The Marines Corps has some growing pains with regards to Women living with the men in the field.  Any one of the military services are notorious for being slow to change, and this particular change is pretty glacial.

“You’re going to have sex, you’re going to have love, you’re going to have relationships, and it’s going to overly complicate the command structure,” Marine veteran, Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, told the Marine Corps Times.

Army was doing what the Marine Corps is fighting at least twenty-five years ago.  When I deployed with my unit to Desert Storm, our platoon stayed together in one tent.  Two women, the rest men (don’t recall how many, but it was not more than eight).  It did not destroy the morale of our platoon, and we did have sex.  It did not complicate anything.  We just put up cloth walls for privacy, which everyone did, because there wasn’t a whole lot of privacy to start with.

Eventually, as we got more women assigned the unit from the inactive reserves, then we split off into two women only tents.  The other woman and I were disappointed; it was much better being with our platoon.

Yes, we did have some issues with soldiers having sex and one who got pregnant–but it wasn’t because they were living in the same tent.  It was because we were there under very stressful circumstances and also because we were there for a long time.  It’s one part of the war experience that military tends to pretty much pretend like it doesn’t exist, then blame the women for being there, as if only one person was responsible not the stressful situation.

Filed under: Military Tagged: Army, Desert Storm, Mariness, Women Soldiers