I don’t know if you all know this or not but women have served in various armies for thousands of years. Women were recently integrated into our military units here in the US. There have always been concerns in our society as to whether women should serve alongside men in the military and more specifically in combat units. I can come up with arguements both for and against this as an former soldier. The biggest problems that we encounter when we deal with this issue are not about whether women are fit to serve in the military, but the mores of our society.
As a former soldier I have served with many women at various times and just like the men there were some good and some bad. Some used their womanhood to try to get over while some wanted to prove that they could do just as much as a man.
The one woman that I respect the most (I don’t know her name) attended the Army Paratrooper school with me. She was a hispanic woman and could not have been much more than four feet tall. If you know anything about jump school you know that it is pretty demanding physically. On this day we were in the final week of training and we were preparing to make a jump in full combat gear. We were wearing full combat gear, to include a weighted rucksack, a rifle, our main parachutes, and our reserve parachutes. In jump school you never walk you run so we were running in this gear. I can’t remember exactly where we were running to but I do know that it was strenuous. This little woman was moving as fast as she could and really struggling so when I passed by her I tried to help her by grabbing the back of her chute and lifting it up while I pushed her forward. She would have no part of it. She wanted to make it on her own and seemed to be angry with me for trying to help her. She reached back and knocked my hand off of her gear and kept going. I wish every soldier had this kind of committment. This is one reason why we offer womens military rings with just about every kind of customization that we offer for the mens rings.
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