Dick and Jane in Basic Training

By Jane O'Reilly

The trials, and errors, of an integrated Army

One cold April dawn in 1979, the new, integrated Army arrived at Fort McClellan, Ala. The jittery recruits of Alpha Company, 87 men and 76 women mostly between the ages of 18 and 22, stepped off the ramshackle buses and began basic training together. They shared barracks (on alternate floors), mess halls and bivouacs, and a few occasionally made clandestine love in the laundry room or the latrines. When the six weeks of marching, spitting, polishing, obstacle coursing and weapons training were over, and the tears, exhaustion, pride and exhilaration forgotten, Writer Helen Rogan asked their commanding officer, a woman, what differences she had noted between the men and women. Said she: "The men overloaded the washing machines because they didn't know how to use them."

As Rogan points out in her groundbreaking new book Mixed Company:

Women in the Modern Army (Putnam; $14.95), the answer was not entirely accurate. The women's physical standard was slightly different, mainly because men are generally larger and possess greater upper-body strength. Some women with small hands had trouble negotiating the hand-guards of the M-16 rifle, others with short legs could not keep up with the standard 30-in. marching step. The women were required to do fewer push-ups and sit-ups than the men (16 push-ups and 27 sit-ups for the women, 40 of each for the men), and were allowed a little over 22 minutes, instead of just under 18, for running two miles. According to Rogan, who watched the full cycle of basic: "Some men and women couldn't run; some men cried and were scared. The most important differences were between people when it came to training soldiers." For the most part, she concludes, the success of either sex depended on how well the drill sergeants dealt with those individual differences.

The U.S. has more than 67,000 women in its active Army, 8.9% of the total.

The women were recruited as a result of national policy, partly in the belief that they might upgrade the declining quality of the all-volunteer force. At enlisted level many of them are, in fact, better educated and motivated than their male counterparts. But they march on the quaking ground of social change, resisted, harassed, endlessly studied with the concentration scientists might devote to a baffling new virus.

The very subject of women in the military stirs deep emotions and prejudices.

Wherever women soldiers are involved, they tend to be seen as "the problem," and rarely are they asked for their own solutions. Rogan above all listens--to the veterans of the now disbanded Women's Army Corps, to the officers and raw recruits, to the new West Point cadets. She is the first person to report on the experiences of women in the Army, and her book is a touching, though often dispiriting account of personal changes and dashed hopes as men and women are processed into soldiers.

"You have to laugh, or else you'd cry," says a recruit named Elizabeth on the first day of training. The women are issued boots cut so badly that many get stress fractures and muscle spasms. One week they are ordered to tuck in their blouses to look like the males. The next week they are ordered not to, to avoid attracting male attention. Blamed as a group for the failure of any one of them, most still show a stubborn patriotic pride.

Women often do better at riflery than men because they listen to instruction while men tend to think they know it all. A veteran male drill sergeant, proud of his work with female recruits, tells Rogan:

"Today's women won't find anything that hard to adjust to in the military. It's the males--you're talking about reconditioning the human male to accept a woman as a wife and mother and at the same time as a fighting partner."

Most of the current arguments, says Rogan, center on physical strength and its importance in soldiering. But, she points out, women are growing up stronger because of school sports programs under Title IX. Even if most women cannot do as many chin-ups or run as far as fast as most men, can they still make capable modern soldiers? Regan's answer, which the book mainly bears out, is yes.

Mixed Company suggests that much of the harassment women get in the Army, especially the women cadets at West Point, is due to the Army's own confusion about changing ideas of male identity. Women officer candidates are poor at pushups, but they prove outstanding on human flexibility, concern for the well-being of their troops and the team work essential to an all-volunteer Army.

"In the Army, atti tudes are fact," Rogan writes. If the attitude is that women are a hindrance to standards, then they tend to be treated accordingly. But one female officer snaps: "Discrimination is unprofessional." Whether or not women are discriminated against, she adds, depends on the caliber of leadership at any particular base. In integrating the sexes militarily, the crucial factor seems to be numbers. Rogan concludes, "Wherever there are women, there must be enough women."

Keeping the women the Army already has is a problem. Many leave because of pregnancy (about 8% a year get pregnant). The solutions, Rogan believes, are child care and better provisions for pregnancy leave. Furthermore, Rogan says, the high attrition rate for all women could be sharply reduced if they were taken seriously, properly used and not harassed so much.

As she notes of female West Point cadets:

"Occasionally people would say scornfully to them, 'If you can't stand up to this, what will you do in combat?' The difference was that in combat they would not have expected to be tortured by their own side. " At the moment, the Administration has put a "pause" on increasing the number of women in the Army, while yet an other review board is preparing yet another assessment of the women's role. The idea of females in uniform was new even to Rogan, 35, who was born in Edinburgh and educated at Cambridge University before coming to the U.S. "My idea of a soldier was always a man. It was startling to see women, especially in command over men. And startling to see how quickly it seemed natural." Rogan believes that arguments about women's participation in the Army are now academic. "Women want to serve, and the Army needs the women's contribution if it is to become truly representative of the country it must defend." But the issue may very well depend on whether the volunteer force continues, or the country goes back to the draft.

--By Jane O'Reilly

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