« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

MEMBER DIARY

WOMEN IN COMBAT

A Senseless Decision

By: longtimeconservative (Diary)  |  January 28th, 2013 at 11:44 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Lifting the ban on women serving in direct combat is the most degrading, humiliating decision possible for a mother, wife, sister, daughter or any female. Assume she joins the Army and takes basic and artillery training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. After training, she is assigned to a Field Artillery Observation Battalion with orders to replace a similar outfit in South Korea.

Her new temporary home becomes an 8’x16’ hillside timber and sandbag covered bunker facing the front line. A small slit facing the enemy provides room for observation. Her sometimes clad, sometimes nude bunker buddies are another forward observer and two Korean soldiers. Her job is to gather battlefield information, enemy movement and conduct artillery fire and counter-fire missions.

Inside her bunker are three cots, an oil fired heater, cooking utensils, wash basins, communication equipment, barely enough room to move and no screens or privacy. Bathroom, alias latrine facilities, behind the bunker include a board with a 12” round hole  resting between two steel ammunition crates and over a small pit. It has a crude three foot square canvas cover that rarely protects from rain, sleet or snow. A sometimes wet roll of toilet paper hangs adjacent and countersunk in the ground is a 155 mm shell casing used for urination.

It is in plain view of a nearby infantry unit assigned to the same hill. Based on my very limited experience in the military, it is no place for a woman or social experimentation no matter what the Sec. of Defense orders.

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • Don T.

    You need to get your mind right. This is not about female soldier comfort or lack thereof, or about improving military unit effectiveness. This issue is about equal opportunity and social justice for all. Get with the program, man!

    • gawken

      The chief argument of proponents of this asinine idea is that women in the military don’t have the same opportunity to achieve flag rank as male officers because they can’t get their ticket punched in a combat command. Thus they are somehow “harmed.”

      An article by a female Marine officer in the current Marine Corps Gazette completely demolishes this. In fact, it shows how it will actually HURT the ability for females to achieve high rank.

      An excellent read: “Get over it! we are not all created equal.”

      http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created-equal

      • auh20catokeyahburkeburke

        great article. Although I disagree with the title, because “created equal” implies that we are equal before God. Which I do believe that everyone is equal before God. Although as the article points out we are not equal amongst each other.

  • Chris

    When I joined the military, I did so with the expectation that I would be giving up certain things (like privacy, and maybe my life), and with the knowledge that I might be sent somewhere where the only toilet paper available to me might be wet (though at the time, I was more concerned that my toilet paper might spontaneously combust in the heat of an Iraqi summer). From the very first pee-in-a-cup-with-someone-watching experience at MEPS, the military doesn’t try to hide its slightly skewed standards of modesty. One imagines that females who volunteer for the service, and who volunteer again for combat arms, would know these things too.

    Ideally, we wouldn’t have anybody living in a little bunker waiting for a million North Korean artillery shells to fly over the border, but since we do, why not let anyone with the interest and ability stand that post?

