On 20 November 1943, during the horrific fighting on Betio atoll during the battle of Tarawa, two Japanese tanks mounted a counterattack against the fragile Marine toehold on Red Beach 3. The Marines were huddled there at the base of a seawall in the face of withering fire from Admiral Keiji Shibasaki’s fanatical Japanese Naval Landing Force defenders who were slaughtering hundreds of their 2nd Marine Division comrades in Betio Lagoon during 76 hours of some of the most savage fighting in the history not only of the Marines, but the US armed forces.
Marine anti-tank gun crews were trying to figure out how to get their 912 lb 37MM M3 antitank guns over the 7 foot plus seawall. The battery commander ordered his 5 man crews to LIFT them over. Being Marines who always obeyed even seemingly impossible orders, they did EXACTLY that and promptly knocked out the tanks. They then engaged several enemy bunkers whose dual purpose guns were repeatedly knocking out the approaching landing craft and put them out of action. Finally they routed a local counter attack of 200 or so Japanese against the south shore of Red Beach 3 with canister shot, all of this at a critical and precarious point in the landing.
As a matter of POLICY, I think that MOST (not all) women should be excluded from the armed forces for the most part, with a few exceptions and COMPLETELY from combat and most combat support roles, particularly when the armed forces are a small percentage of the total population, as is the case now.
I mean no disrespect` to women members of the armed forces who have served their country honorably and well. I respect them as veterans and comrades in arms. Policy decisions are above their level for the most part.
The use of significant numbers of women should be reserved for large scale mobilization as was the case in WWII. Despite the fact that the US had over 16 million personnel in uniform, and that over 400.000 members of the Armed Forces died in the line of duty, against what was probably the most formidable battlefield enemies that the US has ever fought, who regularly inflicted defeats upon our forces for much of the war NO ONE seriously considered putting women into combat units, even when the need to replace the staggering number of infantry casualties in NW Europe forced the experimentation with racially mixed infantry platoons. The population base is more than twice as large now as then and there would be no problem securing a sufficient number of qualified men with appropriate incentives for such a relatively small armed forces as we have today.
Even the WW II Soviet example must also consider the 8 MILLION Soviet military dead, and even then the women at the front were largely circumscribed to medical personnel, select few aviation units and anti aircraft artillery. Infantry assault units were all but non existent.
The advantages for the armed forces, particularly the Army would be greater flexibility as to how personnel can be deployed in combat emergencies and other contingincies and a lesser logistical strain as involves clothing, barracks and housing, and innumerable other considerations that are exclusive to the maintenence of large numbers of women. I think morale and discipline would also be improved as well.
I have noticed the frequent references to carrying a wounded comrade off the battlefield under fire and at a dead run. That is a vital function of upper body (and lower body) strength and power. But the need for that strength manifests itself in other more routine ways as well. Such as clearing stoppages in automatic weapons, particularly when the cartridge case is even more stubbornly wedged in the chamber by fouling, corrosion from battlefield conditions, heat from continued sustained fire and innumerable other reasons. I recall having to use two hands to clear a stoppage on a Browning M2 MG in a firefight and I weighed 185 lbs and could do 25 proper pullups.. Packing up the heavy equipment during a forced rapid advance or retrograde movement when time is critical may also hinge on strength and endurance. Passing artillery ammo and powder charges, breaking and replacing track on armored vehicles, changing tires, opening crates, unloading vehicles, digging into defensive positions, and so on and so on. I regularly saw women in the National Guard who couldn’t perform most or any of these tasks or did so at an unacceptably slow pace.
Most of the men in my mech infantry unit in Vietnam had to perform what is an exhausting series of tasks when healthy. They often did these same tasks when weakened by diahrrea, dysentery, malaria and a host of other ailments. So whatever strength they had when well was degraded by their various illness(s). So if you have large numbers of people who barely meet the standard when healthy, imagine their performance when degraded by sickness. This happened to the soldiers of Merrill’s Marauders in the Burma campaign of WW II, but initially they had all been picked men, at or near the top of the Army physical standards and combat vets to boot. Even so they were utterly wasted by their arduous campaign at the end of it.
This apparent imperative to place large percentages of women in the Armed Forces is completely unnecessary and impelled by reasons other than those that deal with combat efficiency.. It will not be long before sex/sexual orientation, and gender commissars are appointed at unit level.
The courts have repeatedly ruled that the armed forces are exempted from many of the equal opportunity requirements of the civillian world, and for the very good and sufficient requirements that are unique to the armed forces. This contretemps is being propelled largely by the cultural marxist wing of gender equity feminism who wish for the placement of a leftist Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The resultant detriment of the ability of the armed forces to fight plays no consideration in their calculus, other than as an peripheral side benefit.
I know that women have played a vital role during guerrilla, partisan warfare and sabatoge/espionage activity. But to deliberately employ them in ground combat units or other units whose primary task is to close with, engage and destroy similar enemy units is the height of lunacy and madness given the effort required to identify the relative few who could qualify even if we ignore the potential detriments to morale and discipline.
In fact Soviet military used females in every combat role, in segregated units mostly.
The results were atrocious, but for female personnel mostly, not the the Germans and Japanese.
In fact all the aspects of female deployment were researched well at the time. I don’t know why US government is implementing another communist practice which has proved to be a failure for communists themselves.
There were roles, there females proved on par or more capable than males, but there were really few roles like that.
By 1944 Soviets mostly employed women in air forces (ground attack) and air defences (aa-gunners).
Army used them predominately as medics and specops (as hunter-killer snipers).
Before that female marines were sinking in droves under weight of their equipment as they tried to get out of landing crafts, soldiers were shot in their backs running away from their positions screaming after a single mortar round falling and female tank crews weren’t fit enough to fix a tank track under fire.
Even a Soviet tolerance to a losses had it’s limits.
Ah, ok, good, you did post it in-thread, and not just send it out in FReepmail.
Excellent post. Should be developed into an op-ed for something like the Wall Street Journal.