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G.I. Jane Breaks the Combat Barrier, August 15, 2009
As the convoy rumbled up the road in Iraq, Specialist Veronica Alfaro
was struck by the beauty of fireflies dancing in the night. Then she
heard the unmistakable pinging of tracer rounds and, in a Baghdad
moment, realized the insects were illuminated bullets.
She jumped from behind the wheel of her gun truck, grabbed her
medical bag and sprinted 50 yards to a stalled civilian truck. On the
way, bullets kicked up dust near her feet. She pulled the badly
wounded driver to the ground and got to work.
Despite her best efforts, the driver died, but her heroism that
January night last year earned Specialist Alfaro a Bronze Star
for valor. She had already received a combat action badge for
fending off insurgents as a machine gunner.
“I did everything there,” Ms. Alfaro, 25, said of her time in Iraq.
“I gunned. I drove. I ran as a truck commander. And underneath
it all, I was a medic.”
Before 2001, America’s military women had rarely seen ground
combat. Their jobs kept them mostly away from enemy lines,
as military policy dictates. But the Afghanistan and Iraq wars,
often fought in marketplaces and alleyways, have changed that.
In both countries, women have repeatedly proved their mettle in
combat. The number of high-ranking women and women who
command all-male units has climbed considerably along with their
status in the military.
“Iraq has advanced the cause of full integration for women in the
Army by leaps and bounds,” said Peter R. Mansoor, a retired Army
colonel who served as executive officer to Gen. David H. Petraeus
while he was the top American commander in Iraq. “They have
earned the confidence and respect of male colleagues.”
Their success, widely known in the military, remains largely hidden
from public view. In part, this is because their most challenging work
is often the result of a quiet circumvention of military policy. Women
are barred from joining combat branches like the infantry, armor,
Special Forces and most field artillery units and from doing support
jobs while living with those smaller units. Women can lead some male
troops into combat as officers, but they cannot serve with them in
battle. Yet, over and over, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army commanders
have resorted to bureaucratic trickery when they needed more soldiers
for crucial jobs, like bomb disposal and intelligence. On paper, for instance,
women have been “attached” to a combat unit rather than “assigned.”
This quiet change has not come seamlessly — and it has altered military
culture on the battlefield in ways large and small. Women need separate
bunks and bathrooms. They face sexual discrimination and rape, and
counselors and rape kits are now common in war zones. Commanders
also confront a new reality: that soldiers have sex, and some will be
evacuated because they are pregnant.
Nonetheless, as soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, women have
done nearly as much in battle as their male counterparts: patrolled streets
with machine guns, served as gunners on vehicles, disposed of explosives,
and driven trucks down bomb-ridden roads. They have proved indispensable
in their ability to interact with and search Iraqi and Afghan women for
weapons, a job men cannot do for cultural reasons. The Marine Corps has
created revolving units — “lionesses” — dedicated to just this task. A small
number of women have even conducted raids, engaging the enemy directly
in total disregard of existing policies.
Many experts, including David W. Barno, a retired lieutenant general who
commanded forces in Afghanistan; Dr. Mansoor, who now teaches military
history at Ohio State University; and John A. Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel
who helped write the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual, say it is only
a matter of time before regulations that have restricted women’s participation
in war will be adjusted to meet the reality forged over the last eight years.
The Marine Corps, which is overwhelmingly male and designed for combat, recently
opened two more categories of intelligence jobs to women, recognizing the value of
their work in Iraq and Afghanistan. In gradually admitting women to combat, the
United States will be catching up to the rest of the world. More than a dozen countries
allow women in some or all ground combat occupations. Among those pushing
boundaries most aggressively is Canada, which has recruited women for the infantry
and sent them to Afghanistan.
But the United States military may well be steps ahead of Congress, where opening
ground combat jobs to women has met deep resistance in the past. Elaine Donnelly,
president of the Center for Military Readiness, a group that opposes fully integrating
women into the Army, said women were doing these jobs with no debate and no
Congressional approval.
“I fault the Pentagon for not being straight with uniformed women,” said Ms. Donnelly,
who supported unsuccessful efforts by some in Congress in 2005 to restrict women’s
roles in these wars. “It’s an ‘anything goes’ situation.” Poll numbers, however, show
that a majority of the public supports allowing women to do more on the battlefield.