  • auh20catokeyahburkeburke

    Yo, I have first hand experience with some this stuff. Back in 2006, in Ramadi man, I was there, I am actually pretty sure I passed within a few feet of Kyle Scott at a meeting I went to with my Lt., which preceded the operation where we took over city block in the middle of the city and turned it into COP FALCON. Anyway they really did have Punisher skulls on their chests, and I was like comon, that’s a bit showy, but they will killers. I cannot emphasize that enough. Navy Seals in Ramadi in the summer of 2006 killed SO MANY people. OMG. Seriously. Anyway, so on this mission, for which I cannot remember the name of the operation, we first cut off the southern tip of Ramadi. The idea of the Brass was to cut off every escape route from the city, and then the NSW and SF backed by the regular army and marines would systematically clamp down on the city and murder Al Qaeda. It worked great! Anyway, if you want to follow along, type in Ramadi into google maps, switch on sat view, and goto ramadi. Where the river forks at the northeast edge of town, there is BLUE DIAMOND, on the north side of the river, it was one of Saddam’s palaces. If you go a couple of hundred meters west, you’ll see a big patch of sand, that was the CAMP RAMADI motorpool. Lame place. Anyway, follow the fork of the river that goes south, there’s a bridge at the southern end of the city. About May 24 of 2006, NSW goes in first, we go in after, we secure the southern tip of the city. Going east, up the road, there is a clump of homes, and another, smaller clump south of that, and further south of that there is like 2 homes way down there. Anyway, in the smaller clump, on the southeast edge, there is a larger walled residence, with an outbuilding shaped like an L on its northeast corner. See it? Anyway, we stayed there overnight, got eaten alive by fleas. Buddy of mine counted like 100 bites on just his forearm. We got out the next day and survey the damage. It was nuts. In the confusion, we had drove through people’s homes with the brads by accident, destroyed a sheep pen, and nearly ran over 2nd squad by accident coming out the other side of pen, ran over a horse by accident, almost ran over family sleeping in the yard by accident, it was a disaster area. And then there was this Marine Sgt. walking through the area writing checks to people, Oh I see I they drove your home thinking it was a fence. Moral of the story is it was hard to see at night for the brad drivers. An Engineer is shot that morning by a sniper. He poked his head to try to see who shooting at him. Bad move. He died. So we’re bummed about that. All this time we have two Marine MPs with us, one is dude, pretty cool guy, and the other is a girl. She’s a dog handler, I can’t remember her name, but the dog’s name was Emma. Anyway this dog sits down, everytime it smells a bomb. So she and the dog would investigate say the front door before we kick it down to make sure we won’t get blown to hell. So she rolls with us for about 4 or 5 days. During this time our unity and discipline goto hell. Why? Because we’ve seen like 3 women in the past year, the chick who chewed, the chick who didn’t wear a bra, and butternose, and anyone who was in the 2ndBCT knows what I’m talking about. Every guy wanted to insert his business into her business. One team, one fight, to everyman for himself, preoccupied with getting laid instead of the mission. I remember one of buddies asking the male marine, so is she, uhh like a slut? I don’t whether he was pulling our legs or being honest, but he was like hell ya. Fuel on the flames. So we left that place and went to go establish COP Falcon as a center for operations in the area. Everytime I look at the google map of Ramadi I think I’ve found COP falcon, but I’m never sure. I think it is east of the 4 way with the circle in it, and bisected by the creek nearby, but I’m not sure. It’s a little ways north of the area I previously described. Anyway, this lady Marine MP stays with us for a few days before he sends her away, not because she’s done anything wrong, but because she is destroying our discipline because we are young horny men. She was no prissy pants, she was just as evil as the rest of us, and she was stout, could carry her load. Which I must say she is one of the three physically strongest women I have met in my life, out of thousands and thousands. I am saying I have only met three women capable of doing infantry work. I’ll now make my argument clear. Very few women are physically capable of being in a Combat Arms MOS. I carried 120 pounds of gear of me. How many women do you know that can run full sprint with 120 pounds of gear on them? The problem with them being there is not with them so much as the men. It kills discipline and unity amongst a platoon, which is HARD to build. Two, women will get pregnant and sent home, thus reducing manpower of combat units and increasing headaches of for officers running those units. Three, medics will likely try to save a wounded female soldier versus a wounded male soldier. Four, libtards who are reflexively anti-military and anti-war are typically for females being a part of combat arms units. They’re idiots for this. What they do not realize and the MOST IMPORTANT PART of what I have to say is this, we’ve just doubled the size of the army we can raise. The next step of so called progress would be to add women to selective service. I believe this will happen. It’s just one more step on putting the United States on a Total War footing. Not the video game, but Clausewitz’s concept of Total War. This is the real danger to our democracy and way of life. If read of all of this you’re awesome!

    • PowerToThePeople

      What is wrong with you? Seriously, what is your ailment?

      • auh20catokeyahburkeburke

        Lung cancer mostly. What’s yours?

    • Viet71

      Readable stream of consciousness.

      The American military certainly needs women in branches such as military intelligence. Women certainly can fly helicopters and pull triggers. The issue, as you write, is unit morale and discipline.

      In Viet Nam, women served as army nurses. There were also “donut dollies” — Red Cross workers, who were separately housed (these women, by the way, are and were greatly under-appreciated for their courage and dedication). Grunts knew it was hands off as to these women. Vietnamese women were fair game. That attitude on the part of the brass stemmed from a recognition that a lot of healthy young men needed a sexual outlet.

      I don’t know how women would work in a modern infantry unit. I imagine it would depend to a large extent on basic training, NCO control, and company-level officer leadership.

    • Bill S

      Paragraphs.

      Use paragraphs.

      • auh20catokeyahburkeburke

        next time

  • eltuba

    Women have been passive victims in every war since the first one. If a motivated physically capable women decides she wants to fight for herself I don’t have any problem with that.
    From my observations in the workplace It does seem that there needs to be a minimum number of women in any given unit in order for the men to regard their presence as normal. At my workplace one department has two females with about 100 men. They are constantly fawned over and their idiot male co-workers have an uncanny ability to make fools of themselves around them. The other department has about one female for every two males. Those women are regarded by their male co-workers as a normal part of the workplace who just happen to smell a little better. There isn’t any of the childish behavior you see in the first group.

  • WmCraig

    How does this compare to the Republican’s war on women. Something pales in comparison.

    Since the path from enlisted combat veteran to general doesn’t exist how can Democrats justify putting enlisted women in combat. Why not release the restrictions for officers only?

    My take is, that for reasons I am yet to understand the Democrats want to damage the military, again. It has become too respectable for women to serve. If provides a level of freedom and independence that makes women harder to scare into dependency. It makes it too easy to get good people, men and women to enlist.

    Of course, the Democrats always were big on the draft. Could be the answer. Maybe the want to see the draft brought back. Give them one more tool to use to intimidate the public into compliance.