Women in War Zones

On February 25, 1852, the H.M.S. Birkenhead, an iron-hulled British troopship,

steamed out of Simons Bay, of the Western Cape of South Africa. The sea was
calm and the day was clear. The Birkenhead carried around six hundred and
thirty people in all: troops from ten regiments and a few of their family
members, seven wives and thirteen children. It was bound for Algoa Bay, where
the men were to join the colonial war against native Xhosa tribes. Early in the
morning on February 26th, when all but the duty watch were asleep, the
Birkenhead struck an uncharted rock, and then hit it once again. The rock sliced
through the hull, and many of the soldiers who had been sleeping in their berths
quickly drowned. The ships captain, Robert Salmond, ordered that the anchor
be dropped, the distress rockets fired, and the lifeboats lowered, and then he
loaded all the women and children onto them. When the ship tore open and
broke in two, Salmond cried out, All those who can swim jump overboard, and
make for the boats. But there were not enough boats, and only three of them
could launch. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Seton realized that the rush would
swamp the lifeboats and drown the women and children in them. Drawing his
sword, he ordered the men to stand fast. In the words of the 1852 Annual
Register, Under this heroic obedience to discipline the whole mass were
engulphed in the waves by the sinking of the ship. Of the six hundred and
thirty people who left the Cape, only a hundred and ninety-four survived
including every woman and child onboard.

The phrase women and children first did not appear until a few years after
the Birkenhead went down, but the protocol dates to its evacuation.
(Rudyard Kipling memorialized it as the Birkenhead Drill in his poem
Soldier an Sailor Too.) Today, the call is most famously associated with the
sinking of the Titanic; whatever the reference, the phrase evokes the
courage and solemn fortitude of a man sacrificing himself for a lady. You
could walk a steeds path from this sentiment back to the Knights of the
Round Table and their foresworn code of chivalry, as recorded by Sir Thomas
Malory, to always do ladies, gentlewomen and widows succor and to
never force ladies, gentlewomen or widows. In 1857, five years after the
Birkenhead sunk, the S.S. Central America went down on a voyage from
Coln to New York. The magazine Godeys Ladys Book noted that Captain
Herndons first order, Save the women and children! was the test of this
Christian heroism.
We may believe that were beyond a publicly acknowledged code of male
honor, and yet news reports of civilian deaths often follow the general toll
with the number of women and children killed. Dispatches from the current
war in Gaza have informed us that half of Gazas dead are women and
children, that many women and children among the dead, that most of
the injured were women and children. Ofering the number of women and
children dead underlines the vulnerability of the victims. This can be useful:
it can help approximate the number of the dead who were actually
combatants, a matter that is often in dispute. But it also invokes a continued
belief that women, like children, need special protection. The phrase

suggests a range, even a rank, of innocence among civilians, in which

children and their mothers embody it most fully. It recalls the idea that
wombs, the chambers that can repopulate a devastated group or nation,
somehow make female bodies more holy. Of course, not all women are
mothers, and men and women are equally vulnerable to aerial assault. If we
truly wish to identify the most helpless victims, we should count, alongside
children, the infirm and the elderly. Instead, we tally the number of women
and children killed, reflecting and perpetuating outdated ideas about
womens lives and womens bodies.
Early last year, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lifted the militarys ban on
women in combat, saying, If members of our military can meet the
qualifications for a job, then they should have the right to serve, regardless
of creed, color, gender, or sexual orientation. In November, four female
Marines became the first women in Marine Corps history to complete
infantry training, passing what many consider its most difficult test: a
twelve-mile march with eighty pounds of gear in tow. This spring, William
Denn, an Army captain and intelligence officer who has led soldiers in Iraq
and Afghanistan, wrote in the Washington Post that women can be key
assets in the field. Based on his patrols in Iraq from 2007 to 2009, Denn
wrote, Most Iraqi men were reticent to speak with us for fear of retribution
from al-Qaeda. Iraqi women, often fed up with the violence in their
neighborhoods, could be persuaded to provide information, but first we had
to bridge the gender gap, build rapport and earn their trust, all of which took
valuable time. Denn went on to write that including women in front-line
units would be more than an exercise in social equality; it would be a
valuable enhancement of military efectiveness and national security.
Yet because we see female bodies as vulnerable and in need of protection,
we often find it difficult to imagine them in combat or sustaining combat
injuries. Last week, on the military Web site Ranger Up, a veteran named
Lana Dufy wrote about the injuries she sustained after an I.E.D. explosion in
central Iraq, including severe loss of eyesight, balance, and memory. My
arms were covered in bruises from the days of IVs and near-constant blood
work, she wrote. My face was mottled with healing black eyes from where
the doctors had punched out the cartilage behind my nose to get access to
that sweet spot in the middle of my head. But, when Dufy walked around
Walter Reed Army Medical Center with her ex-husband, no one seemed to
notice it was my ex helping me walk and not the other way around. Instead
he constantly got the question So where were you when you got hit? while
I heard, He looks great! Is he just here for follow up? In a war zone, we
understand women as victims to be defended. (Or, alternately, to be
exploitedthe prevalence of sexual assault as a weapon of war cannot be
overlooked.)
There is a persistent belief, Dufy continues, that girls just dont get blown
up. Women who have been wounded in war say they hear suggestions that
theyre just being sensitive, that theyre unfit or less fit. Dufy makes the

case for a military Leaning In: women need to be even tougher to show that
theyre fit enough. She writes, Is it a double standard? Yes. Is it stupid and
wrong? You bet. But instead of complaining about it, lets prove it. Meet the
maximum standards if you want the job, regardless of the standard set. Hold
yourself to a higher moral ground. Dufys words suggest the immensity of
the servicewomans struggle against those who diminish the work and worth
of women who join men on the battlefield. To do justice to those who risk
everything, we better believe that women get blown up, too.
Just as we have to squint our eyes to see a woman as a combatant, we have
a hard time imagining a male civilian who is not, even informally, a fighter.
What would happen if women, who we perceive as innocents in war zones,
were understood to be simply war casualties, their worth neither more nor
less than that of male civilians? Perhaps we would be more just and more
respectful to female soldiers and we would come a little closer to grasping
the magnitude of each human loss.

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