Fifty-three percent of the respondents in a New York Times/CBS News poll in July,
said they would favor permitting women to “join combat units, where they would be
directly involved in the ground fighting.” The successful experiences of military women
in Iraq and Afghanistan are being used to bolster the efforts of groups who favor letting
gay soldiers serve openly. Those opposed to such change say that permitting service
members to state their sexual orientation would disrupt the tight cohesion of a unit
and lead to harassment and sexual liaisons — arguments also used against allowing
women to serve alongside men. But women in Iraq and Afghanistan have debunked
many of those fears.
“They made it work with women, which is more complicated in some ways, with sex-
segregated facilities and new physical training standards,” said David Stacy, a lobbyist
with the Human Rights Campaign, which works for gay equality. “If the military could
make that work with good discipline and order, certainly integrating open service of gay
and lesbians is within their capability. ”
From Necessity, Opportunity
No one envisioned that Afghanistan and Iraq would elevate the status of women in the
armed forces. But the Iraq insurgency obliterated conventional battle lines. The fight was
on every base and street corner, and as the conflict grew longer and more complicated,
the all-volunteer military required more soldiers and a different approach to fighting.
Commanders were forced to stretch gender boundaries, or in a few cases, erase them
altogether. “We literally could not have fought this war without women,” said Dr. Nagl,
who is now president of the Center for a New American Security, a military research
institution in Washington.
Of the two million Americans who have fought in these wars since 2001, more than
220,000 of them, or 11 percent, have been women. Like men, some women have
come home bearing the mental and physical scars of bombs and bullets, loss and killing.
Women who are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars appear to suffer rates of
post-traumatic stress disorder comparable to those of men, a recent study showed.
Men still make up the vast majority of the 5,000 war deaths since 2001; nearly 4,000
have been killed by enemy action But 121 women have also died, 66 killed in combat.
The rest died in nonhostile action, which includes accidents, illness, suicide and friendly
fire. And 620 women have been wounded.
Despite longstanding fears about how the public would react to women coming home in
coffins, Americans have responded to their deaths and injuries no differently than to
those of male casualties, analysts say. That is a reflection of changing social mores but
also a result of the growing number of women — more than 356,000 today — who serve
in the armed forces, including the Reserves and the National Guard, 16 percent of the total.
Over all, women say the gains they made in Iraq and Afghanistan have overshadowed the
challenges they faced in a combat zone.
“As horrible as this war has been, I fully believe it has given women so many opportunities
in the military,” said Linsay Rousseau Burnett, who was one of the first women to serve as a
communication specialist with a brigade combat team in Iraq. “Before, they didn’t have the
option.”
Although women make up only 6 percent of the top military ranks, these war years have
ushered in a series of notable promotions. In 2008, 57 women were serving as generals
and admirals in the active-duty military, more than double the number a decade earlier.
Last year, Ann E. Dunwoody was the first woman to become a four-star Army general,
the highest rank in today’s military and a significant milestone for women. And many
more women now lead all-male combat troops into battle. The Army does not keep
complete statistics on the sex of soldiers who receive medals and tracks only active-
duty soldiers. But two women have been awarded Silver Stars, one of the military’s
highest honors. Many more women have been awarded medals for valor, the statistics
show.
To be sure, not all women in the military embrace the idea of going into combat. Like
men, a few do what they can to try to get out of deployments. Military women and
commanders say some women have timed their pregnancies to avoid deploying or
have gotten pregnant in Iraq so they would be sent home. The Army declined to
release numbers on how many women have been evacuated from a war zone for
pregnancy. In addition to the dangers, military life is grueling in other ways, especially
for mothers juggling parenting and the demands of the military, which require long
absences from home. And while the military is doing more to address the threat of
sexual harassment and rape, it remains a persistent problem.
Bending Rules, Shifting Views
The rules governing what jobs military women can hold often seem contradictory or
muddled. Women, for instance, can serve as machine gunners on Humvees but cannot
operate Bradleys, the Army’s armored fighting vehicle. They can work with some long-
range artillery but not short-range ones. Women can walk Iraq’s dangerous streets as
members of the military police but not as members of the infantry. And, they can lead
combat engineers in war zones as officers, but cannot serve among them. This was the
case for Maj. Kellie McCoy, 34, a wisp of an officer who is just over five feet tall. As a
captain in 2003 and 2004, she served as the first female engineer company commander
in the 82nd Airborne Division and led a platoon of combat engineers in Iraq.
