Personally I wish nobody ever had to go to war. But reality is, it happens. And American women have been on the field of battle since the early days of this country. Be they the frontier woman fighting off savages (no PC here, they were savages), the women in the revolution who helped tend wounded, the women who did the same in the War against Southern Rebellion, the women who went to France in 1917, and so on....
In World War II they were allowed to take on other roles, some ferrying brand new planes with no guns (because women couldn't fly an armed plane) to England. More than a score of these women died, some in the cold of the North Atlantic when a new engine with a problem failed, some to Nazi guns when they got to England, short on fuel and no place to go but try to land through an attack. They served as nurses in the jungles of the South Pacific and some endured the Bataan death march - and many died.
They served in many roles in Korea - Mash's depiction of that is good but it is a picnic compared to reality. The Communists targeted Mash units at times with mortars and heavy artillery. Some time ask one of the surviving nurses what happened when one of them hit near a person. Many lost arms, legs, lives. Mortar rounds are nasty, you only know where they are going to hit AFTER the hit. And the Chinese Communist plumbers were very good. Unfortunately for the American plumbers (the name for the tube men) needed three shots to find them and four rounds were launched before they were stopped.
Then there was Viet Nam... More of the same.
And finally there was Sadaam. And in the rear echelon were many women. Let’s face it, today there is no rear echelon. A group from Western PA died in Gulf War 1 when a Scud hit their barracks . For those of you who don’t know and have doubts what Sadaam had, SCUD = WMD.
Let me say this in closing... American women have not had the opportunities to be in some of the battles men have served in but where they have served we have no reason to believe they would not carry on in the finest tradition of any male American unit. Till we have such evidence we need to treat them with the respect due the uniform they wear.
