The expanding role of GI Jane

Currently, women make up about 15 percent of the US armed forces - a proportion that's nearly doubled since 1980 and is up by a third since the last Gulf War. More than 90 percent of service positions are open to women. And though women remain barred from about 30 percent of active-duty positions - including Special Forces and frontline ground-combat roles - the front lines, it now seems, are everywhere: With guerrilla fighting and supply lines that snake through the sand, a medic careening over the desert in her canvas-topped Humvee can be as vulnerable as a young private crouched in Baghdad with his M-16.

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Some women believe that more ground-combat roles should be open to them: As long as they can lift and load the rounds, they say, women should be allowed to command tanks and artillery platoons. Women, after all, perform crucial jobs men cannot - frisking Iraqi females for hidden weapons at checkpoints, or entering rooms reserved for women in Muslim societies. Congress lifted the ban on women serving on combat ships after the first Gulf War, and the Pentagon did away with its "risk rule," which outlined where women could and couldn't serve, according to the likelihood of enemy contact.

Such a system made less sense as warfare changed and the definition of "front lines" disintegrated. Now, says Laura Miller, an expert on gender and the military at RAND, "we don't necessarily have a clear line in the sand. And with longdistance missiles, people in the rear are in danger, too. It's strategically advantageous to take out supply lines and communications centers - which is where women are more concentrated. Nobody's really safe."

Yet, on many levels, war is a qualitatively different experience for women. They say their gender sets them apart, and they must struggle to adjust to a male world, especially in combat forces. The many mothers here openly mourn missed birthdays, first steps, and bedtime stories, with what seems a greater intensity than the fathers do. Some left behind babies as young as a few months old.

Women soldiers headed toward Baghdad with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division shared their stories with the Monitor.

Lt. Sarah Fritts

	SARAH FRITTS ANN SCOTT TYSON

Lt. Sarah Fritts heard the first cracks of AK-47 machine-gun rounds targeting her Kiowa scout helicopter as she flew low over the central Iraqi city of As Samawah. Scanning the ground only 60 feet below, she saw a crowd of Iraqi civilians lining the banks of the Euphrates.

"Half the people were waving at us, and the others were shooting out of their homes, so it was a bad mix," recalls Lieutenant Fritts, a platoon leader with the 3rd Squadron of the 3rd Infantry Division's 7th Cavalry, known as the 3-7 Cav. "All along the river, fire was coming out of home after home."

Up ahead, another Kiowa crew spotted an Iraqi jumping out of a car with an AK-47 and running into a building. An attack on the building was ordered, and Fritts and the other pilots zeroed in with their rockets, completely flattening the structure.

It was the first combat of the war for Fritts and her platoon, but when she landed, she discovered that her reaction to the fighting was completely different from that of her male comrades.

"Everyone was like, 'Yeah, get them'' and I was having trouble with that really aggressive attitude," she recalls. "People were saying, 'Yeah, let's go level that whole area.' And I was saying, 'There's no reason to go level 50 homes' - it just wasn't necessary."

Indeed, in a break between missions on the route to Baghdad, Fritts said that while she's proud to be one of only two women pilots with the 3-7th Cavalry, her life on the front lines has been distinctly different from that of the men around her.

"There are some things that set me apart," says the West Point graduate from Portland, Ore.

The granddaughter of a World War II B-17 pilot, Fritts has wanted to fly helicopters since she was a freshman in high school. After West Point, she attended flight school, where less than 10 percent of her classmates were women. Now, she proudly wears the Cavalry's signature black Stetson with gold tassels that she keeps behind the seat of her Kiowa, nicknamed "Drunken Monkey."

Male colleagues treat her with respect, she says, even though she knows some of them disagree with policies allowing women to serve in military jobs traditionally reserved for men. "The guys are very professional, so they put aside their personal feelings," she says.

But Fritts has realized that as the lone woman, she will not enjoy the kind of lifelong bonds forged in combat by the men in her platoon. "A lot of the guys get their best buddies from within the troop, so they can really let go and be themselves. But my best friends are women, and they aren't here, so the guys won't really know me the same way," she says.

Practical problems in western Iraq's flat terrain, such as finding a spot to change clothes or go to the bathroom, also separate Fritts from the men. So does a disinclination to join in with the men's lewd banter and crude jokes.

As an officer, Fritts has had to make a conscious effort to change the language she uses with her male subordinates - eliminating niceties. "Guys are more direct. Instead of asking them to do things, I have to tell them, without saying 'Please' or 'Thanks.' That's what they expect."

Fritts sees herself as a trailblazer, and as she witnesses firsthand the strict segregation of women in Iraq, she feels particularly gratified that American women can serve in combat. Still, she believes that combat fields, such as armor and artillery, should be opened up to women who have the physical strength to do those jobs.

Fritts doesn't relish the danger of her work. "Every time I go up, I expect to get shot at," she says, admitting that only her training allows her to overcome the fear and confusion of combat.

But she rejects, on principle, the idea that a public aversion to placing women in harm's way should bar her from the front lines. "Why should I not be allowed to do something I want to do because some guy lying on a couch watching TV feels uncomfortable seeing me dragged through the street?" she says. "I don't see why a woman's life is so much more important than a man's life," she says. "For a woman to gain full citizenship, she should be able to die for her country."

Next: Sgt. Raja Valenzuela

AP SOURCE: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE