First Person: Women in combat? They already are

The Pentagon is lifting its ban on women officially serving in combat. Yahoo News asked female military veterans to react to the decision. Here's one perspective.

COMMENTARY | Women have been in combat roles for a long time. What is being done now is to recognize a long-accomplished fact. Complaints about this recognition betray the complainers as ill-informed or ungrateful to the women who have already taken the ultimate risk.

I served in the USCG in the 1970s, engaged in Cold War operations against the Soviets and eastern bloc fleets in the North Atlantic. I went to sea on a 210' medium endurance cutter engaged in ELT duties in the North Atlantic.

The USCG was engaged in direct contact with Soviet and eastern bloc fleets. We boarded and inspected their huge 500- to 600-foot factory-trawler spy ships. The USCG had men and women alike performing all duties.

I was a QM2 at the time and stood navigation and radar watches on the bridge. I served as a member of a boarding party that boarded a 600-foot gray and white rust-streaked Soviet factory-trawler spy ship.

Separating from the boarding party, I visited their bridge to inspect the wheelhouse and chart room. Alone with the enemy crew, unarmed, I located their spy shack and checked out their navigation gear.

Soviet ships had women on their crews, too. The Soviet women on the factory-trawler spy ship were assigned to crew a ship with a military mission. We took them seriously. The Soviets have a long history of women in combat. Some of their best snipers in WWII were women,

In the 1970s, the Navy publicly discussed crewing combat ships with women. We thought it was comical to see some Navy types raving on about how women were not able to fulfill this role since we already did it. Especially ironic was the fact we trained with the Navy and often bested them in USCG vs. USN war games.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/women-combat-already-164500941.html

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