…I’m taking over your military guy. And if your great pumpkin guy
starts writing me, consider his e-mails stolen too.
This is about the “risk rule”:
Rich – as Jonah’s “military guy” and a retired, disabled vet who
commanded a
unit with women in it all I can say is: if they are in my unit in a
combat
zone – they’ve got to be able to go where I go, and do their jobs.
Anything
else is ludicrous, and not fair to the people who have to take up the
slack.
I had female medics, cooks, signallers, survey and meteorological
specialist
soldiers. My MET section, to do their job properly, is deployed AHEAD
of
the DIVARTYs guns and launchers, between them and the likely targets.
That
data is critical to first round accuracy. My survey was an equally
important factor (still true in this day of GPS) My signals people had
to
keep the circuits up. My wounded/ill cared for, and the troops fed.
That
was a while ago, when we still did conventional cooking and feeding,
before
T-rats and MREs.
The issue can’t be wished away by saying that suddenly these people
can’t be
in those places. They are either soldiers, capable of the work, or they
aren’t. But we can’t say they are, and then say they aren’t. If they
get
killed, wounded, or captured, then they get killed, wounded or captured.
Tough.