WOMEN SOLDIERS DESCRIBE WHAT IT IS LIKE TO LIVE AND FIGHT ALONGSIDE MEN IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

Women at Arms

Living and Fighting Alongside Men, and Fitting In

By STEVEN LEE MYERS
THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/us/17women.html
Be sure to click on this link and then watch the video of two young females from the U.S. Army describe how they deal with the men in their combat unit in Iraq.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE WARHORSE, Iraq — There is no mistaking that this dusty, gravel-strewn camp northeast of Baghdad is anything other than a combat outpost in a still-hostile land. And there is no mistaking that women in uniform have had a transformative effect on it.

They have their own quarters, boxy trailers called CHUs (the military’s acronym for containerized housing units, pronounced “chews”).

There are women’s bathrooms and showers, alongside the men’s. Married couples live together.

The base’s clinic treats gynecological problems and has, alongside the equipment needed to treat the trauma of modern warfare, an ultrasound machine.

Opponents of integrating women in combat zones long feared that sex would mean the end of American military prowess. But now birth control is available — the PX at Warhorse even sold out of condoms one day recently — reflecting a widely accepted reality that soldiers have sex at outposts across Iraq.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first in which tens of thousands of American military women have lived, worked and fought with men for prolonged periods. Wars without front lines, they have done more than just muddle the rules meant to keep women out of direct enemy contact.

They have changed the way the United States military goes to war. They have reshaped life on bases across Iraq and Afghanistan. They have cultivated a new generation of women with a warrior’s ethos — and combat experience — that for millennia was almost exclusively the preserve of men.

And they have done so without the disruption of discipline and unit cohesion that some feared would unfold at places like Warhorse.

“There was a lot of debate over where women should be,” said Brig. Gen. Heidi V. Brown, one of the two highest ranking women in Iraq today, recalling the start of the war. “Here we are six years later, and you don’t hear about it. You shouldn’t hear about it.”

Read full story here and watch video of two females from the U.S. Army describe how they deal with the men in their combat unit: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/us/17women.html