Equal When Bullets Fly

After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, President Clinton opened several new military job categories to women. But Congress continues to bar women from combat. As the war in Iraq is proving, on the ground, the line may be a distinction without a difference.

Women have served in the American armed forces since the Army Nurse Corps began in 1901. After the draft ended in 1973 and the service academies opened their doors to women, the ranks of female officers and troops expanded. Now about 15% of U.S. service personnel are women.

The all-volunteer services’ growing dependence on women and their distinguished records have prompted changes in their roles. Clinton’s post-Gulf War order, for example, permitted women on combat ships and in fighter planes. But special forces, infantry, armor and most field artillery jobs remain closed to women, as does service aboard submarines.

The top brass worry that women don’t have the physical strength or the stomach for combat. Some also suggest that their presence could erode the tight bonds that develop among fighters in a foxhole. Of course, that argument long justified the racial segregation that lasted in the military until 1948.

The enemy has never seen the line between combat and noncombat units as sacrosanct -- as women serving in roles that are supposedly not in the action are discovering in Iraq. Male and female service personnel on the ground can turn into de facto combat soldiers the moment a suicide bomber shows up at a military checkpoint or a supposed civilian opens fire with an automatic weapon.

Consider the experience of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch and Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, members of the 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company. Iraqi forces ambushed their unit March 23 after it took a wrong turn. They took Lynch, Johnson and several others prisoner. Johnson’s captors interrogated her on Iraqi television and her fate remains unknown.

But Tuesday, U.S. troops rescued Lynch, who is now recovering from multiple injuries in a military hospital in Germany. Although the military has not released details of her capture and captivity, Lynch reportedly shot several Iraqi soldiers during the initial firefight and kept firing until she ran out of ammunition.

It’s a good bet that Lynch’s experience and that of the 200,000 other women in uniform will continue to push at the boundaries of a woman’s “place� in the military. As the adage goes, in war everyone is equal -- or at least equally at risk.