Marines to have first female infantry officer
The Marine Corps plans to assign a woman as an infantry officer, a historic first, following her anticipated graduation from the service’s grueling Infantry Officer Course, service officials said Thursday.
The lieutenant and her male colleagues completed a threeweek combat exercise Wednesday that includes live fire at the service’s training center at Twentynine Palms, Calif., on Wednesday, the service said in a statement Thursday after The Washington Post first reported the news. That exercise marked the final graded requirement in the 13-week course, which is widely seen as some of the toughest training in the military. About 25 percent all students typically wash out.
The woman is the first of 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.
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 yet occurred. All that remains between now and then is returning equipment used during training, and a few administrative days, 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. Officials shared few details about the lieutenant Thursday, and two said it is unlikely that she will agree to do any media interviews, preferring to be a “quiet professional” and just do her job.
The lieutenant will join a part of the military that has long been seen as being critical of serving alongside women.
Kyleanne Hunter, a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Committee for Women in the Services and former Marine helicopter pilot, said that the new infantry officer will deal with two major issues once she is assigned to her battalion.
One will be winning over Marines under her command, Hunter said, and the second will be coping with outside attention and critics who want to see her fail.
“She did something that is really hard, and it’s hard physically and it’s hard mentally,” Hunter said. “Her first challenge is going to be to remain anonymous, for lack of a better term, and just do her job.”