurgents and cultural taboos discouraging Muslim women from joining the military.

Sondos asked to be identified only by her first name to avoid reprisals by family, neighbors and insurgents.

Although female soldiers have previously completed the two-week course and joined the army, Saturday's graduating group was the first all-female class of recruits trained by female trainers on an Iraqi-run base.

Smaller groups of women have trained in Jordan and held military police jobs.

The new training reflects a growing role for women in Iraq's armed forces.

“The Iraqi army is actively recruiting women,” said Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, spokesman for Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in charge of equipping and training Iraqi security forces. “They need them. There are certain jobs absolutely necessary to women.”

The Khawla Bint al-Azwar Class — named after a female warrior in the time of the prophet Mohammed who disguised herself as a man to fight in Muslim wars — will join 120 other female soldiers attached to different units at the 1st Brigade.

They represent a small step toward the future look of the Iraqi army, says Brig. Gen. Jaleel Khalaf, commander of the 1st Brigade and top commander of Iraqi troops in Baghdad.

The women will take on a number of roles, including administrative, medical and public affairs duties, he says.

They'll also go on combat missions, particularly cordon-and-searches, where they'll search females in suspected insurgents' homes. And they'll interrogate and look after female suspects in the brigade detainee facility.

Like U.S. forces, the Iraqi army generally bans women from combat units such as infantry and artillery.

But in Iraq, there are no front lines, and female troops are often in harm's way.

They earn the same starting salaries as male soldiers, about $330 a month.

“This is the reality: We need female soldiers,” Khalaf says. “If I have a female prisoner, what do I do? If I have to search a female and can't do it with a male, it'll be a catastrophe.”

Under a broiling morning sun recently, the women lined up and saluted as Khalaf read their names and handed out certificates. Nearly all the women's faces were shielded by handkerchiefs to avoid their images being broadcast by the local media.

The U.S. Army's 256th Brigade Combat Team, which advises the Iraqis, sent a contingent of female soldiers to the ceremony in a show of support.

After the ceremony, the U.S. soldiers congratulated their counterparts and snapped pictures together.

“This is a huge step,” said 1st Lt. Taysha Deaton, a public affairs officer with the 256th Brigade Combat Team. “How many years did it take us to reach this level?”

Under Saddam Hussein's regime, women had a smaller role in the military, mostly relegated to the medical corps or administrative positions in the Defense Ministry.

Female soldiers joined the Iraqi army as early as 2003, shortly after the collapse of the regime. In July 2003, under the guidance of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Iraqi military hired the first squad of 20 female soldiers, says Lt. Col. Waleed Majeed, an early Iraqi recruiter.

“Some of them died, some of them quit, some of them transferred out because the Iraqi officials didn't treat them very well,” he says.

Khalaf says Iraq's Shiite-dominated government has been reluctant to recruit large numbers of female soldiers. The Defense Ministry tried to ban females from joining the army, Khalaf says.

Female recruits were turned away at recruiting stations, which are run by the ministry, he says. And the ministry imposed a 9 a.m.-3 p.m. curfew on females on bases, he says.

“They're really trying to stop these women from joining my brigade,” he says. “If I had the power of hiring, I'd have a female battalion.”

A Defense Ministry spokesman denies allegations that officials are discouraging female participation in the army.

The curfew was mandated “for the bad security situation and because we do not have places to keep women at night and because there is no need for their staying for a long time,” spokesman Maj. Salih Sarhan says.

U.S. Central Command declined to comment on Defense Ministry policies.

Sondos, the recent graduate, says her neighbors and some relatives have stopped speaking to her since she joined the army. She plans to stick with the military regardless of any resistance — from relatives, colleagues or insurgents.

She's been assigned to administrative duties but hopes to be involved in cordon-and-search missions soon, she says.

“I want to fight alongside the men,” she says. “I want to fight against the terrorists who are taking over my country.”

Washington Times
January 19, 2005
Pg. 1

Army Affirms Its Ban On Women In Combat

Questions raised whether policy will be enforced

By Rowan Scarborough, The Washington Times

Army Secretary Francis Harvey has told Congress that the service will keep the Pentagon's ban against female soldiers in ground combat, including no assignments to units that routinely embed with war fighters.

The Army had been reviewing the 1994 ban to see whether changes should be made to coincide with a sweeping transformation plan for combat brigades. Some officers at the Pentagon advocate lifting the ban on embedding, or collocating, sex-integrated support units with infantry, armor and other combat units.

