Marine Corps Puts a Few Good Women to the Test

Marine Corps Puts a Few Good Women to the Test

Experimental Training Group Seeks to Answer Question: What’s the Future of Women in Combat?

By Michael M. Phillips in the Wall Street Journal

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C.—In combat, the No. 4 cannoneer on an artillery crew must heave 100-pound rounds, one after another, into the loading tray of a 155 mm howitzer.

In the North Carolina woods these days, the job sometimes falls to a crew member who weighs just slightly more than the artillery shell she has to lift. “Everybody thinks that we’re not good enough and can’t do everything males can do,” said Marine Lance Cpl. Vicki Harris, a 4-foot, 11-inch, 110-pound military clerk from Cambridge, Ohio. “I want to get out there and prove them wrong.”

Lance Cpl. Harris is part of a large-scale Marine Corps experiment intended to settle the question once and for all: Can women fight in ground-combat units alongside men? The Marines have gathered 400 men and women for a unique experiment to find out.

After the group finishes training next year, researchers will observe the men and women during a series of live-fire attacks and, with high-tech sensors, assess how troops of different sizes and sexes perform together in combat.

The results, Marine officers say, will allow the Corps to set gender-neutral standards for 20 of its most physically demanding jobs, including rifleman, mortarman and artilleryman, combat positions whose very names suggest they have long been the purview of men.

The Marines’ research experiment comes in response to a 2013 Pentagon order that the military services open all ground-combat jobs to women.

“If members of our military can meet the qualifications for a job, then they should have the right to serve, regardless of creed, color, gender or sexual orientation,” then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said at the time.

He left open a loophole: The services have until Jan. 1, 2016, to prove women can’t perform a particular combat job and request an exemption.

“We want to collect the data and do the research before we open the positions,” said Capt. Maureen Krebs, a Marine Corps spokeswoman, “because we don’t want to set female Marines up for failure.”

Some of the female Marines who volunteered echo Lance Cpl. Harris’s desire to prove naysayers wrong. They include Cpl. Raquel Mathieu, whose father was a drill instructor and whose uncles were Marines. As a girl in Stafford, Va., she shunned dolls and preferred playing football with the boys at recess. Her brother, a three-tour combat veteran, died in a car crash three years ago. She wears his corporal’s chevrons on her own collar.

“A lot of people were telling me I was a woman and I couldn’t do it,” said Cpl. Mathieu, 22 years old. “I was just waiting for them to tell me I could.”

The Pentagon decision allowing women in combat jobs adds to a period of rapid social change for the U.S. military, reminiscent of racial integration ordered in 1948 by President Harry Truman. In 2011, President Barack Obama lifted the ban on openly gay and lesbian troops.

The Air Force and Navy have moved quickly to integrate women into their forces, though not into special-operations units. The Army has postponed training women at ground-combat schools until it decides whether to seek exemptions. And Special Operations Command is studying the impact of allowing women into the Green Berets, Navy SEALs and other commando units.

Marine officers anticipate their research will establish data-based physical standards to help judge which Marines—men or women—are qualified for which jobs.

“We’re not going to lower standards, period,” said Lt. Col. Mike Samarov, who developed the Marines’ approach to the gender-integration order.

The debate over women in combat—similar to arguments about gays in the military—used to focus on so-called unit cohesion: Would the presence of women, or gays, hinder a squad’s ability to fight as a team?

The combat experiences of women in Iraq and Afghanistan—like those of openly gay troops—have mostly sidelined that objection. “This isn’t about women in combat,” Lt. Col. Samarov said. “We consider that a settled issue.”

Some critics, however, worry the Marines are looking for evidence to justify keeping some jobs all-male. “I’m concerned that they are creating a standard that is not gender-neutral and that is based only on how past male Marines have accomplished tasks,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) said.

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Indeed, skeptics in the Marine Corps don’t believe women can withstand the physical demands of the toughest ground-combat jobs. To serve in infantry companies, for example, Marines must complete a 24.8-mile march in eight hours, carrying 114 pounds of gear.

One of Lance Cpl. Harris’s male crewmates alerted her to comments posted on a Facebook page for artillery Marines. “Teach them horribly, this way they are set up for failure, and they scrap the program,” wrote one contributor.

But Lance Cpl. Harris and other women said the male Marines in the task force have their backs.

Gender doesn’t matter to Staff Sgt. Jon Ellis, 30, an Iraq veteran from Independence, Mo., who was assigned to the task force to provide leadership. “It’s whether the individual has the ability to be an infantryman or not,” he said.

Cpl. Mathieu worries about making the cut but tries not to dwell on fear. When the going gets tough, she and Sgt. Nyree Wilson, a 27-year-old supply clerk from Paterson, N.J., buck each other up. “We just have that female bond,” the corporal said. “We know we’re in a man’s world.”

