Women in Combat: Marine Corps Puts a Few Good Women to the Test

In combat, the No. 4 cannoneer on an artillery crew must heave 100-pound rounds, one after another, into the loading tray of a 155 mm howitzer.

In the North Carolina woods these days, the job sometimes falls to a crew member who weighs just slightly more than the artillery shell she has to lift. “Everybody thinks that we’re not good enough and can’t do everything males can do,” said Marine Lance Cpl. Vicki Harris, a 4-foot, 11-inch, 110-pound military clerk from Cambridge, Ohio. “I want to get out there and prove them wrong.”

Lance Cpl. Harris is part of a large-scale Marine Corps experiment intended to settle the question once and for all: Can women fight in ground-combat units alongside men? The Marines have gathered 400 men and women for a unique experiment to find out.

After the group finishes training next year, researchers will observe the men and women during a series of live-fire attacks and, with high-tech sensors, assess how troops of different sizes and sexes perform together in combat.

The results, Marine officers say, will allow the Corps to set gender-neutral standards for 20 of its most physically demanding jobs, including rifleman, mortarman and artilleryman, combat positions whose very names suggest they have long been the purview of men.

The Marines’ research experiment comes in response to a 2013 Pentagon order that the military services open all ground-combat jobs to women.

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“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,” then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said at the time.

He left open a loophole: The services have until Jan. 1, 2016, to prove women can’t perform a particular combat job and request an exemption.

“We want to collect the data and do the research before we open the positions,” said Capt. Maureen Krebs, a Marine Corps spokeswoman, “because we don’t want to set female Marines up for failure.”

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