Elaine Donnelly, who heads a pro-military group, said yesterday that it is still not clear whether the Army is telling Congress one thing, while in actual operations, it plans to mix integrated Forward Support Companies (FSC) within combat units.

"It's disappointing that official information from the Army seems so difficult to come by," Mrs. Donnelly said. "If they say the FSC will be all-male, and historically they have been, that would be true compliance with law and policy. However, if there are female soldiers being trained for the FSCs, that would be something else."

Mr. Harvey sent a memo to four senior members of Congress on Thursday, a day after The Washington Times reported that the president had said in an interview that he opposes any move to change the ground combat prohibition. The president was emphatic: "No women in combat."

The Army, for months, has been reviewing the role of female soldiers. Confidential briefing papers obtained by The Times showed that senior officers advocate lifting the so-called "collocation rule." This would have allowed women to serve in support units, such as Forward Support Companies, that normally embed with combat units such as armor or infantry and are in fact combat troops.

Mr. Harvey last week notified the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees that he was retaining the ban. The Stars and Stripes newspaper first reported on the memos.

Mrs. Donnelly, who heads the Center for Military Readiness and has been working to expose the internal Army debate, expressed suspicion and asked why the Army is reluctant to explain its decision in full.

She questions whether the Army intends merely to assign co-ed Forward Support Companies outside a combat unit's organizational chart, even though they will have to embed with those units to do the resupply mission.

The Army in November gave a private briefing to House military staffers that showed FSCs attached to brigade support battalions, a move the Army did not consider to be collocation. Mrs. Donnelly disagrees.

"The issue is not where they put them on paper, but the reality," Mrs. Donnelly said. "If they put gender-integrated FSCs with the brigade support battalion, then they would be violating the collocation policy."

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, is spearheading a major transformation of Army brigades by turning them into "units of action" that train and deploy as one. To fully achieve these rapid deployment brigades, some inside the Pentagon have advocated changing the collocation rule so that mixed-sex FSCs can be embedded with them.

The Times has reported on two sets of briefing papers circulated at the highest levels of Army headquarters. One states that the Army does not have enough male soldiers to keep the FSCs all-male and should therefore consider the change.

A second Nov. 29 briefing from the director of the Army's Human Resources Policy Directorate states: "The way ahead: rewrite/eliminate the Army collocation policy."

With the Harvey memo, that idea appears, for now, to be dead.

Reporters and editors of The Times asked Mr. Bush in a Jan. 11 Oval Office interview whether he supported internal Army proposals to change the land-combat rules.

"There's no change of policy as far as I'm concerned," Mr. Bush said. "No women in combat. Having said that, let me explain, we've got to make sure we define combat properly: We've got women flying choppers and women flying fighters, which I'm perfectly content with."

The Clinton administration in 1994 lifted the ban on women in combat aircraft and ships, but left in place the prohibition on direct land combat and collocation.

Advocates of lifting the collocation cite a need for deploy-as-one brigades, and note that in Iraq there are no clear lines of battle. Islamist terrorists attack support units about as often as they strike all-male units that are clearly combat units.

Marine Corps Times
August 9, 2004

Band Of Sisters

Army 'Lionesses' hit streets with Marines on combat ops

By Gordon Lubold, Times staff writer

RAMADI, Iraq — When Marines on the hunt for insurgents here kick in the door, Spc. Shannon Morgan isn’t far behind. She’s part of “Team Lioness,” a small group of women proving itself in one of Iraq’s hottest combat zones.

Women are serving throughout the war zone, but the soldiers in this band of sisters are unique. They’re joining male Marines and soldiers on offensive ops, taking part in raids, security patrols and vehicle checkpoints.

The women are not walking point or leading infantry squads in the assault, but their secondary role is no less important to the success or failure of a mission here. They accompany the infantrymen to conduct body searches of Iraqi women, allowing U.S. forces to hunt for insurgents while not offending the citizens they seek to win over.

These women are helping to win the peace in this still restive city, but the significance of what they’re doing goes beyond the war zone. By joining men on the offense, they are blurring the traditional lines that have kept women in combat-support roles and out of harm’s way.

But in the counter-insurgency fight now being waged in Iraq, a war with no front lines and no traditional “rear,” just about anywhere outside the wire qualifies as “harm’s way.” And the women here are in the thick of it.

