‘I Went to War, Too:’ D.C. Women Soldiers Share Scars, Successes

By Taaq Kirksey
WI Contributing Writer
Thursday, April 24, 2008

  
U.S. Army Cpt. Yolanda Lee did not think she would see combat when she first signed on with the D.C. National Guard in 1993, two years after the Gulf War came to an end.
  
“I was always of the mindset that you only went to war every 20 years,” she said at a panel discussion Monday at the Rayburn House Office Building.

The discussion, sponsored by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), highlighted the contribution of women in the District’s National Guard troop, touching on an experience that some said has gone largely unexamined since the war in Iraq was launched five years ago.
   
“As vital as women are, we still don’t think of them as soldiers,” Norton said. “They have raised the quality of the armed services today.”
  
Lee, a transportation officer and Ward 8 resident, spent most of 2005 overseeing military convoys – favored targets by enemy combatants due to their high visibility – en route to hotspots such as Mosul, Fallujah and Tikrit. While in country, she said she encountered the full gamut of threats posed to American servicepeople, including suicide bombers, small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. She also lost a comrade to a roadside bomb.
 
 “It has made me more humble and more compassionate toward my fellow soldiers,” she said. “I hope to never go back, but if I have to go back, I will be ready.”
    
Army chaplain Cpt. Gladys Lanier spent 2004 in Iraq, having previously thought she would not see frontline combat duties as a woman.
  
“I didn’t think women would be in combat in the late ‘80s [when she joined,]” she said. To ready herself for deployment, she said she “embraced the idea of what the Army stood for.” 
  
Spc. Stephanie Wade, who works with a military drug enforcement program, summed up her concerns before her 2006 deployment with a blunt pragmatism. “Well, that’s what I signed up for. I had to get in that frame of mind,” she said.
  
 But as a mother of two – daughters MaKayla, 10, and Yasmeen, eight, sat anxiously in the front row – Wade said she had to prepare for more than combat. “Mommy’s going to go away for a while to make things better,” she said she told her children before deploying.
  
For Wade, the chance to enhance her family’s economic conditions justified the dangers of war. “My whole, entire family supported me going into the military to have a better life,” she said.
 
 “These women that surround me have taken a very brave chance,” said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Carol Holland, the forum’s moderator. She said women’s dual roles as soldiers and, often, the primary caregivers in their homes can be uniquely challenging. “The impact that they leave on their families can be double.”
  
 The panel talked about military life for women in Iraq, noting that while their gender was not an issue, instances of sexual harassment and assault have occurred between American female soldiers and American male troops and Iraqi police. Lanier suggested that the U.S. Army’s zero tolerance policies on sexual misconduct were doing more to protect women soldiers.
  
Wade said her experiences among the Iraqi people had been largely positive and that she enjoyed learning aspects of their culture and language. “You give the same respect that you want,” she said.
  
The inclusion of women into the nation’s military has been gradual. The Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 barred women from serving in combat positions in the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The Army was exempt from the legislation, but followed a similar course.
  
Legislation in the early 1990s saw much of these restrictions repealed, with women allowed to serve as Navy and Air Force combat pilots and on most naval vessels. Specialized assignments, such as in the Army’s Special Forces branch or the Navy’s SEAL teams, are still off-limits to women.
    
Women are also barred from serving on submarines and in combat infantry or artillery units, but can serve as military security officers, sometimes working with male infantry units. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women made up 15 percent of armed forces troops in 2004 while nearly two million American women were veterans.
    
While there has been continued debate regarding the physical capabilities of women soldiers in relation to their male counterparts, Lanier stressed, “[American servicewomen are] prepared to do the same jobs as men.”
   
Along with performing the same tasks, the panelists said women soldiers undergo the same wartime stresses as men, with posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] affecting U.S. troops regardless of gender. As a group, they said mental health services for returning soldiers are vital and the need for assistance should not be negatively scrutinized.
  
“You shouldn’t be labeled when you go out and seek [psychological treatment] for fear of social stigmas or damaging future employment prospects,” Lee said.
   
Lanier said that while professional athletes are often revered for their tenacity in overcoming physical injuries, living with emotional scars is “just business as usual” for many American troops who never recover from their experiences.
   
“How do I close this door and go back into the civilian world?” she asked. Lee suggested that the U.S. Congress could help maintain troop morale by keeping deployments to 12 months, rather than keeping troops in country for extended periods.
  
“A year is a long and hard time to be away from your family,” she said.
  
 All the panelists expressed pride in their work as soldiers, with Wade saying that service to the country is “what I’m here for.”  
   
Lanier echoed this, referring to her service as “a calling.” However, she lamented that women soldiers are yet to receive the same recognition as men in the theater of war.
  
“I think society is pretty much blind to the fact that women are serving,” she said. “But I went to war, too.”