WUNRN
USA
- Women in the Military
LIVING & FIGHTING ALONGSIDE MEN,
& FITTING IN
August 17, 2009
Moises Saman for The New York Times
Staff
Sgt. Patricia F. Bradford, left, and Specialist Jennifer M. Hoeppner attended a
briefing before going on patrol.
FORWARD
OPERATING BASE WARHORSE, Iraq — There is no mistaking that this dusty,
gravel-strewn camp northeast of Baghdad is anything other than a combat outpost
in a still-hostile land. And there is no mistaking that women in uniform have
had a transformative effect on it.
They have their
own quarters, boxy trailers called CHUs
(the military’s acronym for containerized housing units, pronounced “chews”).
There are
women’s bathrooms and showers, alongside the men’s. Married couples live
together. The base’s clinic treats gynecological problems and has, alongside
the equipment needed to treat the trauma of modern warfare, an ultrasound
machine.
Opponents of
integrating women in combat zones long feared that sex would mean the end of
American military prowess. But now birth control is available — the PX at
Warhorse even sold out of condoms one day recently — reflecting a widely
accepted reality that soldiers have sex at outposts across Iraq.
The wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan are the first in which tens of thousands of American
military women have lived, worked and fought with men for prolonged periods.
Wars without front lines, they have done more than just muddle the rules meant
to keep women out of direct enemy contact.
They have
changed the way the United States military goes to war. They have reshaped life
on bases across Iraq and Afghanistan. They have cultivated a new generation of
women with a warrior’s ethos — and combat experience — that for millennia was
almost exclusively the preserve of men.
And they have
done so without the disruption of discipline and unit cohesion that some feared
would unfold at places like Warhorse.
“There was a
lot of debate over where women should be,” said Brig. Gen. Heidi V. Brown, one
of the two highest ranking women in Iraq today, recalling the start of the war.
“Here we are six years later, and you don’t hear about it. You shouldn’t hear
about it.”
In many ways,
General Brown’s career trajectory since the war began reflects the expanded
role for women at war.
In 2003, as a
colonel, she commanded a Patriot air-defense brigade that joined the push from
Kuwait to Baghdad, losing nine soldiers in a maintenance battalion outside
Nasiriya three days after the invasion began. One of them, Pfc. Lori Ann
Piestewa, was the first woman killed in action in Iraq; Pfc. Jessica
D. Lynch was captured in the same attack. Now, as the American role
in the war declines, General Brown will oversee the logistics of withdrawing
the vast amounts of military hardware in Iraq over the next year.
“We’ve needed —
needed — the contributions of both our men and women,” said Brig. Gen. Mary A.
Legere, the director of intelligence for the American war effort here and the
other highest ranking woman in Iraq.
The military,
of course, is not gender blind, especially in a war zone.
Sexual
harassment in a still-predominantly male institution remains a problem. So does
sexual assault. Both are underreported, soldiers and officers here say, because
the rigidity of the military chain of command can make accusations
uncomfortable and even risky for victims living in close quarters with the men
they accuse.
As a
precaution, women are advised to travel in pairs, particularly in smaller bases
populated with Iraqi troops and civilians. Capt. Margaret D. Taafe-McMenamy,
commander of the intelligence analysis cell at Warhorse, carries a folding
knife and a heavy, ridged flashlight — a Christmas gift from her husband, whom
she lives with here — as a precaution when she is out at night on the base.
Staff Sgt.
Patricia F. Bradford, 27, a psychological operations soldier, said that
slights, subtle and not, were common, and some were easier to brush off than
others. Women are still viewed derisively at times in the confined,
occasionally tense space of an outpost like Warhorse.
“You’re a
bitch, a slut or a dyke — or you’re married, but even if you’re married, you’re
still probably one of the three,” Sergeant Bradford said.
At the same
time, she and other female soldiers cope with the slights, showing a disarming
brashness.
“I think being
a staff sergeant — and a bitch — helps deflect those things,” she added.
The issues that
arise in having women in combat — harassment, bias, hardship, even sexual
relations — are, she and others said, a matter of discipline, maturity and
professionalism rather than an argument for separating the sexes.
Sergeant
Bradford recalled the day during her first tour when her convoy moved south
while a soldier with whom she was then engaged to be married moved north on the
same highway. She listened on the radio as his convoy came under an attack that
continued after she was out of range.