Take Morgan. She’s considered the best squad automatic weapon gunner in her battalion. She can kill the bad guy — and has — and has accompanied a unit during a 21-mile foot patrol in full combat gear on a day when temperatures pushed above 100 degrees.

When the bullets fly, she runs — toward the fight.

Morgan is not literally kicking in the door on raids. She leaves that for the Marines or soldiers in the “stack teams.”

But figuratively speaking, Morgan says she’s opening the door a bit wider, helping to redefine this man’s Army.

“I think it’s a breakthrough for females in combat,” said Morgan, a vehicle mechanic from Mena, Ark. “Putting women out there on the front lines with Marine [fire] teams is letting people know that women can hold their own.”

A woman’s touch

Team Lioness, a group of about 20 women with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Engineer Battalion, was born of necessity less than a year ago, when commanders saw a troubling situation during their raids and other missions.

The men they sent charging into the city, often into private homes, made Iraqi women uneasy. Searching the women proved difficult, as Muslim culture dictates that men are not to touch women they don’t know.

Some women refused to be searched, a stance the enemy exploited. Insurgents took to hiding weapons and other illicit materials under women’s dresses, knowing they probably wouldn’t be found there.

So Army commanders added female soldiers to the mix and watched as the tension of the Iraqi women eased.

The Iraqi women became so comfortable with the female soldiers — often clutching their arms or handing them their babies during house searches — that the Lionesses were able to collect intelligence from them that the men wouldn’t have been able to get.

It’s the soldiers’ hair that does the trick, said Sgt. Brandi Burns, a 30-year-old construction equipment operator from Roswell, N.M.

“They see all that masculinity, they see these people coming in their lives, then they see that itty-bitty bun and that eases them,” she said.

Most of the women with the 1st Engineer Battalion company are construction vehicle drivers or mechanics who are certified on the .50-caliber machine gun. Seeing an opportunity to join the fight, they jumped at the chance to go on raids. Many have seen more action than their male counterparts.

“Our Army guys would love to put a wig on and go out and do this stuff,” said Staff Sgt. Ranie Ruthig from Wentworth, S.D. “And we like to rub it in.”

Marines learned the value of bringing a Lioness to the fight when 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, arrived here in March. In the months since, 2/4 has become one of the team’s biggest customers.

The leathernecks were decidedly skeptical when the Lionesses first appeared, because women aren’t supposed to be assigned to combat-arms units below the division level.

They took them in anyway.

“The Marines just throw you out there and expect you to do it,” Ruthig said.

Mixed reactions

Although assignments to certain Army and Marine combat-arms units have been closed to women, more combat-related jobs such as explosive ordnance disposal technician and combat engineer were made available throughout the 1990s. That doesn’t necessarily mean many women are filling those jobs yet, however, according to a recent study by the Rand Corp., a California-based think tank.

The reasons women are underrepresented in many combat-related jobs could be due to a number of factors, such as personal choice, systemic problems or the fact that not much time has elapsed since the jobs were opened to women. Those with less experience than their male colleagues in such combat-related jobs may still be in the training pipeline, according to the study.

It’s too soon to tell the effect of Team Lioness and other efforts to involve women in combat operations, but the practice will likely improve the image of female service members, said retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, director of the Women in the Military Project for the Washington-based Women’s Research and Education Institute.

“When this has settled down, I think the male Marines will have learned a lot about women’s abilities,” Manning said. “It will open up a lot of doors for women Marines. In history that’s how it’s worked … out of necessity.”

Leathernecks who have worked directly with the women of Team Lioness say they perform a valuable service the Marines can’t do without. The motto here is “first do no harm,” so having female soldiers available to help during missions involving Iraqi women is a good idea.

“When they’re there, it helps us out a lot,” said Cpl. Jared McKenzie, an assaultman with Weapons Company, 2/4, from Bon Aqua, Tenn. “It gets us out of searching the women, so it won’t get us in trouble.”

But predictably, other Marines aren’t big on women in combat, saying the female soldiers on the Lioness missions they’ve seen are sloppy and make them feel uncomfortable. Another Marine said he doesn’t think the American public is ready to send women into combat.

“It’s hard enough sending their sons off to war and watching them get killed,” said Lance Cpl. Phillip Scoggins, 24, who was sent to 2/4 as a combat replacement. “I don’t think they’re ready to see a woman get killed.”

Ready or not, 23 American service women have died in war zones since Sept. 11, 2001, the most American women to die in a war since World War II. There is no obvious outcry against the deaths of women compared to their male comrades.

