Women in the Infantry

The Army Times has a piece on women attending One Station Unit Training initial entry training to  become Infantry soldiers in the United States Army.   Of course, the leadership at Ft. Benning is all about how they're adjusting, making it work, etc. And of course, no one wants to say women in the Infantry is…

The Army Times has a piece on women attending One Station Unit Training initial entry training to  become Infantry soldiers in the United States Army.  

Of course, the leadership at Ft. Benning is all about how they're adjusting, making it work, etc. And of course, no one wants to say women in the Infantry is a bad thing. 

But to give Army Times credit, they do list some of the reasons why allowing women in the Infantry is stupid. 

Commanders are adjusting to new concentrations of injuries among the women. While male recruits often get ankle sprains and dislocated shoulders, women are prone to stress fractures in their hips. In the latest class, six of the seven injured women in Charlie Company had hip stress fractures.

Emphasis mine. Stress fractures of the hips are not minor injuries. That's enough to sideline someone for at least a month, and usually two. Further, it's an injury that will almost certainly reoccur under similar circumstances. And take my word for it, the lightest rucksack march you'll ever do is in basic training. In a real unit, the loads only go up. 

We're grooming these women to suffer injuries at rates far beyond those of men, and with longer lasting consequences than a sprained ankle. We're going to see these women with service connected disability claims draining the public fisc such that no matter how hard they tried to serve honorable, they instead represent a net drain on the force. 

And when they are discharged due to injury or failure to complete training, at a rate twice of that for men, the Army has to recruit someone to replace them. And that delay means a deployable unit will go to war shorthanded. 

It is stupid. And everyone knows it. But none dare speak the truth. 

 

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Responses to “Women in the Infantry”

  1. UltimaRatioRegis

    Made precisely these comments, replete with the identification of pelvic stress fractures, many times before. The real unfortunate part is that many of these very young women will be permanently disabled, and no small number will not be able to have children. But what’s that compared to advancing the cause?

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  2. Esli

    Half the women weigh less than 120 lbs. Load is 68 lbs. Come on. That is the lightest load they will carry. Life only gets harder outside the training base. In Iraq, my armor, pistol +45 rounds, and M4 +210 rounds weighed in at 71 lbs before I picked up anything else for a mission (that’s why I quickly ditched the pistol). No future RTOs, javelin gunners, grenadiers, M240 or SAW gunners here, so I guess somebody else is stuck with that gear.

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  3. SFC Dunlap 173d RVN

    Oh indeed it’s stupid and yes everybody DOES know and nobody is saying the emperor has no clothes on.

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  4. Quartermaster

    The Navy saw similar injuries in women. No one wanted to tell the uncomfortable truth there either. FedGov, particularly the military, is run by cowardly idiots.
    Dubya didn’t stop the SJW PC nonsense when he was POTUS and it’s looking more and more like Trump won’t either.

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  5. USMC Steve

    Even if someone tells Big Army this, they will not listen. Too many career politicians in Big Army, and until Trump gets shed of them, the culture of self destructive stupidity will continue to damage the Army.

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  6. timactual

    “, so I guess somebody else is stuck with that gear.”
    Sounds suspiciously like marriage. An “equal partnership” until it comes to the heavy lifting.

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  7. Krag

    RE: “Even if someone tells Big Army this, they will not listen. Too many career politicians in Big Army, and until Trump gets shed of them, the culture of self destructive stupidity will continue to damage the Army.”
    No matter how much fun it is to beat up on Army, this is not an Army-only issue. I didn’t see any Marine Generals throwing stars on the table at Obama, despite presenting him with solid studies showing the stupid of women in the infantry.
    No guts left in the general officer ranks of any service, and it probably goes much lower than that.

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