Posted on 05/26/2007 10:13:09 AM PDT by AlbertoMG
Deep and thoughtful.
That way women could get pretty much the same training available to them now and make rank without the perceived need to fill a combat slot.
Females are about 16% of the total force but only about 2% of the casualties in theater so I don't think my plan would hurt combat effectiveness (in fact I think it would enhance it), but I know it will never happen in the current political environment.
Probably right. Also, women are part of the military at all levels in all fields except the combat arms. They are commanding officers up to and including the brigade level, and they are an integral part of the NCO corps in CS and CSS units.
That's true, but to a lesser extent than male soldiers as females have a higher rate of attrition in their first enlistment than do males and, generally speaking, a lower overall reenlistment rate (if you look at the links I have to FR articles in my favorites you will see that this is one of my "pet" issues). Those who are in leadership roles now would be the leaders in a new auxilliary. Anyway, I know it isn't going to happen, but I wish this is what would have been proposed in the early 1970s when the gender integration of the force began in earnest.
Yea, I was just a grunt humping a 60 lb pack sleeping in a hole in the ground 50% of the time and getting shot at up close and personal, so what do I know about combat...
Meadow Muffin
I suppose there's an overwhelming number of cultures since the begining of mankind, that sent their women off to war with their men to disprove my point?
Or are men bigger than women on average because prehistoric men liked to play basketball?
Back to WWI :
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World War I
Women served in the Russian armed forces in small numbers in the early stages of the war, but their numbers increased after heavy Russian losses such as at the Battle of Tannenburg and Masurian Lakes and a need for increased manpower. One such recruit was Maria Bochkareva who was serving with the 25th Reserve Battalion of the Russian Army. After the abdication of Nicholas II of Russia in March 1917, she convinced interim prime minister Alexander Kerensky to let her form a women’s battalion. The Women’s Battalion of Death recruited women between the ages of 13 and 25 and appealed for support in a series of public meetings, enlisting approximately 2,000 soldiers. The Battalion fought during the June Offensive against German forces in 1917. Three months of fighting dwindled their numbers to around two-hundred and fifty.
The Women’s Battalion was disbanded after a failed political revolution known as the Kornilov Affair. Its leader, General Lavr Kornilov, had been strongly supported by Bachkarova, and the Women’s Battalion were identified as potential sympathizers. The majority of the battalion’s members were reformed as the First Petrograd Women’s Battalion. This group was at the Winter Palace on the night of the Bolshevik Revolution, along with an untrained cadet detachment and a bicycle regiment. They mounted a stiff resistance but ultimately fell, although there were only 5 deaths in the storming of the Winter Palace. The triumphant Bolsheviks officially disbanded the group.
Several women pilots are known from the First World War. Princess Eugenie M. Shakovskaya was assigned duty as an artillery and reconnaissance pilot, having volunteered for the Imperial Russian Air Service in 1914 (one of the world’s first female military aviators) and flew missions with the 26th Corps Air Squadron in 1917 for nine months. Because of her connections to the Imperial family she was demobilized after the October Revolution. Lyubov A. Golanchikova was a test pilot, contributed her airplane to the Czarist armies; Helen P. Samsonova was assigned to the 5th Corps Air Squadron as a reconnaissance pilot. And in 1915, Nedeshda Degtereva had the distinction of being the first woman pilot to be wounded in combat while on a reconnaissance mission over the Austrian front in Galicia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
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I can’t remember reading much about women in war before WWI,
Russia again,,,before that ??
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1840401/posts
and what happens to the kids ??,,,very sad...
I expect that it takes as many as it takes to move a litter. In reality, the more the better.
I was just playing off your words. No offense intended.
True, I was not humping a ruck or sleeping under triple canopy, but I was out there much of the rest of the time.
Welcome home, brother.
You speak as a veteran. I speak as a historian - and we both agree.
This isn’t about increasing our military capabilities - its about making an idiotic political statement.
Your “in other words” sound pretty ignorant.
There is some wisdom in there somewhere. There may well be a reason why that was never tested.
Yes, and those units were all female. They also had all female artillery units.
MPs are deployed right and left, and are frequently involved in close quarters combat.
"Dr Ruth", before her career discussing sex on TV, was an Israeli sniper:
She decided to immigrate to the British Mandate of Palestine where she joined the Haganah in Jerusalem. Despite her diminutive height of 4 feet 7 inches, she was trained as a sniper. [2] Westheimer was seriously wounded in action by an exploding shell during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and it was several months before she was able to walk again.[3]
“The encroachments by the (women) on the offices proper for the (men) is a great derangement of the order of things.”
So are transportation companies and lots of other units that have females assigned. The fact remains-females are 16% of the total force, but only 2% of the casualties. I think this is a combination of several things; higher rates of nondeployability among females due to health issues (including pregnancy) and/or concious or unconcious efforts by the leadership to remove females from situations where they might be likely to be involved in combat. In over four years of fighting there are only a handful of examples of female valor in combat (and I do not mean to take anything away from those individuals), it seems to me to be pretty clear that the battlefield experience shows that females are ill-suited for direct combat.
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