Soldiers are more used to working with women, partly because there are more women than Marines in the Army and partly because they work more closely with men.

Overall, about 73,000 of the Army’s 485,000 soldiers, or 15 percent, are women; about 10,600 of the nearly 178,000 active-duty Marines are women, roughly 6 percent.

The greater percentage in the Army is due to the service’s higher number of job specialties, Manning said.

Soldiers are also more used to seeing women in their barracks, where they sleep, change clothes and watch television together. The nearly 20 women in 1st Engineer Battalion’s headquarters company live with the men in their platoons, a nod to unit cohesion that’s important if women are going to play a worthwhile role, commanders here said.

Even soldiers not familiar with the role Team Lioness is playing have open minds, since any woman stationed in Iraq is vulnerable, serving in capacities beyond her usual stateside roles.

“I think as far as putting them at risk, they’re at risk anyway,” said Army 2nd Lt. Alex Graziano, a 25-year-old native of Athol, Mass., who is with a transportation unit working near Baghdad.

Some women end up in combat by accident. But others seek out jobs that will put them in harm’s way. Women serve in military police units, and in Iraq, Army MPs have been doing many of the same jobs Marine infantry perform. They patrol some of Iraq’s meanest streets.

If there were any doubt about how they would perform in combat, four female MPs blew them away the night of Oct. 16, 2003, in Karbala.

In an intense firefight that killed three other MPs, it was women manning machine guns in the turrets of armored Humvees along with the men in the unit who allowed the soldiers to fight their way free of the ambush. A fifth woman, a medic, braved enemy fire during the attack, running from wounded soldier to wounded soldier. For their bravery, those five women were awarded Bronze Stars or Army Commendation Medals, all with combat “V” devices. Two got Purple Hearts. Army historians believe that is the most valor awards ever given to women for a single action.

Putting women in the fight is a good opportunity for them and it helps get the mission done, said Lt. Col. Dave Brinkley, commander of 1st Engineer Battalion and one of the architects of the lioness program. When he is planning a mission, he looks at his unit and sees soldiers, not men and women, Brinkley said.

“If they’re not suited for it, they’re pulled off,” Brinkley said.

‘I am going with you’

Although the raids are sometimes low-key missions, things can heat up quickly.

During a mission that quickly grew into an intense gun battle with insurgents, a company commander told some Team Lioness members to get into a Humvee and sit tight. Reluctantly, they did.

After his unit left, a squad of Marines appeared, and the women got out to continue the patrol as the fight raged.

“We’ll take care of you,” Ruthig recalls the Marines telling her.

Morgan went on another mission with Marines from 2/4, a house-to-house search leathernecks call a “bug hunt.”

As the unit walked through downtown Ramadi, they could hear speeches from mosque loudspeakers urging the people to rise up against their American occupiers, and the Iraqis began shooting.

“We moved from section to section, and every section we moved to was a bigger battle than the last one,” Morgan said.

As rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire flew overhead, a commander asked Morgan if she wanted to stay back.

“Hell no; I am going with you,” she recalled saying. On another patrol, she shot and killed at least one insurgent, an act that she declined to talk about in detail.

Detroit Free Press
April 8, 2005

U.S. Military Women Prove Combat-Worthy

By Dogen Hannah, Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Army Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester bolted from her Humvee, took cover behind a berm along the road and began firing at the swarm of insurgents ambushing a U.S. military convoy south of Baghdad.

"Bullets were flying everywhere," said the 23-year-old from Bowling Green, Ky. "I could hear them pinging off the truck in back of me. I could hear them hitting the ground next to me. It was pretty crazy."

For almost a half-hour, Hester and nine other Kentucky National Guard soldiers, including another woman, Spec. Ashley Pullen, fought off 40 to 50 attackers armed with assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. When the shooting ended, 26 insurgents lay dead and seven were wounded.

The midday March 20 firefight -- at the time the largest battle in about four months -- demonstrated that female soldiers aren't strangers to combat in Iraq. Despite military policies banning them from combat units, women have been exposed to fire and are firing back like never before as insurgents wage an unconventional campaign against U.S. forces.

"It's more that the women have killed in this war, rather than that they've been killed," said Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain who directs the Women in the Military project of the nonpartisan, Washington-based Women's Research and Education Institute. "The nature of the engagement over there is such that the women have had to learn how to fight back. And that's been a mighty, mighty big change."

