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Issue: July, 1997
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Drill Sergeant Hassna's |
Women in the Military
by Steve Hassna
All I can say to women thinking about the military as an option is to learn how to spell "posthumously" proficiently. |
LISTEN UP, TROOPS!
It's the old Drill Sgt. here. I'm sitting on the group W. bench wondering how I got here. Well its not really the group W. bench of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" fame, but the jury selection room of Sonoma County, CA. feels a lot like that. You got it. I got tagged to take part in the American justice system. American justice, now that's a concept. So with all this time on my hands it would be best served by writing my next history lesson.
I must admit I have had some prompting recently in the form of having my heels locked by one Command Sargent Major Mary Moore who told me to get off my third point of contact, (that's an Airborne term meaning your ass) and write her a column she would be proud of—don't worry about the electronic age and join the 20th century before it is over. All that, in that order. To have one's heels locked is also a military term. Meaning to come to an extreme position of attention, heels together, feet at 45 degree angles, legs straight, back straight, shoulders back, arms by your sides, fingers curled with thumb and index finger along the outside seams of your pants, eyes straight ahead and your attention focused on the instructions the Sgt. Major is dispensing. That, my friends, is having one's heels locked. If you still don't understand, then find a veteran and ask for a demonstration. I'm sure they would be more than happy to oblige.
As for me, I was receiving the motivation talk from Sgt. Major Moore because of my lack of columns for the Sonoma County Free Press in several months. Which I have no excuse for not submitting.
There are things one should remember. First off, the army calls this a motivation factor; that no compliance to the Sgt. Major's commands would result in one wishing you were born on another planet in a far away galaxy, and that help from God on your behalf would not be tolerated or allowed. Second, you don't give excuses to a Sgt. Major.
So here I am in Mary's shop, "Long Ago and Far Away" in Sebastopol, CA at the position of attention, saying at the right time "Yes Mary, you're right, yes I'll get right on it," etc., etc. You get my drift here? Mary wanted a column and she wanted it yesterday. At that point, I lovingly promoted her to Command Sgt. Major. For those of you who don't know what a Sgt. Major is, I'll give a brief run down. If you still don't understand, find a Vet and ask them.
It doesn't matter, officer or enlisted ranks, Sgt. Majors scare everybody. It's amusing to see officers cringe when one of these people gets pissed off. OKAY. so here goes. Sgt. Major: Highest ranking non-commissioned officer rank E-9 in all services. The army designation is Sgt. Major; Navy is Master Chief Petty Officer; Air Force is Chief; Marine Corps is Sgt. Major; and Coast Guard is Master Chief Petty Officer.
There are some rules to remember when dealing with these people.
Are you getting all this? If not, you got it, find a vet to translate.
Well now, with all that perfectly clear, let's move on. For some time now I wanted to do a piece on women in the military, but just as I got started something else would come up, i.e. Drill Sgt.s, P.R. problems, Uniform Code of Military Justice (U.C.M.J. which isn't,) one scandal after another. Ain't the military just great?
So what I'm going to do is just do what I first wanted to do, women in the military. Then cover all this other stuff in following columns.
In 1996 the movie "Courage Under Fire" came out, about a woman chopper pilot in the Gulf and her being recommended for a posthumous Medal of Honor, America's highest award for valor. There's a word you should remember here, it's Posthumous, or dead, because that's how most of these things are awarded. I'd like to see Mr. Rogers come out some day and say, "Hi children, can you say posthumously?", with that weird smile on his face. This was billed as the first woman to be recommended for this award. But that was not entirely accurate. (I got that line from the movie, Independence Day .) The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about one Doctor Mary Walker, who received the award for her part in the civil war. She worked in a field hospital, captured by confederate troops, interned in a P.O.W. camp and tended to the sick while there, being released at wars end.
Dr. Walker received the medal from President AndrewJohnson, who by the way took over after Lincoln died of an acute case of lead poisoning. But that is a whole other story. Anyway, things went on just fine for Mary for a lot of years. She wore the medal proudly every day after she received it. She also wore men's suits and conducted her life as if she were in charge of it. Seems no one told her that men were in charge. Then in 1903 things changed. A congressional committee decided that what Mary did wasn't that brave and stripped her of the medal [of honor]. What these guys, who were in charge, were really upset about was that Mary was an outspoken advocate of women's rights, against the death penalty, and told the guys in charge to go pound salt!
