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Thursday, December 02, 2004

Women in Iraq 
A reader writes in:

Two suggestions for topics - both about the Fallujah op - I haven't seen covered in browsing the milblogs, and it'd be neat if you would.

1. The role/contribution of female soldiers and Marines, presumably CS and CSS types, in the battle.

2. A related and a more personal question. It takes more than 11- and 19-series to outfit a fighting unit. As a former 96B, S2 type, I'd like to read about the role/contribution of HHC-HQ types in Fallujah, particularly non-combat arms soldiers like 96Bs.



Well, understand I'm not really 'plugged in' to the Fallujah insiders. I'd refer readers to The Green Side for that. But I can speak a bit about women in Iraq.

The role of women on the battlefield in the US military is commonly misunderstood by the lay person.

It is true that women are not assigned billets in combat arms MOS's, except for aviation. And they are not formally assigned to line infantry, armor, or combat engineer units at echelons below the battalion level.

But they are certainly present in the support battalions. Women have been performing some of the most dangerous jobs in Iraq: from driving fuel trucks to going out and defusing or destroying roadside bombs as part of an Expert Ordnance Disposal team.

In Fallujah, they would have been extraordinarily busy, with their lives on the line constantly. Even in Ramadi, it wasn't unusual to have EOD teams out several times a day, and sometimes there was a two-hour waiting list to get an EOD team out to your sector to blow an IED. (Out in the desert you could use a 50 cal machine gun from a distance to blow most obvious IEDs. But in populated areas you had to be a little more restrained.)

Moreover, these supporting MOSs are routinely attached in direct support of a combat unit, in combat. For example, my own battalion at various times had a tactical intelligence team with Arab linguists - including some women - which would even accompany our raiding element on special occasions.

We had a Wisconsin National Guard platoon of mobile bridge team boat crews attached to us, too. There were no bridges to build. So they spent most of their time conducting several security patrols a day along the Euphrates River... sometimes dropping people off or picking people up at the 82nd Division Headquarters. I think about a third of that platoon were women. They seemed really young to me, too.

Two members of that company were killed by an IED near Habbaniyah, in February. Those two were men. I was the battle captain that day. I got word, and I had to break the news to their platoon sergeant, who also happened to be a woman. Everyone was pretty shaken by that. Guard companies are tight-knit groups, and these people grew up together.

We also had a civil affairs unit attached to our battalion for most of that time. I think they had about eight soldiers. Two or three of them were women. Their job was to go down to the university, or to mosques and community centers and conduct opinion surveys, conference with Iraqi community leaders, administrate and supervise reconstruction and remodeling projects. They were out on the streets almost every day in frighteningly small elements. Often just two vehicles with six to ten people, hanging out on the Ramadi University campus.

They had possibly the most dangerous job in country, apart from perhaps the EOD teams.

We also had two different units of truck drivers with us, each of which had several women. They took many of the same risks as the men, and most of our wounded we actually took out on the road.

The Hurricane Battalion actually took one young woman wounded, early in our tenure there: Pfc Sarah Mitchell was supporting Alpha Company on a night raid when the element came under grenade and small arms fire in June or July of 2003, in Ramadi. She took a few small fragments in the arm and hand, and possibly suffered a broken hand. She emptied her magazine out the window and drove away with her passengers.

8 other soldiers were wounded in that incident, including the Alpha Company commander.

Normally, women aren't crashing down doors in raids.

Normally.

But it wasn't long before we realized that we NEEDED women along on these house raids, in order to search women. The Iraqis didn't appreciate men searching through women's underwear drawers. And it was causing a lot of PR problems. And so Team Tigress was born.

Team Tigress was a group of women from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment who would bash into the house along with everyone else, and who would deal with the Iraqi women and children.

Things got easier after that, and they actually got some information we otherwise might not have received, because it's just not done for men to talk to married Iraqi women. Maybe Baghdad was more modern, but Ramadi was still, in many ways, an old fashioned tribal town, and the old ways were still practiced.

Some of the Iraqis figured the Team Tigress women must be whores. Because they wore trousers, you see, and only men and whores wear trousers in Iraq. But the Team Tigress girls were a big hit among some of the younger Iraqi women - wow - these women are strong and confident and some of them even have authority over men!!!

Kind of a new thing in Ramadi, where in over a year, I think I only saw one Iraqi woman actually driving a car.

We also even had an ambulance driver attached to us for a long while.

There was no segregation between sexes, really. Women and men lived alongside one another and worked together, and I don't remember a single problem (though I heard one or two rumors of a sexual relationship between two junior soldiers in another company, but you can't believe everything you here.)

U.S. Servicewomen in Iraq serve honorably and well, and share all the risks right along with the men. And clearly, many women are taking more than their fair share of the risks. But they come with the job.

Their troop quality was excellent, though not uniformly so. In my own limited experience, my sense is that our women soldiers fall along a wider quality continuum than the guys - with more than a random sampling at the very top and very bottom of the quality curves, in terms of soldier/MOS knowledge and general attitude/professionalism.

The standard deviation of troop quality seems to be higher with women for some reason, organized on a flatter curve. Other peoples' mileage may vary, though. I might be bringing biases of my own to the table. And I think the supporting my unit tended to be younger than the guys, and more junior in rank, so that had something to do with it, too.

But I'm thankful to have known every one of them, and I wouldn't have traded them for anything in the world.

And SSG E, if you should read this, I thought you were a total class act as an NCO. Virginia C., you were an unforgettable experience to get to know, and thanks for those New Yorker Magazines.

Lt. O, you had more crushes on you than I can count, and the other guys were so jealous that I got to see you every couple of days to hand prisoners over to you.

Sergeant W with the 94th MP, thanks for the laughs, for your patience with my Detainee paperwork at one in the morning, and for the acadamy award performances. (I'll mention one of those, maybe, in another post.)

Splash, out

Jason








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