
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 26, 1995                   TAG: 9506260044
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MEMORIAL

ON VETERANS Day and Memorial Day, we typically picture America's brave young men who served in the military to defend our nation and its freedoms. If an image of America's women in wartime comes to mind at all, it's usually Rosie the Riveter, temporarily on the job in the factory to build the tanks and airplanes men needed on the battlefront.

The stereotype is slow to change. The nation remains uncomfortable with the idea of sending women into combat. Yet that is all the more reason to remind ourselves that women have long had a role on the battlefield - a longer and more visible role there, in fact, than in corporate boardrooms. Women's contributions to the armed forces have been many, and are highly deserving of recognition and gratitude.

With the groundbreaking last week for the national Women's Memorial in Arlington, America is finally honoring the 1.8 million women who have served in the U.S. military. Many of them had nearly been lost to history:

Deborah Sampson Gannett, for instance, who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Revolutionary War. Belle Boyd, a Civil War spy. The ``hello girls'' of World War I, French-speaking telephone operators sent to the front, along with more than 12,000 other women, to ``free men to fight.'' And the WACs, the WAVES, the WASPS, the WAFs and the SPARS of World War II - during which more than 200 women died on the frontlines in military service to this country.

Some of the aging female veterans who gathered in Arlington for Thursday's ceremony recalled enlisting in the armed forces at a time when women lacked even the right to vote. Many who had endured the hardships of war had come home from remote lands without veterans benefits in acknowledgment of their service.

Indeed, as President Clinton said, America's women in the military were dismissed for decades as ``second-class soldiers.'' The memorial, he said, is ``overdue payment on a debt that we will never fully repay ... a debt we owe to generations of American women in uniform.''

Today's generation of military women are, of course, no longer WACs or WAVES; and they no longer serve only as nurses or in an auxiliary role. They are first-class soldiers, sailors, fliers, coast guarders - serving throughout the world, and then some.

This year, for instance, Air Force Lt. Col. Eileen Collins became the first female pilot of a space shuttle, the Discovery. Someday, perhaps, on holidays when we honor veterans, the image of women like her will also flash to mind. No one's likely to confuse Col. Collins with Rosie the Riveter.

by CNB