Learning to fly, looking to fight

Henzie’s five barracks mates in Female Room No. 1 here at a makeshift US base know they could come under fire. Some embrace the thought. Sgt. Mikaela Fahey, 23, a graduate of the Army’s Air Assault School, is a mechanic who might be pressed into duty as a door-gunner.

Sgt. 1st Class Cyndee Carnes, 36, expects she will drive into Iraq close behind advancing US troops to work at a helicopter operations centre. Sgt. Chris Cossette, 27, a mechanic, will be driving in a convoy, too. She tries not to think about snipers.

After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Congress expanded opportunities for women in the military, allowing them to fly most combat aircraft. Women make up 15 percent of active-duty forces, compared to about 1 percent at the end of the Vietnam War. But military remains the ultimate male business, a place where America’s gender conflicts stand in sharp relief.

To be in the field with the occupants of Female Room No. 1 is to feel the constant, subtle tension of these pioneers — women going to war. It is evening, and the women warriors are comparing their tattoos.

Fahey, the daughter of a mechanic on Boston’s metro rail system, sports a fist-size eagle-and-American-flag tattoo on her back. Henzie has a Coptic cross on her leg. A spiky black bracelet encircles the wrist of Cossette. They are young women who grew up admiring their Vietnam vet fathers, longing to fly, decorating their rooms with Marine posters offering adventure.

They were told they could do anything. Their brothers got tattoos; so did they. At the same time, observes Henzie: ‘‘You gotta be in touch with your girl side.’’ When the combat boots come off, the feet light up. Ruby red. Glittery, bubble-gum pink. Pearly white.

The women belong to F Company — ‘‘the Big Windy’’ — of the Army’s 12th Aviation Brigade out of Giebelstadt, Germany. The unit has been living in a broken-down Kuwaiti barracks west of Kuwait City for about a month. Here, women and men share the same squat toilets that stink of sewage, the same showers with the smashed porcelain floors. In the barracks rooms, the beige paint flakes off like dandruff. An overhead fluorescent light pops on each morning at 6:30. Like the men, women work 15-hour days and eat the leathery chunks that pass for Army beef.

They walk around laden with six magazines of ammunition, two canteens, a six-pound flak jacket and a gas mask kit that looks like a school lunchbox, plus a biochemical suit, a flashlight, pocketknife and an 8 1/2-pound M-16 rifle over the shoulder. But women make up less than 10 percent of the company; there are just two Female Rooms. In fact, the younger women integrate traditional male and female culture without a blink.

A few nights ago, some F Company men plotted a nighttime commando raid. The objective: Female Room No. 1. They wanted to lie outside the door and listen to the women discuss sex. In the end, the mission was cancelled. ‘‘I know you talk about that stuff,’’ an officer told Henzie. Dude, the women don’t talk about that stuff, Henzie replied. Here is what they talk about: their weddings, ones they’ve had or dream of having; the jobs they hope to get on leaving the Army: photographer, physical therapist, pastry chef. They talk about their families. Carnes, a former jail supervisor from Santa Rosa, Calif., is thinking of her four children, who range from 15 months to 14 years.

Debate still flares in Washington over women’s role in the military. Some of the questions are the same as ever: Are they physically strong enough for combat? Will they undermine the cohesion of units? Will Americans be able to bear the sight of women in body bags? Not that women haven’t given their lives in US wars.

More than 300 died in World War II, many of them nurses; 15 perished in Vietnam. Five Army women were killed in action in the Gulf War, and nine others died in accidents. Two Navy women were among the 17 sailors who died in the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000. Women are still not allowed in most jobs on the front lines in infantry, armour, artillery and Special Forces.

A Black Hawk crashed just three weeks ago in Kuwait at night on a training mission. All four occupants were killed. Henzie knew one of the pilots. One recent day, Henzie was at the controls of a Chinook, flying over northern Kuwait. Below was an awesome array of US military might: M1 Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, trucks. Henzie flew on over the desert.

‘‘That’s the Black Hawk crash there, at 11 o’clock,’’ the co-pilot said. Henzie gazed down. From the air, the site resembled a doused campfire, a circle of charred embers surrounded by sand. Her heart dropped. ‘‘Wow,’’ she said. Death is one subject no one talks about in Female Room No. 1. (LA Times-Washington Post)