Realities vs. policy: Women face growing combat roles in Iraq

"The Army has to understand the regulation that says women can't be placed in direct-fire situations is archaic and not attainable," said Lt. Col. Cheri Provancha, commander of a Stryker Brigade support battalion in Mosul, who decided to bend Army rules and allow Guay to serve as a medic for an infantry company of the 82nd Airborne. [. . .]

"This war has proven that we need to revisit the policy, because they are out there doing it," said Provancha, a 21-year Army veteran from San Diego.

Dozens of soldiers interviewed across Iraq — male and female, from lower enlisted ranks to senior officers — voiced frustration over restrictions on women mandated in Washington that they say make no sense in the war they are fighting. All said the policy should be changed to allow, at a minimum, mixed-sex support units to be assigned to combat battalions. [. . .]

"We live and work with the infantry," said Maj. Mary Prophit, 42, who heads a four-person civil-affairs team with a Stryker battalion in Mosul. An Army reservist and librarian from Glenoma, Lewis County, Wash., Prophit handles security duties from the hatch of a Stryker armored vehicle, watching houses during searches and returning fire when shot at. "Civil-affairs teams have to be prepared to perform infantry functions, because at any time we could be diverted," she said.

In January, Prophit was delivering kerosene heaters to a Mosul school when insurgents detonated a roadside bomb as her convoy passed, fatally wounding three Iraqi soldiers. Prophit moved to shield the medic treating the wounded, firing at insurgents who were shooting at them from a mosque across the street. "Women in combat is no longer an argument," she said matter-of-factly at her camp near the Mosul air field. "There is no rear area."

I was quoted by Ann Scott Tyson in her May 13 front-page article "For Female GIs, Combat Is a Fact."

I told The Post's reporter that the issue is no longer whether women should be in combat, because we are in combat. The delineation between the front lines and the rear areas has disappeared. But while some women have the physical and mental strength to serve in combat, myself included, that is a far cry from being an infantryman. Being in an in fantry unit means being part of a close team and being prepared to live in all sorts of conditions and perform all sorts of missions, many of which are unpleasant.

Our living conditions in Iraq are quite nice, and people might get the impression that men and women can serve together in close conditions such as the infantry requires. We can work side by side, absolutely. I have been doing that for eight months now as one of three women in a task force of about 700 soldiers. However, an infantry squad must be able to focus on the task at hand and having men and women within that cohesive unit would cause distraction.

I am the team chief of a direct-support civil affairs unit attached to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment. I love working with the infantry, and I feel I have the best job over here.

And, by the way, I am 40, not 42, as the article reported.

MAJ. MARY PROPHIT Mosul, Iraq www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/21/AR2005052100525.html

I appreciate all you do. In the last few years I've met some wonderful female soldiers -- it's been a real good experience.

I'm new to Civil Affairs and I haven't yet had my first CA deployment (not for lack of trying). When the time comes, I'll be happy to deploy with the all the soldiers I've met -- male and female.

Women in combat is facing its trail by combat. This is something you can't fake. And women have never been so intricately engaged on the frontline of the U.S. military before. While proponents are hailing it as a fait accompli, I think the actual results have actually lost ground in the quest to official sanction. I see the first signs of the tide having turned on the issue. My favorite anecdote was the soldier who called home to her mother to get a lawyer because
her company had refused to go on a supply mission.

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