Female troops face new dangers in Iraq
By Lisa Horn, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, May 30, 2004
Each year, Memorial Day pays tribute to those who have died in America’s battles. This year, memorial wreaths will be placed on more female warriors’ graves than ever before.
Since the Iraq war began in March 2003, more women have died serving in Iraq than in any other war in American history. As of May 28, 20 female soldiers have died in Iraq, 13 by enemy fire. In Desert Storm, 15 women lost their lives, five to hostile fire.Like their male counterparts, women join the military for a variety of reasons beyond patriotism: to earn money for college, to become proficient in a skill, to see the world or simply to challenge themselves.
“I needed a change,” said Sgt. Tammy Joseph, a hairdresser and reservist before she joined the Army full time. She’s now a truck driver for the 68th Transportation Company in Mannheim, Germany.
“I have learned a lot about myself,” said Pfc. Jena Clifford, another “Eagle Express” driver, who smiled when she mentioned that her father was a Marine. “Coming into the military, you learn so much more about yourself than you would if you went to college.”
Pfc. Rachel Bosveld, the only female soldier based in the European theater killed in Iraq to date, also chose to follow in her father’s boot steps. A member of the 527th Military Police Company from Giessen, Germany, Bosveld was killed Oct. 26, during a mortar attack on a Baghdad police station.
“She was my little girl,” said Marvin Bosveld, Rachel’s father, during a phone interview from Waupun, Wis. “I was in the Army, her brother was in the Army so she had the Army background. I raised my kids to be very independent and take care of themselves.”
From the Revolutionary War’s Molly Pitcher to the heroines of Operation Iraqi Freedom, women have served — and some have died — in virtually every conflict in U.S. history. However, it wasn’t until 1948 that Congress allowed women to become full-fledged members of every service branch.
Today, women can serve in practically any unit, anywhere. According to Defense Department statistics, women serve in 91.2 percent of all Army occupations and, unlike in Vietnam, all female soldiers are trained to use weapons.
Some career fields, however, are still closed to women.
Women cannot serve in battalion size or smaller units of infantry, armor, cannon field artillery, multiple launch rocket artillery and Special Forces.
They may not fly special operations helicopters, perform organizational mechanized maintenance in maneuver battalions, be assigned to forward area air defense artillery, combat engineer line companies or ground surveillance radar platoons.
“The Department of Defense likes to differentiate between combat, combat service and combat service support,” said 1st Lt. Jenny Pittam, executive officer for the 68th. “But in reality, we’re all out there just as much.”
Regardless of job or gender, the guerrilla nature of the Iraq war has made every servicemember a target, said Pittam, who along with Joseph and Clifford, deployed to Iraq from April to October last year.
“To be in combat service support doesn’t really mean much anymore,” she said. “You’re still there with the front-line soldiers.”
Such was the case for Spc. Frances Vega, an administrative specialist; Sgt. Melissa Valles, an automated logistical specialist; and Sgt. Keicia Hines, a unit supply specialist. They all died in Iraq doing jobs that would have normally put them far from the enemy.
“The lines are blurred now,” Pittam said. “It’s not a matter of engaging, it’s a matter of defending.”
Spc. Brie Kotula, a light-wheeled mechanic with Babenhausen’s 77th Maintenance Company checked cars and searched suspicious women during her eight-month deployment last year.
“At first it was really scary,” said Kotula, who compares her job of maintaining vehicles to a Jiffy Lube mechanic. “We didn’t have any prior training for this, and we didn’t really know what to do.”
Military police assisted Kotula’s unit at the beginning, “but after they moved, it was kind of like, ‘We’re alone, we’re out here,’ ” she paused. “It’s just you and the person you were working with at one guard station.”
So have the deaths of female servicemembers caused a public outcry? Not necessarily, according to Dr. Charles Moskos, a military sociologist and professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
“Americans seem to prefer somebody else’s daughter dying rather than their own sons,” Moskos said. “Surprisingly, there has been no outcry, no reaction. I think part of it is because the women who are dying are generally working class women and they’re not the daughters of prominent Americans.
“There was more attention given to Pat Tillman than there were to the women [killed], right?” he asked, referring to the publicity surrounding the death of Tillman, a former professional football player who died fighting in Afghanistan.
Though there appears to be a wider acceptance of female servicemembers working jobs that were once reserved for men only, female soldiers interviewed, however, said that they still have to prove their mettle to the males. And they don’t have any qualms about it.
“It’s a day-to-day struggle to basically put my foot down and say, ‘I can do this, I am just as good as you,’ ” Kotula said.
Rachel Bosveld’s sister-in-law, 2nd Lt. Marylou Bosveld, an MP with the Wisconsin Army National Guard, hopes to pick up where Rachel left off.
“I think she’s going to volunteer to go,” Marvin Bosveld said. “I just think that’s her nature. Right after Rachel was killed she said, ‘I’m going to go over there to pick up her weapon and continue on.’ ”
