Women are moving into the trenches
Marine Staff Sgt. Cliff Wooldridge told me recently that most of his colleagues in the infantry oppose opening the field to women.
I was nearing the top of the rope when my muscles gave out.
We had already put in a strenuous morning of running, marching and calisthenics at Marines Officer Candidates School before even starting the obstacle course, which required us to climb over walls.
I let go, sliding 20 feet or so down the rope and crumpling in a sweaty mess at the bottom. I looked up to see a sergeant instructor screaming at me to get back on the rope. This is what I had come for. People have different reasons for joining the military. Job skills, patriotism or just an attraction to the profession of arms. I grew up in Connecticut’s comfortable suburbs wanting for very little but left wondering what I was capable of. A refuge from polite society was just what I needed.
I spent my handful of activeduty years in the Marine Corps infantry during peacetime, between 1981 and 1984, but the current generation of infantrymen has spent more than a decade in combat or training for their next deployment.
Dakota Meyer, who earned the Medal of Honor, the nation’s top honor for bravery, told me in an interview several years ago he made the decision to join the Marines after a recruiter told him he wouldn’t be able to hack it. He signed up that same day.
We read so much about drones and precision weapons, it’s no wonder the public thinks that the future will bring pushbutton wars fought from inside climate-controlled rooms.
The truth is wars are mostly won and lost by the decidedly unglamorous foot soldiers, or grunts, and always have been.
Until now, the grunts have been men. That is changing.
The Pentagon has ordered all the services to open up all jobs in the military to women by the end of this year.
Women have fought and died in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, winning admiration across the board for how they have performed.
But combat arms – such as infantry, tanks and artillery – have largely remained male preserves until now.
The order to allow women into these fields hasn’t prompt- ed much attention outside the military. But inside the armed forces, especially the fraternities of the combat arms, it has triggered enormous consternation.
These are jobs that require physical strength and spending long periods of time in primitive conditions. Foot soldiers carry more than 100 pounds on their backs for miles at a time and have to be ready to fight when they reach their objective.
Marine Staff Sgt. Cliff Wooldridge told me recently that most of his colleagues in the infantry oppose opening the field to women. They fear that it will ultimately lead to a lowering of standards if not enough women qualify and to a reduction in combat effectiveness.
Wooldridge knows firsthand how primitive the infantry fight can be. In a hand-to-hand battle with a Taliban militant who was trying to kill him, he grabbed the fighter’s machine gun and beat him to death with it. Wooldridge earned the Navy Cross, the second highest medal for valor, for his actions that day.
The services have launched scientific studies, hoping to be able to quantify the precise physical standards required to be an infantryman, artilleryman or tanker.
The service chiefs promise that standards will not be lowered — and it’s worth noting that military women don’t want the bar lowered, either — but some grunts worry the decisions will ultimately be made by bureaucrats who don’t understand what they do or scientists wearing lab coats instead of fatigues.
Whatever happens, the brass will need to keep faith with warriors like Wooldridge and Meyer who know the infantry is more than a set of physical standards.