Should Women Serve in the Military?

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[@christopherreeves5592]

Well said Father.

[@mariekatherine5238]

There are roles other than combat in the military. I immediately think of Jael in the Bible and St. Joan of Arc. Both of these were under exceptional circumstances. In the former, the strategy was such that a man could not do it. In the latter, God couldn’t find a man, so He took the best available and willing woman.
My grandmother worked in a munitions factory in WWI, and my mother belonged to the W.A.V.E.S. starting in 1943 as an assistant in vehicle assembly. She got her pilot’s license and flew transport across the U.S. to various bases. There was a pool of eight women on base used in this capacity. It’s how she met my Dad, also in the Navy, at a social mixer. That was in 1944 and they married in 1946. They were both from NYC, but didn’t know one another prior to meeting in San Diego! Of course, Mom left the Navy when the war ended as she wanted to get married. Otherwise, she may have remained a single military woman! In a sense she did, having command over we children and maintaining a household when Dad was deployed. (He stayed in until 1962.)
At that time, males and females were strictly separate in the military except occasional social events. Women did not engage in combat. In fact, romance was strictly forbidden, and service was limited to single women. Probably the closest women came to combat was as nurses in field hospitals or hospital ships, a few of which were attacked by the Japanese who didn’t abide by wartime ethics. There were also the nurses in the Philippines taken prisoner of war to a pow camp. A few did not survive the camp. Three nurses managed to escape the initial attack and they did engage in literal combat with an older, out of shape Japanese soldier, killing him and fleeing into the jungle. Two American nurses along with several Filipinos escaped the camp and went on foot some 175 miles to Manila. It took them two months and they traveled on paths and remote roads by night. They were helped by ordinary Filipino and resistance forces. At one point they holed up in what they thought was a deserted base and were taken by surprise by a six Japanese separated from their platoon. They killed two of them and set the huts on fire, the four Japs fleeing into the jungle. Two of the Allied party, Filipinos, died enroute, from disease, a girl of about 10, and her old grandfather. The remaining were picked up by American GI’s and driven the last 50 miles into the just liberated Manila. There’s a book about it. Sorry, I don’t recall its name.

[@josephc6014]

How does Joan of Arc fit into this? Although she was not meant to kill directly, she was nevertheless thrown into dangerous combat situations with the intent of directing men to kill. And based on her own evading the question of whether she used her sword during her trial, it seems plausible that she did fight. How do we reconcile a tradition of discouraging women from combat situations with a seemingly divine imperative for Joan to enter one?