Marines set for a historic step for women
WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps plans to assign a woman as an infantry officer, a first, following her anticipated graduation from the service’s Infantry Officer Course, service officials said Thursday.
The lieutenant and her male colleagues completed a three-week combat exercise Wednesday that included live fire at the service’s training center at Twentynine Palms, Calif., the service said Thursday. That exercise marked the final graded requirement in the 13-week course, widely seen as some of the toughest training in the military.
The woman is the first of about three dozen women who attempted the course to complete it. She is expected to lead a platoon of about 40 infantry Marines in a service that is often seen as the most resistant to full gender integration in the military. It has grappled this year with a scandal in which more than a 1,000 current Marines and veterans were investigated for sharing photographs of nude female colleagues online.
The class will mark its graduation Monday with a “warrior breakfast” 35 miles south of Washington, in Quantico, Va., said three officials with knowledge of the course. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the graduation has not occurred. All that remains between now and then is returning equipment used during training, and a few administrative they said.
The historic moment arrives nearly two years after then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter lifted the military’s last remaining restrictions for women, part of an effort by the Obama administration to make the armed forces fully inclusive.
The Marines first opened the Infantry Officer Course to women on an experimental basis in 2012. Thirty-two women tried the course before the research ended in 2015; none completed it. days,