On Sept. 14, 2003, her four-vehicle convoy drove into an ambush. It was attacked by
multiple roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. Three soldiers
were wounded in the ambush. As one of the wounded stood in the middle of the road,
bloody and in shock, Major McCoy ran through enemy fire to get him, discharging her
M4 as she led him back to her vehicle. Then, she and the others returned to the “kill
zone” to rescue the remaining soldiers. Insurgents shot at them from 15 feet away.
But eventually, all 12 soldiers piled into one four-seat Humvee and sped away.
Major McCoy received a Bronze Star for valor and, most important for her, the admiration
of her troops. “I think my actions cemented their respect for me,” she wrote in an e-mail
message from Iraq. “I worked hard to earn their respect.” As an officer, Major McCoy’s
assignment followed both the letter and the spirit of the regulations.
But in other cases, the rules were bent to get women into combat positions.
In 2004 and 2005, Michael A. Baumann, now a retired lieutenant colonel, commanded
30 enlisted women and 6 female officers as part of a unit patrolling in the Rashid district
of Baghdad, an extremely dangerous area at the time. On paper, he followed military policy.
The women were technically assigned to a separate chemical company of the division. In
reality, they were core members of his field artillery battalion. Mr. Baumann said the women
trained and fought alongside his male soldiers. Everyone from Mr. Baumann’s commanders
to the commanding general knew their true function, he said.
“We had to take everybody,” said Mr. Baumann, 46, who wrote a book about his time in Iraq
called “Adjust Fire: Transforming to Win in Iraq.” “Nobody could be spared to do something like
support.” Brought up as an old-school Army warrior, Mr. Baumann said he had seriously doubted
that women could physically handle infantry duties, citing the weight of the armor and the gear,
the heat of Baghdad and the harshness of combat. “I found out differently,” said Mr. Baumann,
now chief financial officer for St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota. “Not only could they handle it,
but in the same way as males. I would go out on patrols every single day with my battalion. I
was with them. I was next to them. I saw with my own eyes. I had full trust and confidence in
their abilities.”
Mr. Baumann’s experience rings true to many men who have commanded women in Iraq. More
than anything, it is seeing women perform under fire that has changed attitudes. But some
experts say the hostility toward women in the military was fading on its own. Many young men
today have grown up around female athletes, tough sisters and successful women. As the
experience of Iraq and Afghanistan sinks in, some experts and military officers believe that
women should be allowed to join all-male combat units in phases (so long as job-specific physical
exams are created to test the abilities of men and women).
For New Warfare, New Roles
War is different today, they say. Technology has changed the way some of these jobs are done,
making them more mechanized and less strength-dependent. Warfare in Iraq involves a lot more
driving than walking. What is more, not all combat jobs are the same. Handling field artillery or
working in Bradleys, for example, are jobs more suited to some women than light infantry duties,
which can require carrying heavy packs for miles. Still, most women in the military express little,
if any, desire to join the grueling, testosterone-laden light infantry. But some say they are interested
in artillery and armor.
Any change to the policy would require Congressional approval, which lawmakers say is unlikely in
the middle of two wars. But women in the military and their allies want their performance in combat
to count for something. “We have to acknowledge it because the military is like any other corporation,”
said Representative Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of California and the senior woman on the House Armed
Services Committee. “If you are not on the front lines doing what is the main purpose of your existence,
then you won’t be viewed as someone who can command.”
Military women said they were encouraged by the words of Representative John M. McHugh, the nominee
for Army secretary, who just four years ago supported a failed push in Congress to restrict the role of women
in combat zones. At his Senate hearing in July, Mr. McHugh, Republican of New York, sought to allay concern.
“Women in uniform today are not just invaluable,” he said, “they’re irreplaceable.” He added that he would
look to expand the number of jobs available to them. In Mr. Baumann’s view, the reality on the ground long
ago outpaced the debate.
“We have crossed that line in Iraq,” he said. “Debate it all you want folks, but the military is going to do what
the military needs to do. And they are needing to put women in combat.”
