
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 20, 1994                    TAG: 9406180011 
SECTION: FRONT                     PAGE: A6    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Medium 
DATELINE: 940620                                 LENGTH:

WOMEN IN COMBAT: WEST PULLS A FAST ONE

{LEAD} While President Clinton was in Europe hailing the heroes of D-Day, his appointees in the Pentagon were drawing up a remarkable policy directive that, had it been in place in 1944, would have ensured that plenty of female bodies would have been scattered across the sands of Omaha Beach.

Army Secretary Togo West was on the verge of submitting to Defense Secretary William Perry (without, apparently, first running it past Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan) a nine-page memorandum that would have opened to women many more positions than Army commanders had recommended. General Sullivan found out and the idea has now been put on hold.

{REST} West's list included allowing women to pilot Army Special Forces and air cavalry helicopters and to serve on artillery crews, as combat engineers, forward air controllers and other supposedly ``non-combat'' positions. To encourage ``gender cohesion,'' basic training would also be made coed, an idea that was tried in the late 1970s and discarded as unworkable.

In frank congressional testimony Thursday, Gen. J. H. Binford Peay (VMI, '62) cited his own Vietnam experience when he pointed out that artillery positions that were supposedly ``behind the lines'' were frequently overrun by enemy attacks. ``The future battlefield will be more expansive and lethal,'' he said. ``Distinctions between direct and indirect combat will be blurred. . . . We cannot expect to view warfare as hygienic or clearly defined.''

Unfortunately, General Peay is a rare case of an outspoken military officer on this issue. Many privately share his views but decline to say so publicly for fear of offending the likes of Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo. She seems determined to have a top-to-bottom coed military, no matter what the cost in morale, combat readiness or military effectiveness.

It has been almost exactly three years since the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on women in combat. It is clearly long past time for another.

Do Sens. John Warner and Charles Robb, both of whom sit on the committee, think women should have been piloting the helicopters that were shot down in Somalia? The ones where the bodies of the crews were dragged through the streets? They could have been had this proposal been in place. If Congress doesn't speak up, as General Peay has done, it can't be upset if the Clinton administration decides war-fighting has to yield to political ideology.

{KEYWORDS} WOMEN IN THE MILITARY

by CNB