Since last month, volunteers have been arriving at Camp Lejeune to fill the experimental unit, called the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force. They include some of the first female graduates of the Corps’ ground-combat schools. The top artilleryman in the howitzer class was an artillerywoman, and women were the best performers in Corps schools for tank, amphibious-assault vehicle and light-armored reconnaissance crews.

Four of nine women in the tank school failed out, however, largely because of difficulties lifting the heavy shells into the main gun. And just 40% of the women in the recent infantry school class graduated, compared with 95% of the men.

Female Marines have previously tried to complete the training required of infantry officers. None of the 24 women who attempted the grueling 10-week course over the past year have lasted more than two weeks. Most dropped out the first day.

But the new experiment is on a larger scale, involving 105 women and 295 men who volunteered from the enlisted ranks. The volunteers include both Marines who graduated from ground-combat schools and a contingent of men and women who were working as clerks, cargo loaders or in other support jobs and are now getting their first taste of front-line infantry duties.

Sgt. Samantha Smith of Milford, Pa., 25 years old, spent seven years in the Marine Corps, including two tours of Afghanistan, as an administrative clerk. Now, she’s part of the experimental tank platoon, where the 5-foot, 4-inch 125-lb. sergeant wears a grimy jump suit and balaclava and quickly loads rounds weighing more than 50 lbs. into the main gun of an Abrams tank.

“It’s important for women to realize we can do everything men can do in the Marine Corps,” Sgt. Smith said. “We just have to work a little harder for it.”

When the volunteers arrive, they undergo a battery of physical tests run by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh. On a typical day, Marines in Spandex bodysuits and swim caps file into a white chamber, called a Bod Pod, to measure body fat. They stand on a wobbly platform while surrounded by moving images to test their balance. Cameras record their joints in motion as they jump. A chair measures the strength of the muscles in their legs, shoulders and trunk.

“We want to figure out what characteristics make a Marine successful and remain uninjured,” said Katelyn Allison, assistant professor of sports medicine at the university.

“Sprint, sprint, as fast as you can go. Go, go, go!” a researcher urged Lance Cpl. Jada Connor, who was training on a stationary bicycle. She is an ammunition technician who wants to qualify for the infantry. “The only person I have to prove it to is myself,” said the 19-year-old Marine from Queens, N.Y.

Across the room, Lance Cpl. Eduardo Arenas Matos, age 20, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, sprinted on a treadmill. A blue-and-white mask covered his face with a corrugated hose running to a machine that monitored his aerobic capacity. A researcher in purple latex gloves pricked the lance corporal’s finger to test his blood lactate concentration as he ran.

The rest of the unit’s five-month training at Camp Lejeune will involve the constant practice of actions Marines perform in combat. The 12-person artillery crews set up and dismantle heavy guns over and over. Tank crews remove and replace broken track. Aspiring infantry Marines practice high-speed reloads, learning to replace an empty rifle magazine in seconds.

“You take a knee,” Sgt. Ryan Torrez, an Afghanistan veteran and group instructor, told one woman who had stood while inserting a new clip. “You don’t want to get shot in the face.”

The true test comes next year, when the task force begins 90 days of trial runs, likely in Twentynine Palms, Calif., part of the Mojave Desert.

Paul Johnson, a scientist whose bow ties stand out amid the camouflage fatigues at the Marine base in Quantico, Va., designed an experiment he said would take the bias out of the decision about women in ground combat jobs.

In the case of the infantry Marines, each 13-person squad—which will have random mixes of men and women—will perform repeated live-ammunition tasks such as rushing an enemy position. Electronic monitors on the weapons and human-silhouette targets that sense the crack of a passing bullet will record who fires which shots from where, and whether they hit. Heart-rate monitors will measure stress and report who is working to their potential.

A similar technique will be used to test tank crews as they fire at targets and light-armored reconnaissance vehicle crews as they race to change a tire.

The tests will generate a large amount of data that will show how individuals contribute to the team’s success, and researchers will match the data to fitness records and physical qualities. Mr. Johnson expects to present recommendations to the Marine Corps commandant, Gen. Joseph Dunford, by late summer.

Gen. Dunford will consider the findings to decide whether to appeal to the secretary of Defense for exemptions, the Marines say, or allow women to serve in all combat jobs.

The women crawling through the dirt and rumbling through the forests at Camp Lejeune think they already know what the data will show.

“I wanted to be part of the brotherhood, the gun club,” said Lance Cpl. Princesse Aldrete, a 23-year-old aspiring infantrywoman from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “I’m not going to fail.”

 

Poster’s comment: My mission is to survive and succeed.