Contact Admin. Young and Female in the U. Army Kayla Williams with Michael E. W Norton Company, , pp. One in three members of the army's military intelligence personnel in Iraq is female. Although classified as noncombatants and refused billets in the military's combat arms, women increasingly find themselves in the same places, under the same direct fire, as men.
Although the regular army still refuses to train women as snipers, the Air National Guard has been sending women to the army's sniper school for three years. Women have come in harm's way in every war, but the current war has featured women being both fired upon and firing back, sustaining wounds and dying, or returning with the physical scars even amputations and the psychological symptoms of war at close range.
Love My Rifle More Than You tells the story of an ex-punkster turned National Public Radio fundraiser, a former runaway and rebel turned college graduate and homeowner. She served with the st Airborne Division in Iraq as a linguist from February until February Never a spit-and-polish soldier in boot camp, Williams did what was required: But I never did it just to do it.
Who gave a shit? She did her two-mile run in fifteen minutes, rather than the twenty allowed females, and over twice as many pushups as most army women. The guys in her unit, Williams explains, "gave us females endless shit for the different female standards on PT tests: Girls get off easy Girls can't hack it. There has been little grumbling about the age norming of fitness standards across the military, but the chorus of complaints about different standards for women has reverberated since woman began training alongside men in most branches of the military.
The Marine Corps, which still holds fast to its separate-but-equal gender integration policy, is the exception. Defenders of different requirements for men and women insist that such standards simply measure general fitness, not specific strength levels for specific jobs.