As the convoy rumbled up the road in Iraq, Specialist Veronica Alfaro
was struck by the beauty of fireflies dancing in the night. Then she
heard the unmistakable pinging of tracer rounds and, in a Baghdad
moment, realized the insects were illuminated bullets.
She jumped from behind the wheel of her gun truck, grabbed her
medical bag and sprinted 50 yards to a stalled civilian truck. On the
way, bullets kicked up dust near her feet. She pulled the badly
wounded driver to the ground and got to work.
Despite her best efforts, the driver died, but her heroism that
January night last year earned Specialist Alfaro a Bronze Star
for valor. She had already received a combat action badge for
fending off insurgents as a machine gunner.
“I did everything there,” Ms. Alfaro, 25, said of her time in Iraq.
“I gunned. I drove. I ran as a truck commander. And underneath
it all, I was a medic.”
Before 2001, America’s military women had rarely seen ground
combat. Their jobs kept them mostly away from enemy lines,
as military policy dictates. But the Afghanistan and Iraq wars,
often fought in marketplaces and alleyways, have changed that.
In both countries, women have repeatedly proved their mettle in
combat. The number of high-ranking women and women who
command all-male units has climbed considerably along with their
status in the military.
“Iraq has advanced the cause of full integration for women in the
Army by leaps and bounds,” said Peter R. Mansoor, a retired Army
colonel who served as executive officer to Gen. David H. Petraeus
while he was the top American commander in Iraq. “They have
earned the confidence and respect of male colleagues.”
Their success, widely known in the military, remains largely hidden
from public view. In part, this is because their most challenging work
is often the result of a quiet circumvention of military policy. Women
are barred from joining combat branches like the infantry, armor,
Special Forces and most field artillery units and from doing support
jobs while living with those smaller units. Women can lead some male
troops into combat as officers, but they cannot serve with them in
battle. Yet, over and over, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army commanders
have resorted to bureaucratic trickery when they needed more soldiers
for crucial jobs, like bomb disposal and intelligence. On paper, for instance,
women have been “attached” to a combat unit rather than “assigned.”
This quiet change has not come seamlessly — and it has altered military
culture on the battlefield in ways large and small. Women need separate
bunks and bathrooms. They face sexual discrimination and rape, and
counselors and rape kits are now common in war zones. Commanders
also confront a new reality: that soldiers have sex, and some will be
evacuated because they are pregnant.
Nonetheless, as soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, women have
done nearly as much in battle as their male counterparts: patrolled streets
with machine guns, served as gunners on vehicles, disposed of explosives,
and driven trucks down bomb-ridden roads. They have proved indispensable
in their ability to interact with and search Iraqi and Afghan women for
weapons, a job men cannot do for cultural reasons. The Marine Corps has
created revolving units — “lionesses” — dedicated to just this task. A small
number of women have even conducted raids, engaging the enemy directly
in total disregard of existing policies.
Many experts, including David W. Barno, a retired lieutenant general who
commanded forces in Afghanistan; Dr. Mansoor, who now teaches military
history at Ohio State University; and John A. Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel
who helped write the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual, say it is only
a matter of time before regulations that have restricted women’s participation
in war will be adjusted to meet the reality forged over the last eight years.
The Marine Corps, which is overwhelmingly male and designed for combat, recently
opened two more categories of intelligence jobs to women, recognizing the value of
their work in Iraq and Afghanistan. In gradually admitting women to combat, the
United States will be catching up to the rest of the world. More than a dozen countries
allow women in some or all ground combat occupations. Among those pushing
boundaries most aggressively is Canada, which has recruited women for the infantry
and sent them to Afghanistan.
But the United States military may well be steps ahead of Congress, where opening
ground combat jobs to women has met deep resistance in the past. Elaine Donnelly,
president of the Center for Military Readiness, a group that opposes fully integrating
women into the Army, said women were doing these jobs with no debate and no
Congressional approval.
“I fault the Pentagon for not being straight with uniformed women,” said Ms. Donnelly,
who supported unsuccessful efforts by some in Congress in 2005 to restrict women’s
roles in these wars. “It’s an ‘anything goes’ situation.” Poll numbers, however, show
that a majority of the public supports allowing women to do more on the battlefield.
