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1. Soldiering: The Enemy Doesn't Care If You're Female
- Temple University Press
- Chapter
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Rhonda Cornum I Soldiering: The Enemy Doesn't Care If You're Female Should women be in the military? Should they be in combat? I must have been asked about these issues a thousand times since I was shot down in Iraq during the Gulf War. I don't think people think it's so remarkable that I've been in the Army, but do people really believe that being shot down in a helicopter and spending a week in prison makes you an expert on social /military issues? That seems pretty unreasonable to me. I think I do have an important point of view about such issues, but I believe my view is valuable because it is based on my experience of (at the time I was shot down) thirteen years in the military and six and a half months of being deployed. Being captured does, though, give one a certain amount of credibility. Still, when I'm asked what I think about women in the military, my opinion is based on my extended experience, not on stereotypes, not on philosophy, not on prejudice, and not on a one-week experience as a prisoner of war. I was an unlikely person to join the military. I was a product of the late I960s and I970s-as my teenage daughter says, of "the hippie days." I was a graduate student in nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University and within a year or so of getting my Ph.D. when I gave a talk at a national meeting and a lieutenant colonel in the Army came up to me afterward and asked if! had a job when I graduated. He turned out to be the director of a research division at the Letterman Research Institute in San Francisco and was interested in hiring someone to do research on amino acid metabolism. There was one hitch. He said, "You have to be in the Army." Well, that was inCopyrighted Material 4 Rhonda Comum teresting. I'd never met anybody in the Army before. During high school I had never even met someone who was planning to join the Army. In college I was at least aware that there were people in the Army---Cornell had an ROTC contingent, but I had never met anyone who belonged to it. I didn 't say "No thanks," because I've always been willing to think about new activities, but I had had no experience at all with people in the Army and certainly none with Army people who did biochemical research. One thing I learned about being commissioned in the Medical Service Corps was that I would make a lot more money than I would as an assistant profes~ sor or postdoctoral fellow. I also learned I would have a beautifully equipped research lab and an equally beautiful view ofSan Francisco Bay from the third floor of the Letterman Institute. You add to that package having no teaching responsibilities-an opportunity to do only research-and I was sold. I was commissioned in the Army Medical Service Corps and went off to officer basic training in San Antonio, Texas, in the summer of 1978. Officer basic was not exactly what the lieutenant colonel had told me it would be. Most of the other students were second lieutenants 'who had just graduated from college or from Officer Candidate School and who were going to be leaders of medical platoons. They were going to be in the real Army, not the medical research institute version of the Army. While I was attending this summer indoctrination course, I discovered that I really liked it. I liked running in formation. I liked doing things as a group. The Army sort of took on the feeling offamily. Going to the field and accomplishing things as part of a squad was a new experience for me. I had been very competitive my entire life, but I had always done things as an individual. I showed dogs-you do that by yourself. I showed horses-you do that by yourself. I didn't participate in any organized team sports when I was in high school or college. And doing biochemical research involved pitting your brain against a problem. First you had to find the problem; then you had to find a way to solve it; finally you had to find the solution. This was not really a group experience either. For whatever reason, when I joined the Army I found I was ready...