“For four days,
I had no idea what happened to him,” she said, “but I still had to continue my
mission, because that’s what you do when you’re a soldier.” (He emerged
unscathed, she later learned.)
Unforeseen
Issues
Such issues
were not foreseen when the war in Iraq began in 2003, even though the initial
invasion force included women in the
vanguard.
On a practical
level, the military was not prepared to house and otherwise address the
specific needs of women in a war zone — including issues like health and
privacy.
Early on, bases
were largely makeshift and far more dangerous. Few soldiers, male or female,
had more than rudimentary quarters or latrines. None had much privacy.
Sgt. Dawn M.
Cloukey, a communications specialist, spent her first tour in Iraq in 2005 and
2006 as the only woman among 45 soldiers, operating a retransmission station in
the mountains of northern Iraq and then in the center of Baghdad. She lived out
of a rucksack, with no toilet or room of her own. She described the experience
as isolating.
“I always felt
like the plague,” she said at Warhorse, on her second tour in Iraq, where she
handles communications for the commander of the First Stryker Brigade of the
25th Infantry Division.
As the United
States military settled into more permanent bases, many initial difficulties
abated, as the Army
gradually adapted to the new reality of waging war with a mixed force. So have
the soldiers themselves.
Women have
sought acceptance in a still-predominately male environment not by emphasizing
their sex but rather by displaying their toughness, their willingness to adjust
to conditions that are less than ideal.
“I’ve kicked my
guys out of the truck to pee in a bottle like that,” Sgt. Joelene M. Lachance,
a soldier with the 172nd Military Intelligence Battalion, said at Warhorse,
pointing to one of the liter water bottles that are ubiquitous at bases in
Iraq. “Cut the bottle off and pee in the bottle and then dispose of it.
Sometimes it’s an issue, but most of the time, I just make do.
“I don’t try
to, like, ‘I can’t sleep here,’ ” she continued. “If they’re sleeping
there, I’m sleeping there. I spent five days out in the truck once — with six
of my guys, sleeping on the floor.”
Warhorse still
reverberates with the rumble of armored convoys and the thud of helicopters
ferrying troops and, at times, the wounded. It is just north of Baquba, the
regional capital of Diyala Province, one of the most restive provinces in Iraq.
Here, the war is not over. Warhorse will very likely be among the last bases to
close in Iraq before American troops withdraw in full.
At the outset
of the war, the introduction of women into outposts like Warhorse raised fears
not just of abuse or harassment, but also of sex and pregnancy. The worst of
those fears, officers say, have not materialized.
In fact, sex in
America’s war zones is fairly common, soldiers say, and has not generally
proved disruptive.
In April, the
latest iteration of General Order No. 1, the rules governing the behavior of
soldiers in Iraq broadly, quietly relaxed the explicit prohibition on sex in a
war zone, though it still bars sex with Iraqis and spending the night in
someone else’s CHU. Some commands, including Baghdad, retain broader
restrictions, for example, on being in CHUs belonging to members of the
opposite sex.
“The chain of
command already has to deal with enough,” Captain Taafe-McMenamy said. “They
don’t really want to have to punish soldiers for dating.”
Women do become
pregnant — a condition that, intentional or not, in or out of wedlock, requires
the woman to be flown out within two weeks, causing personnel disruptions in
individual units.
The Army and
Marine Corps declined to say exactly how many women left Iraq and Afghanistan
as a result of pregnancies, but it appears to be relatively rare and has had
little effect on overall readiness, commanders say. At Warhorse, the First
Stryker Brigade, which has thousands of soldiers, has sent only three women
home because of pregnancies in 10 months in Iraq, the brigade said.
“There was a
fear if we integrate units, you will have a bunch of young people with raging
hormones, and it will end up in too many unwanted pregnancies, and it’s more
trouble than it’s worth,” said Peter Mansoor, a former battalion commander in
Iraq who, until retiring recently, served as Gen. David
H. Petraeus’s executive officer. “With good leadership and
mentorship, we have been able to keep those problems to a minimum.”
Taking
On New Roles
Roughly 1 in 20
of the 5,600 soldiers at Warhorse is female, a smaller ratio than in the
military as a whole. Nonetheless, they are fully integrated in the base’s operations.
Many of the
women at Warhorse serve in jobs that have traditionally accommodated women: the
base hospital, food service, supply and administration.