Fifty-three percent of the respondents in a New York Times/CBS News poll in July,
said they would favor permitting women to “join combat units, where they would be
directly involved in the ground fighting.” The successful experiences of military women
in Iraq and Afghanistan are being used to bolster the efforts of groups who favor letting
gay soldiers serve openly. Those opposed to such change say that permitting service
members to state their sexual orientation would disrupt the tight cohesion of a unit
and lead to harassment and sexual liaisons — arguments also used against allowing
women to serve alongside men. But women in Iraq and Afghanistan have debunked
many of those fears.
“They made it work with women, which is more complicated in some ways, with sex-
segregated facilities and new physical training standards,” said David Stacy, a lobbyist
with the Human Rights Campaign, which works for gay equality. “If the military could
make that work with good discipline and order, certainly integrating open service of gay
and lesbians is within their capability. ”
From Necessity, Opportunity
No one envisioned that Afghanistan and Iraq would elevate the status of women in the
armed forces. But the Iraq insurgency obliterated conventional battle lines. The fight was
on every base and street corner, and as the conflict grew longer and more complicated,
the all-volunteer military required more soldiers and a different approach to fighting.
Commanders were forced to stretch gender boundaries, or in a few cases, erase them
altogether. “We literally could not have fought this war without women,” said Dr. Nagl,
who is now president of the Center for a New American Security, a military research
institution in Washington.
Of the two million Americans who have fought in these wars since 2001, more than
220,000 of them, or 11 percent, have been women. Like men, some women have
come home bearing the mental and physical scars of bombs and bullets, loss and killing.
Women who are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars appear to suffer rates of
post-traumatic stress disorder comparable to those of men, a recent study showed.
Men still make up the vast majority of the 5,000 war deaths since 2001; nearly 4,000
have been killed by enemy action But 121 women have also died, 66 killed in combat.
The rest died in nonhostile action, which includes accidents, illness, suicide and friendly
fire. And 620 women have been wounded.
Despite longstanding fears about how the public would react to women coming home in
coffins, Americans have responded to their deaths and injuries no differently than to
those of male casualties, analysts say. That is a reflection of changing social mores but
also a result of the growing number of women — more than 356,000 today — who serve
in the armed forces, including the Reserves and the National Guard, 16 percent of the total.
Over all, women say the gains they made in Iraq and Afghanistan have overshadowed the
challenges they faced in a combat zone.
“As horrible as this war has been, I fully believe it has given women so many opportunities
in the military,” said Linsay Rousseau Burnett, who was one of the first women to serve as a
communication specialist with a brigade combat team in Iraq. “Before, they didn’t have the
option.”
Although women make up only 6 percent of the top military ranks, these war years have
ushered in a series of notable promotions. In 2008, 57 women were serving as generals
and admirals in the active-duty military, more than double the number a decade earlier.
Last year, Ann E. Dunwoody was the first woman to become a four-star Army general,
the highest rank in today’s military and a significant milestone for women. And many
more women now lead all-male combat troops into battle. The Army does not keep
complete statistics on the sex of soldiers who receive medals and tracks only active-
duty soldiers. But two women have been awarded Silver Stars, one of the military’s
highest honors. Many more women have been awarded medals for valor, the statistics
show.
To be sure, not all women in the military embrace the idea of going into combat. Like
men, a few do what they can to try to get out of deployments. Military women and
commanders say some women have timed their pregnancies to avoid deploying or
have gotten pregnant in Iraq so they would be sent home. The Army declined to
release numbers on how many women have been evacuated from a war zone for
pregnancy. In addition to the dangers, military life is grueling in other ways, especially
for mothers juggling parenting and the demands of the military, which require long
absences from home. And while the military is doing more to address the threat of
sexual harassment and rape, it remains a persistent problem.
Bending Rules, Shifting Views
The rules governing what jobs military women can hold often seem contradictory or
muddled. Women, for instance, can serve as machine gunners on Humvees but cannot
operate Bradleys, the Army’s armored fighting vehicle. They can work with some long-
range artillery but not short-range ones. Women can walk Iraq’s dangerous streets as
members of the military police but not as members of the infantry. And, they can lead
combat engineers in war zones as officers, but cannot serve among them. This was the
case for Maj. Kellie McCoy, 34, a wisp of an officer who is just over five feet tall. As a
captain in 2003 and 2004, she served as the first female engineer company commander
in the 82nd Airborne Division and led a platoon of combat engineers in Iraq.