The change refuels a long-running debate about whether women should serve in combat units. Those opposed to the ban say it shows that women can hold their own. Those favoring the ban worry that the nature of the fight in Iraq will make it more likely that the military will sidestep or ease the rules.

Among supporters of the ban on women in combat is Elaine Donnelly , the president of the Center for Military Readiness, a socially conservative advocacy group. The Army should reassess whether women should serve in units such as Hester's 617th Military Police Company that can end up so close to the action, Donnelly said.

"I think there's some military police roles that women can do and do well," Donnelly said. "But when they start doing things very similar to what the infantry does, that, I think, is a whole different position."

Women are permitted to pilot just about any aircraft, to ship out on almost any vessel and to serve most roles in the Army and Marine Corps. In the Army alone, they constitute about 15 percent of 500,000 active soldiers and about 25 percent of 212,000 reservists.

Women remain barred from infantry, armor, special forces and certain artillery units. Defense Department policy also excludes them from units smaller than a brigade -- 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers -- with the primary mission of engaging in direct combat on the ground.

That still leaves room for them to serve in police, supply, maintenance and other units that closely support combat troops. Those units are vulnerable in Iraq, where conventional front lines don't exist and insurgents target relatively lightly protected patrols and supply lines.

"We've always operated under the assumption that there were such things as frontline troops," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution. "It's obviously not true in an insurgency or stabilization mission."

Danger knows no gender

One female soldier was killed in the war before President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1, 2003. Since then, 19 more female soldiers and two female civilian military employees have been killed in hostile action, according to the Pentagon.

At least 261 women in the military, most in the Army, have been wounded in action since the war's March 19, 2003, onset. Like their male counterparts, female troops have fallen prey to homemade bombs, mortars, rockets, gunshots and vehicle crashes resulting from hostile action.

"The fact is that in Iraq now, everyone is in danger," said Martha Rudd, an Army spokeswoman.

Neither Pullen, 21, nor Hester was wounded in the March 20 fight. Four soldiers of the Nebraska National Guard's 1075th Transportation Company, which had been traveling with the convoy and helped repel the attack, and three Kentucky soldiers were wounded.

Donnelly said the courage of Hester and Pullen is admirable. "But the danger of ambushes or the experience of being in an ambush is not the same as what a combat soldier is trained and dispatched to do: to deliberately engage in offensive action against the enemy."

Others see the firefight as evidence that women can handle combat assignments. It rebuts arguments that female soldiers will break bonds among male soldiers in combat units and that women can't stand the rigors of living in the field, said Manning.

Military leaders "are certainly learning an awful lot from this about women, in general, as far as how they function in this type of environment," Manning said. "What they are learning is that ... women can deal with all that stuff and deal with it very well."

New York Daily News
December 14, 2004

The Women Of War

In Iraq, death knows no front line, nor gender

By Richard Sisk, Daily News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - America's women in uniform have been fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan in ways never foreseen under the restrictions on women in combat.

Through last week, 27 women had been killed in Iraq and five in Afghanistan and more than 230 had earned the Purple Heart for wounds inflicted by the enemy, according to Pentagon records.

Among those fatally injured in Iraq was Army 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment Sgt. Linda Jimenez, 39, of Brooklyn, who fell into a bomb crater on patrol in November last year and later died at an Army hospital.

The military's 1994 rules limit women's exposure to combat by barring them from serving in front-line infantry, armor and most artillery units, but the enemy's ambushes and terrorist tactics have altered the rules.

Women driving a truck in Iraq or walking a beat as a military policewoman in "support" units in Iraq have instantly taken up the role of the combat grunt, engaging in running firefights with hit-and-run insurgents.

"I think what changed is that Iraq is different," said Army airborne Capt. Kellie McCoy, who shot her way out of an enemy ambush in September 2003 to earn the Bronze Star with combat "V" for valor under fire.

"Our doctrine [on women in combat] was suited for wars with front lines," McCoy said. "In Iraq, the front line is everywhere. Once you leave the [base] camp, you're on the front line," she said.

The new reality of war - and the performance of women in the field - has prompted the Army to examine whether it should formally change its 1994 rules.

"The assignment of women is one of several issues under review" as the Army converts its heavy divisions into lighter and faster combat brigades, said Maj. Elizabeth Robbins, an Army spokeswoman.