Others, though,
serve on the brigade staff, in intelligence and psychological operations, which
until recently were part of the Special Forces and thus off limits to women.
“We have
changed so much,” Col. Burt K. Thompson, the commander at Warhorse, said of the
Army, noting that every time he leaves the base, his patrol includes two women,
including Sergeant Cloukey “on comms” — communications — and a medic, Sgt.
Evette T. Lee-Stewart. “To have a female on an infantry brigade staff? Oh my
God.”
Like many
commanders who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, he said that women have ended
the debate over their role by their performance.
“I’ve relieved
males from command,” he said. “I’ve never relieved a female commander in two
and a half years as commander.”
The nature of
the war has also done much to change the debate over combat roles. Any trip off
the heavily secured bases now effectively invites contact with the enemy.
Many women have
also been pulled off their regular jobs and trained to search Iraqi women at
checkpoints because of local cultural sensitivities, putting them as much at
risk as any male counterpart.
When Specialist
Jennifer M. Hoeppner goes “outside the wire” at Warhorse, as going on patrol is
known, she clambers into what she calls “the best seat in the truck,” the
turret atop the Army’s newest armored vehicle, the MRAP.
“I’m the gunner
on all our missions,” she said, having qualified for the M240B machine gun at
an expert level.
“I think some
of the males are a little confused when I go up,” Specialist Hoeppner said.
“They’re like, ‘Who’s your gunner?’ ”
Women are also
increasingly “attached” to infantry and armored units that train and advise
Iraq’s police and military forces. Now that almost all American combat forces
have pulled back to bases outside of Iraq’s cities, that training has become
the main mission in Iraq.
The involvement
of women in it has been a cultural shock for Iraqi men far less accustomed to
dealing with women professionally, especially in the military.
Women spoke of
inappropriate comments or uncomfortable flattery, and even gifts. “It was everything
from candy to lingerie,” said Capt. Victoria Ferreira, 29, who spent a year
with an 11-person squad training Iraqi officers. “How do you react to that?
‘Thank you?’ ”
For the most
part, though, Iraqis seem to accept the role of women in the American military
— they have even expanded their own ranks for tasks like searching women at
checkpoints — even if it seems unlikely that women will be incorporated more
widely into the Iraqi armed forces anytime soon.
“I think now,
six years since the war started, they’ve learned to adapt or tolerate the fact
that in the American Army we have high ranking positions that are filled by
women,” said Capt. Violeta Z. Sifuentes, who commands the 591st Military Police
Company.
It was not
always so, she recalled of her first tour in Samarra in 2006. “They always
thought my platoon sergeant or my squad leader was the one in charge until I
was like, ‘Listen here. I’m in charge whether you like it or not.’ ”
The captain’s
remarks were typical. The women serving in today’s military represent a
generational shift. They are confident young women who have not had to fight
the same gender battles their predecessors in uniform did.
“I never felt
like I had to fight to succeed in the Army” was how Captain Taafe-McMenamy, who
is 27, put it.
Adapting
to the Tasks
Women in
today’s military say they do not feel the same pressure to prove themselves.
They adapt and expect others to adapt. They preserve their femininity without
making much of it.
Specialist
Hoeppner and her roommate, Sergeant Bradford, belong to the 361st Tactical
Psychological Operations Company, which patrols the towns and villages of
Diyala with infantry squads to spread and collect information.
On a recent
patrol in the small village of Shifta, they seemed more of a novelty to the
Iraqis they encountered than the soldiers they patrolled with, taking up
defensive positions alongside their male colleagues whenever they paused.
“I actually had
this million-dollar idea my first deployment,” Sergeant Bradford said of her
tour as a truck driver hauling supplies in 2004. “I was like, I need something
that’s like a beer bong that I can hold in place so I can pee standing up
without pulling my pants down. Cause we were truck drivers. We’d stop on the
side of the road. There’s no bushes. I was telling one of my soldiers about
this great idea, and he said they already make that.”
She produced
from her bunk in her CHU a device sold by REI called a “feminine urinary director.” “It’s even pink,”
Specialist Hoeppner interjected.
Warhorse’s
supply officer — a woman — acquired dozens of them.
“The first time
one of them came around a truck and saw me peeing on a tire,” she said of one
of her male colleagues, “I thought he was going to have a heart attack.”
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