Women in combat - 04/11/2003

Image largest obstacle, say vets, family

Evening News staff writer

By CYNTHIA RAMNARACE

It has become one of the pervasive images of this war in Iraq.

Pfc. Jessica Lynch, dressed in green combat fatigues, peering out from underneath a cap pulled down tightly on her head. Branded on her shirt are the words "U.S. Army."

It looks like a picture of any other young soldier, except for this: Pfc. Lynch is smiling. It's a small smile, a grin really, but it adds a vulnerability that is absent in the blank, stern faces usually captured in a military portrait. It's a sweet smile, a young smile, a girl's smile. It brings to mind apple pie and baseball and backyard barbecues.

The irony is that this also is the smile of this war's most well-known prisoner of war.

Being a prisoner of war is bad enough, but this one was young, cute and a girl. In a world where the most egregious war crime that could be committed would be against women and children, can a woman really achieve equality in the military?

From talking with female veterans and the mothers of some women involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the problem isn't what happens in the units where these women serve. It's the public's perception of these women's roles.

"They emphasize the women thing too much," said Linda Lefcheck of Temperance, who served in the Marines in the 1960s. "She's just military. She's a soldier. When you join you don't go in there, at least I didn't, to be separated from everything."

Women today serve closer to combat than ever before. A series of laws passed after the first Gulf War gave women in the military more opportunities than ever. Congress repealed laws that forbid women from flying combat aircraft and serving on combat vessels. The restriction on assignments based on "risk of exposure to direct combat, hostile fire or capture" has been amended. Now, women are limited only from participating in direct ground combat. Women can be found flying F-16s. They've risen as high as vice admiral in the Navy and lieutenant general in the Air Force.

Darlene Shown's daughter, Army Pfc. Pamela Shown, went through integrated training when she joined the Reserves. A military police officer, she is stationed in Kuwait.

In basic training, Pfc. Shown, 23, was the leader of her platoon. She is a grenade expert, a sharpshooter and a rifle marksman. She won the battalion commander's award and was voted most outstanding soldier.

"She just views it as, she's been trained as a military police officer to do her job," Mrs. Shown of Carleton said. "She wants to do it as well as possible. She has support. We haven't discussed any problems as far as her being a woman. But I would think at this point by the time they are out of training, they're so well trained and so respected, you're just viewed as a soldier."

Laura Welch of Monroe, who spent four years in the Navy Nurse Corps, said women face the same questions as men when they enlist for military service. They have to ask themselves, am I willing to put myself in harm's way in order to serve my country?

"(Danger) is just part of the job," said Ms. Welch, who achieved the rank of lieutenant. "When you join the military you have to make the decision in your mind that at some point you could go to war. You have to reconcile that and say yes, I'd be willing to do that."

The last thing women in the military want is to be seen or treated differently.

"Ladies these days are pretty tough," said Leigh Burchell of Newport, whose daughter, Christine, is an Army sergeant. "They want to be where the men are at and do what they are doing."

Mrs. Shown's colleagues at Airport's Sterling Elementary School show extra concern over the fact that Pfc. Shown is a woman. But the students don't differentiate.

"The fifth grade here is writing to her," Mrs. Shown said. "They write her every day but she hasn't gotten it yet. The fifth-grade boys and girls haven't reacted differently than to another male soldier they are writing to. There's a level of respect."

It's a biological fact that most men are bigger and stronger than women. That discrepancy may present a challenge, but it's not an insurmountable one.

"(My daughter) is not a huge person," Mrs. Shown said. "She's 5-foot-3. You're wearing 45 pounds of gear. And she doesn't complain. It's amazing what we're able to do when we put our minds to it."

"She's little — 125 pounds," Mrs. Burchell said of her daughter, Sgt. Burchell. "She's tall and skinny. But she's got a lot of willpower in her. She keeps her head up high. I know they're scared and nervous, and she's got brothers here at home and I tell them you should be proud of her."

Vickie Adams, who spent 20 years in the Air Force and is director of the Monroe County Veterans Bureau, said she can understand how people would think having men and women working side by side in combat could present problems.

"It's a hard position to put the guys in," Ms. Adams said. "When women were first doing jobs like crew chief, a lot of the guys would go out of the way to help her do her job. That causes them some problems because they're not paying attention to their job. The guys are looking at the girls as a sister, girlfriend, mom. They may put themselves in harm's way to protect her."

The details of what happened to Pfc. Lynch, and why she was the only soldier kept alive when 11 others were killed, have yet to surface.

People like Mrs. Burchell and Mrs. Shown only hope that if something like that were to happen to their daughters, they would do the same.

"So far she's holding her head up high and that's what I tell her when I write," Mrs. Burchell said. "I tell her, ‘Protect yourself and protect each other.' "

Keyword: MNews