"We're not at the point of reaching a decision" on whether mixed military units of men and women would be put on the battlefield alongside all-male land combat units, Robbins said, but the possibility will be discussed with Congress.

But with the concept of the front line erased, the current roster of 224,000 women who make up about 16% of the active-duty military of 1.4 million has taken up duties never envisioned by the 1.8 million women who preceded them in uniform since the American Revolution.

In Vietnam, only eight of the more than 58,000 troops killed were women, and they were all unarmed Army and Air Force nurses, according to the Women in Military Service for America (WIMSA) Foundation.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the women carry weapons. They have been killed and wounded by roadside bombs, mortar attacks and small-arms fire.

Women such as McCoy have led men in battle, and women have flown war planes off carrier decks to bomb enemy positions.

The most recent death was that of the Army's 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion Sgt. Cari Gasiewicz, 28, of Depew, N.Y. Gasiewicz's convoy was hit by two roadside bombs near Baghdad on Dec. 4.

"With each conflict, women are used more than in the previous conflict," said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Wilma Vaught in assessing the evolving roles of women in uniform.

"In Vietnam, we were restricted on where we could go, we didn't go out on convoys," said Vaught, a Vietnam vet and president of the WIMSA Foundation.

"More than ever before, the military is accepting that women are there to do a job," Vaught said. "If the job takes them in harm's way, well, that's the way it is."

Time
February 27, 2006
Pg. 36

Crossing The Lines

Though barred from combat, female troops in Iraq often find themselves in full-fledged battle. An intimate look at the lives of the real G.I. Janes

By Tim McGirk, Baghdad

For Captain Shonnel Makwakwa, it was a rare assignment "outside the wire": a chance to break the monotony of life on the base and get out onto the streets of Baghdad. But it didn't take long to realize that this was no routine mission. Minutes after Makwakwa's humvee pulled out of Camp Liberty last December, bad news crackled over the radio: a supply convoy of six 18-wheel trucks was ambushed at Checkpoint 50, a freeway cloverleaf that is a notorious shooting alley for insurgents. Makwakwa, a bright, fit New Orleans native, handles medical logistics for the U.S. 10th Mountain Division--the kind of deskbound job often assigned to women G.I.s. Now she found herself wearing a first-aid kit on her belt, gripping an M-4 rifle and crawling on her stomach as enemy fire rained down. "I could hear the rounds pinging all around me," she says. "It was surreal." The scene was horrific. Flies were everywhere, and so was blood. "I'd dealt with people dying in the hospital, but it was nothing like this," she says. Makwakwa and another soldier kicked in the bullet-shattered windshield of the lead vehicle, but the driver was already dead. The driver of the second vehicle was screaming in agony from his wounds; he later died. Makwakwa and the patrol were able to save three other wounded drivers, but the memories of Checkpoint 50 are hard to erase--a constant reminder that while the military officially bars women from combat, the insurgency makes no such distinctions. "In Iraq, female soldiers are in combat," she says. "We're out there."

American women have served in every U.S. military conflict since the Revolution, usually as nurses or spies, but the country has never been comfortable with sending them into harm's way. Congress bars women from engaging in offensive warfare with the enemy. In response to dwindling military-recruiting numbers and demands by women's groups for more equality between the sexes, the Pentagon in 1994 loosened the ban and allowed women to take on "supporting" combat roles. In Iraq, that can involve anything from piloting combat helicopters to accompanying infantrymen and Marines on house-to-house raids and searching Iraqi women suspects for pistols and suicide belts. As the insurgency has grown more diffuse, increasing numbers of women are finding themselves in the teeth of combat. Says Lory Manning, a former Navy captain who is now a policy analyst at the Women's Research and Education Institute in Arlington, Va.: "This is the first time in U.S. history that women are allowed to shoot back."

It is also the first time they are suffering substantial casualties. Women troops make up nearly 15% of active-duty service members. Since 2003, 48 women have died in Iraq--just 2% of the total number of U.S. troops killed but far more than the 8 nurses killed out of 7,500 servicewomen in the Vietnam War. Three hundred have been wounded in Iraq. Few female troops are out of the line of fire. While military police patrol Baghdad with Iraqi cops who skirmish almost daily with insurgents, women clerks and cooks inside U.S. camps are vulnerable to rocket and mortar attacks by militants. Such hazards underscore the threats to life and limb that still confront all U.S. troops in Iraq, even as the military attempts to turn over more combat responsibility to Iraqi forces. First Sergean