On Sept. 14, 2003, her four-vehicle convoy drove into an ambush. It was attacked by
multiple roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire. Three soldiers
were wounded in the ambush. As one of the wounded stood in the middle of the road,
bloody and in shock, Major McCoy ran through enemy fire to get him, discharging her
M4 as she led him back to her vehicle. Then, she and the others returned to the “kill
zone” to rescue the remaining soldiers. Insurgents shot at them from 15 feet away.
But eventually, all 12 soldiers piled into one four-seat Humvee and sped away.
Major McCoy received a Bronze Star for valor and, most important for her, the admiration
of her troops. “I think my actions cemented their respect for me,” she wrote in an e-mail
message from Iraq. “I worked hard to earn their respect.” As an officer, Major McCoy’s
assignment followed both the letter and the spirit of the regulations.
But in other cases, the rules were bent to get women into combat positions.
In 2004 and 2005, Michael A. Baumann, now a retired lieutenant colonel, commanded
30 enlisted women and 6 female officers as part of a unit patrolling in the Rashid district
of Baghdad, an extremely dangerous area at the time. On paper, he followed military policy.
The women were technically assigned to a separate chemical company of the division. In
reality, they were core members of his field artillery battalion. Mr. Baumann said the women
trained and fought alongside his male soldiers. Everyone from Mr. Baumann’s commanders
to the commanding general knew their true function, he said.
“We had to take everybody,” said Mr. Baumann, 46, who wrote a book about his time in Iraq
called “Adjust Fire: Transforming to Win in Iraq.” “Nobody could be spared to do something like
support.” Brought up as an old-school Army warrior, Mr. Baumann said he had seriously doubted
that women could physically handle infantry duties, citing the weight of the armor and the gear,
the heat of Baghdad and the harshness of combat. “I found out differently,” said Mr. Baumann,
now chief financial officer for St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota. “Not only could they handle it,
but in the same way as males. I would go out on patrols every single day with my battalion. I
was with them. I was next to them. I saw with my own eyes. I had full trust and confidence in
their abilities.”
Mr. Baumann’s experience rings true to many men who have commanded women in Iraq. More
than anything, it is seeing women perform under fire that has changed attitudes. But some
experts say the hostility toward women in the military was fading on its own. Many young men
today have grown up around female athletes, tough sisters and successful women. As the
experience of Iraq and Afghanistan sinks in, some experts and military officers believe that
women should be allowed to join all-male combat units in phases (so long as job-specific physical
exams are created to test the abilities of men and women).
For New Warfare, New Roles
War is different today, they say. Technology has changed the way some of these jobs are done,
making them more mechanized and less strength-dependent. Warfare in Iraq involves a lot more
driving than walking. What is more, not all combat jobs are the same. Handling field artillery or
working in Bradleys, for example, are jobs more suited to some women than light infantry duties,
which can require carrying heavy packs for miles. Still, most women in the military express little,
if any, desire to join the grueling, testosterone-laden light infantry. But some say they are interested
in artillery and armor.
Any change to the policy would require Congressional approval, which lawmakers say is unlikely in
the middle of two wars. But women in the military and their allies want their performance in combat
to count for something. “We have to acknowledge it because the military is like any other corporation,”
said Representative Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of California and the senior woman on the House Armed
Services Committee. “If you are not on the front lines doing what is the main purpose of your existence,
then you won’t be viewed as someone who can command.”
Military women said they were encouraged by the words of Representative John M. McHugh, the nominee
for Army secretary, who just four years ago supported a failed push in Congress to restrict the role of women
in combat zones. At his Senate hearing in July, Mr. McHugh, Republican of New York, sought to allay concern.
“Women in uniform today are not just invaluable,” he said, “they’re irreplaceable.” He added that he would
look to expand the number of jobs available to them. In Mr. Baumann’s view, the reality on the ground long
ago outpaced the debate.
“We have crossed that line in Iraq,” he said. “Debate it all you want folks, but the military is going to do what
the military needs to do. And they are needing to put women in combat.”