Saturday, January 26, 2013

Women in ground combat

The late military historian Lt. Col. Roy E. Appleman wrote extensively about the Korean War. His book Disaster in Korea: The Chinese Confront MacArthur describes in heart-wrenching detail the United States Army's 2d Infantry Division's withdrawal south from a place called Kunu-ri. Here is one vignette, quoting an American Lt. Colonel who was at that moment under intense Chinese small arms and mortar fire:

"For the next 500 yards the road was temporarily impassable because of the numerous burning vehicles and the pile-up of dead men, coupled with the rush of the wounded from the ditches, struggling to get aboard anything that rolled. When we checked to make a turnout, away from a blazing wreck, either there would be bodies in our way, or we would be almost borne down by wounded men who literally threw themselves upon us. At one point, I got out of the quarter-ton [jeep] to remove a body from the road. Then I saw the man was still living. He was a wounded ROK [Republic of Korea] soldier. I squeezed him into our trailer. But as I put him aboard, other wounded men piled on the trailer in such numbers that the jeep couldn't pull ahead. It was necessary to beat them off. We got underway. Then I heard a scream behind me and stopped. The press of bodies had pushed a wounded Turk between the jeep and the trailer and we were about to tear him apart. Again I had to get out and wrestle off a dozen wounded who were trying to board us. There wasn't any space for even one of them and I couldn't give up my place because I had to keep my battalion moving." (My emphasis.)

Every war has uncountable stories like this: Large caliber machine guns too heavy to redeploy; hand-to-hand combat; bayonet charges; wounded who need to be carried to safety. 

And those stories give rise to questions so obvious that I won't waste your time raising them here. Except to ask a rhetorical one: How many of the radical feminists, and their female supporters, are going to volunteer for ground combat -- or are they going to sit comfortably on the sidelines cheering on their sisters who may well die in the name of an absurd notion of "equality," and take male warriors down with them?