Two federal cops were sent to take the medal back. They were met by Mary wearing the medal and a twelve gauge shotgun. The cops decided that being recommended for a posthumous medal of honor for taking same medal from a live recipient wasn't worth the trouble and left, never to return. Mary continued to wear the medal everyday until her death a few years later. Now that, troops, is an attitude that anyone could be proud of, including this old Drill Sgt.
All this coverage, including the movie, has been brought out because of the concept of women in combat. There is a misconception that women in combat is a new thing. WRONG!!!!!!
Women have been involved in combat and close support roles since the revolutionary war. They just haven't been acknowledged for their part. Only recently, since the issue hit the public forum, have women's roles been explored. All this publicity should be a warning to women: Get ready to get medals posthumously.
Because as far as I can see, women will be involved more in the future wars. One reason for this is the concept of the fluid battlefield. The ebb and flow of the battle can change very rapidly on a modern battlefield. Front lines will change quickly and the rear or support may be the front. The U.S. military started looking at this in the 1970's. From this came the rapid deployment forces—Army Airborne and Air Assault units, Marine amphibious forces and reliance on reserve and national guard units for support. I will go over this stuff in later columns. Now let's get back to the main question: women getting posthumous medals.
I stated earlier that women have been involved since revolutionary times. One job women had was support to field artillery. Their jobs were to stand by the guns with pitchers of water and pour the water over the hot barrels to help cool them, so gunners could keep firing. Now were did I glean this tidbit of history? Why, from a U.S. Army recruitment poster showing a woman in 18th century dress standing by a cannon with a pitcher in her hand. Oh, before I forget, these women were nicknamed Molly Pitchers by the male troops. The poster went on to explain that women have been there when their country needed them, all the way back to the revolution. I have this poster at home.
OKAY, let's move on to WWI. Now that was a great place to test the concept of human wave assaults across open areas against fortified machine gun positions. The machine guns won. Also long range artillery, air strikes, submarines, and who could forget mustard gas. All these lovely examples of mass killing caused high casualties on all sides. Field hospitals were packed and women were there doing what needed to be done. Long range artillery shells don't care whose under them. Bombs do not sort out who is combat or non-combat personnel. Or did you already know this?
After WWI everybody went home to regroup and re-arm, vowing to meet in the near future with an even bigger stage production, with a cast of millions. In fact just about everyone on the planet would be involved. This is called an equal opportunity war.
With the U.S. entering WWII, full mobilization brought about a call for women to do their part again. Weapons factories were filled with women while the men went off to fight the good fight. Oh, by the way, all countries involved were doing the same thing. In the military women were shunted to support roles. But one of these support jobs took them directly into harm's way. Women pilots were used to transport unarmed bombers into combat theaters of operation. Then male crews would arm and man the bombers and go out and bomb the bad guys. These women were not considered combatants because they didn't fight. No kidding, Sherlock. They didn't fight because they didn't have any guns to fight with; thus non-combatants. Which made no sense at all if they had to deal with an enemy fighter who couldn't care less if they were unarmed and defenseless or women. They were in enemy aircraft and that was that. It was years after the war that these pilots received any recognition for their service.
On to Korea were women were part of mobile M.A.S.H. units. Then Vietnam and again into field hospitals where many were killed or wounded. Funny thing about Vietnam is that the military couldn't come up with an exact number of how many women were in country. I have heard numbers over the years of a few thousand to 35,000. But hey, what's a spread of, oh 25,000 to 35,000 in the whole scheme of things. Also, like women of other wars, they were virtually forgotten.
Now to the present and we have women as chopper pilots flying close support missions during the Persian Gulf war. That, to me, is as close to combat as you can get. All I can say to women thinking about the military as an option is to learn how to spell "posthumously" proficiently. There are other areas which I could cover, but all that will come up in future columns.
Well troops, that's it for today. So stay tuned and keep reading those papers for the next contradiction in what we all know and love as the American historical process.
And today's tips are:
See you around the base camp,
Drill Sgt. Hassna
copyright Steve Hassna 1997
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