A Marine Corps first: Woman platoon leader
MOUNT BUNDEY TRAINING AREA, Australia — First Lt. Marina A. Hierl watched a dozen Marines charge toward human silhouettes made of paper atop a nearby hill. Despite the early hour, the troops’ armored vests and camouflage uniforms were soaked with sweat. She stood back as they scrambled up the rocky incline, shouting and firing rifles.
“Push left,” she said after the squad completed its mock attack and assembled around her, gulping from canteens as they awaited feedback. “And make sure you’re communicating.”
It was a fairly routine instruction to Marines training for war, coming from a lieutenant in a role familiar to the men: a young, college-educated officer who had little experience but had direct oversight of their lives.
But Hierl is the first woman in the Marine Corps to lead an infantry platoon — a historic moment for a male-dominated organization that had fiercely opposed integrating female troops into combat, something that still unsettles many within the ranks.
That dynamic has been playing for months inside Echo Company, a group of 175 Marines and Navy sailors recently sent to the Northern Territory of Australia for roughly six months of training exercises and to act as a response force for the Pacific region.
Hierl is one of four platoon commanders in Echo Company. Her presence, first eyed with skepticism, appears to have been quietly accepted.
Thirty-seven women have attended the Marines Corps’ Infantry Officer Course at Quantico, Va., for 13 weeks of combat evaluations and mileslong hikes carrying heavy loads. Only two women have passed.
Of those two women, only Hierl has been given a platoon of roughly 35 men to lead.
Last fall, Hierl was among the handful of new lieutenants who reported to duty with the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines at Camp Pendleton in California. The battalion is made up of about 1,000 troops divided into five companies, including Echo.
Hierl, 24, grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., and worked on a horse farm throughout high school. Before graduating, she said, she knew little about the military, but opted for the Marines because, after meeting with a recruiter for the Corps, she thought that it “sounded good.”
“I wanted to do something important with my life,” she said. “I wanted to be part of a group of people that would be willing to die for each other.”
In 2013, during Hierl’s sophomore year at the University of Southern California, Leon Panetta, then the defense secretary, announced that women would no longer be excluded from combat roles in the military.
The moment remains a vivid memory because, Hierl said, it had not occurred to her that her gender could have kept her from leading Marines in war.
The Marine Corps, which had initially challenged the Pentagon’s 2013 order and was overruled, allowed women into its infantry ranks in 2015.
There are 184,473 active-duty Marines, of whom 15,885 are women.
Among them are 80 women serving in previously restricted combat roles.
“I wanted to lead a platoon,” Hierl said. “I didn’t think there was anything better in the Marine Corps I could do.”