Big Boys Don't Cry

--Letter to the Mother, N. But

These are great days we're living, bros.
We are jolly green giants, walking the earth with guns.
These people we wasted here today
are the finest human beings we will ever know.
After we rotate back into the world,
we're gonna miss not having anyone around
that's worth shooting,
--Full Metal Jacket (1987)

War don't ennoble men.
It turns them into dogs... poisons the soul
--The Thin Red Line (1998)

The very purpose of a knight
is to fight on behalf of a lady
--Thomas Malory
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Before addressing women in the military, look at this photo leading the article, "Marines Moving Women Towards the Front Lines":


Ranger will pass on the cheap shot about the right troopie's eye makeup, and the dainty way she is feeding rounds into a magazine. Nor will he question why the troopers are not feeding their magazines with 10-round stripper clips, as they would in real life ("You fight as you train, and vice versa.")

He will, however, point out that the recruits have live ammunition plus their weapons -- a safety violation. Live ammo, recruits and weapons should only be united on the firing line, securely controlled by safety personnel. Live ammo is only present when the Range officer orders the ammmo to the firing points, where they are then loaded. Remember the scene in the film "Full Metal Jacket"? Recruits and live ammo do not mix. (Also note: no "empty chamber devices" on the weapons.)

These small observations prompt questions about the Marine's Basic Rifle Marksmanship (BRM); who is running this range?

But to the story, where in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) do we have "front lines"? Since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan at D plus 30 days, there were none, and this is because what we are calling War is actually Low Intensity Conflict (LIC), with unconventional (UW) or guerrilla (GW) characteristics. There are no front lines in LIC, UW or GW. When troops are rat-holed in secure patrol bases, the concept of front lines is illusory.

Why the revelation of this new move to allow females into classic combat arms now? Is our Warrior Commander in Chief pushing the change to further estrange female voters from Mitt Romney in the next presidential election? Why would we want to push our women up to the front line? In Ranger's opinion, that would compromise the military's combat effectiveness.

Is the U.S. up against a shortage of military-eligible males? Isn't the U.S. the nation that put 11 million men in uniform almost 70 years ago?

"The Marine Corps also plans to collect data from female and male volunteers who will be asked to do three physically demanding tasks: carry a heavy machine gun, evacuate a casualty and do a 20-kilometer march carrying about 70 pounds. Marine officers said the data would not necessarily be used to formulate a new kind of physical fitness test, but to help senior commanders evaluate the relative strength thresholds of male and female Marines."

"The Army, which like the Marine Corps has excluded women from many jobs because of the physical demands or proximity to combat, is also studying ways to integrate women into ground combat units."

What is the point of the exercise? Why the light load (70 pounds)? In the early stages of the Afghan invasion, Marine Light Infantry grunts carried 100 lb+ combat loads on their backs. Why make this weight exception? Women's hip structure and more lax joints were not built for humping heavy loads (unless being paid well for such acts in the porn industry.)

Ranger has consistently opposed the use of women in maneuver units of any kind based upon his experience as Line Mechanized Infantry and Ranger/Special Forces Light Infantry, with assignments as a junior officer in all three types of units. There were times he was so hungry, exhausted and physically beaten down that he often wished he would get hurt just so he could bug out in a militarily acceptable manner. Though his experiences were miniscule compared to that of those at the freezing Bulge or Chosin, he can understand from whence the mentality of the self-inflicted wound.

A further question: Why is the United States Marine Corps -- the branch so opposed to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- now all-aboard for exposure of females to the rigors combat experience? Is this some sort of over-compensation? If fitness is a concern, a homosexual male would surely be more capable of carrying a heavy combat load than a female.

Additionally, there are physiological issues. When Ranger was a patient in the 24th Evac in 1970 RVN, there was an abundance of circumcisions being performed because the men were contracting epididymitis because of the filth and infections caused therefrom. Women would face their own new set of troubling equivalencies to "crotch rot", "jungle rot" and urinary problems. Do you want yourself or your female relations living in such filth and deprivation?

Survival for those on fire bases in the jungles of Vietnam was agony. It is bad enough that men must be so exposed -- why would we wish to put women through this degradation?

If Ranger is patronizing, he is so in full recognition of all that would come to bear upon the female involved in ground combat. Men fight for different reasons, but ideals are among them. Protecting one's nation also implies protecting one's wives, mothers, girlfriends, etc. If we watch them die beside us, we lose one major impetus for being there in the first place.

If a nation must use its woman as line soldiers then that nation has lost the war before the first round goes downrange.

Feel the Love

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We believe the Army made a mistake in its recent appointment of CSM Teresa L. King to the job of Commandant of its Drill Sergeant School at Ft. Jackson (First Woman Ascends to Top Drill Sergeant Spot):

"It may come as no surprise that the Army’s new top drill sergeant idolizes Gen. George S. Patton Jr., has jumped out of planes 33 times, aces every physical training test and drives a black Corvette with “noslack” vanity plates."

How does a sergeant -- or even a sergeant major -- become a commandant in any U.S. Army endeavor? When did sergeants gain the command authority to issue orders?

Commandant orders are not sergeant-level or doctrinal realities. Officers command, NCO's follow, except in today's Army that rule has been subverted. Even Warrant Officers are being given command authority, a misuse of the concept. Warrant Officers and NCO's are not officers.

King "says she regrets not having been deployed to a war zone during her 29-year Army career." It seems ridiculous to have a senior NCO who has never deployed to a combat zone -- let alone had combat duty -- be in charge of all the drill sergeants in training. Today, there are service members with as many as seven deployments, yet a slick sleeve gets the top job? This is a poor call for the chain to make.

Why would the Army want a non-combat arms type in charge of training all of our Drill Sergeants? When was the last time the CSM of the Army was not a combat veteran? Why should a non-combat arms female who never deployed be given this plum assignment without paying her combat dues, as did all of her male predecessors? The Army does not need a support type in a top command leadership position.

As if to justify King's choice in the face of her service weaknesses, she is described as both hard and soft, in an attempt to showcase what a woman might bring of especial import:

"Yet for all her gruffness, she can show surprising tenderness toward her charges. She describes her soldiers as “my children” and her approach to disciplining them as “tough love.” She wells up with emotion while describing how she once hugged a burly master sergeant whose wife had left him."

Pardon me, but if a man hugged a female soldier we would be crying sexual harassment. Yet when CSM King does it, it is seen as matronly and praiseworthy. Most soldiers would pass on the hugs, even from Momma Bear; that is not why we join the Army.

As an aside, the Times article on CSM King carries a misleading statistic regarding "gender integration" in the military:

"Just 8 percent of the active-duty Army’s highest-ranking enlisted soldiers — sergeants major and command sergeants major — are women, though more than 13 percent of Army personnel are female."

The figures are misleading because they do not consider the fact that not all slots/units have female soldiers. The actual percentage of women in high-ranking positions factoring out the above would reflect a different number, one more consistent with women's actual presence.

All things considered, this looks like a token appointment, and not one to the betterment of the service.


Tomorrow: More on CSM King and women's role in the Army

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We remember the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the "date which will live in infamy"