CAMP STRIKER, Iraq — One day a young man wearing a pistol on his leg leaned his rifle in a corner, shucked his ammunition and his body armor, and pulled out his knife. It was about the size of a meat cleaver. “Nice,” another young man said, admiring its high-tech look: all black, including the blade, but for the silver gleam on its sharpened edge. The admirer pulled out his own knife – about the size of an English broadsword – and the two men traded blades, testing for edge and heft and balance and… well, feel.
I smiled at the young woman typing at a laptop. “It’s a guy thing,” I said to her, apologetically.
“No it’s not!” she said. “It’s a knife thing!”
She pulled out her own knife, that was apparently designed for Zeus to carry into battle.
Unless you have been here, you do not appreciate the extent to which women have been integrated into the Army, and are ready to fight. Everyone is armed nearly all the time. Wherever they go, 19 and 20 year old former cheerleaders and babysitters are carrying modern assault weapons and pistols. In a war that is fought on the highways, one explosion at a time, a woman is frequently the Humvee driver, whose courage and instincts will be called upon first in an emergency. Or she may be the turret gunner, exposed and lonely, the sniper’s juiciest target.
Women wear the same uniform and carry the same equipment that men do; speak the same language that men do; take and give the same orders that men do; assume the same risks that men do; and earn the same respect. It seems that whenever the Armed Forces are compelled, reluctantly, to tear down another social barrier – they do so with breathtaking effectiveness.
2 Comments
A great article! It is about time, that the women get credit for the horrible war that is being fought.
I read an interview with a woman, a soldier who served in Iraq, who said that her main source of staying true to herself during that time was painting her toenails. Even though she would be the only one to know what was underneath those sturdy boots in the middle of a war-torn country, it gave her some sense of peace to feel that she was still feminine, still a girl in a sea of camouflage and men. So while it’s great to see women on equal footing, it comes at a price. Though, ultimately, most of this war does.
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