Generally Speaking (43 page)

The future progress of military women will continue to reflect that of women in the broader society, just as it has in the past. Women soldiers have some reason for optimism.

In the 2000 election, women candidates from both parties made historic gains. Overall, women hold seventy-three seats in the House and Senate, more than doubling the thirty-two seats women held in 1990. Five of the nation's governors are now women, and women fill 22 percent of state legislative seats.

These are impressive gains. And the trend will no doubt continue as both Democrats and Republicans groom women candidates for the important 2002 election. Commenting on the significance of the 2000 election, political scientist Sherry Bebitch Jeffe noted, “The more women who serve in the Senate, the more women who serve as governors, the more women there are from which to choose presidential and vice presidential nominees.”

But I personally think it will be a few years before we see a woman at the top of either party's national slate. The resistance to women in high leadership positions is just too deeply seated in America for there to be a major shift in the next two decades. The results of a recent Gallup Poll conducted in five Latin American nations and the United States is revealing. When asked, “Do you believe your country will elect a female president in the next twenty years?” well over two thirds of those polled in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and El Salvador responded yes. Only 46 percent of Americans answered affirmatively (just behind 47 percent of Argentines). But 57 percent of Americans polled believed government would be better if more women held public office. Significantly, across all the nations polled, only 20 percent felt that women would do a better job than men at “directing the military.”

Despite such polls, I remain optimistic about the future of women in the U.S. Army. The transformation of the military currently will require greater participation of women in the defense of our country.

After years as an Army staff officer and commander, my observation about the synergistic contribution men and women soldiers make to the Army that I love so much can be summarized in an anecdote I tell about visiting an Army post in the late 1990s. I stopped at the gate during the morning rush hour to ask directions from the Military Police on duty. The young woman MP at the gate was courteous, her salute as crisp as the crease in her BDUs. But her instructions were rather vague because she did not focus her full attention on giving me precise directions. Instead, she continued her duties, waving the line of cars ahead, checking the drivers' and passengers' proffered ID cards all the while rattling off a chain of directions for me. During all this, she even pulled over a driver who could not produce his ID. Her actions were a prototypical example of multitasking, a talent at which I believe women are especially adept.

Another time, a man MP came around to my car window, turned his back on his assigned lane of incoming traffic, and proceeded to give me a precise set of directions, including all turns and elapsed mileage to my destination building. He was completely zeroed in, focusing on the sole requirement of guiding me. Saddam Hussein could have walked through the gate with a Stinger missile on his shoulder and that young soldier would not have noticed.

When I relate this story, I ask people, “Who would you rather have at the gate?” But before they answer, I always say, “You want them both.”

The Army needs soldiers who can be focused and direct and go straight for closure. But we also need soldiers with a broader view who can juggle multiple tasks and make a quick decision about what is important and what is not. Of course, these skills do not always divide along gender lines; the anecdote illustrates the importance of appreciating our differences.

An Army comprised of men and women serving their country side by side with mutual respect provides that optimum balance. I am proud of this Army and that it gave me the chance to live just such a life of service.

Epilogue

A
week after the June 2000 ceremony in the Pentagon central courtyard to celebrate the end of my Army service, I attended a retirement retreat at Fort Huachuca, the guest of Major General John Thomas, commanding general of the Intelligence Center and School. I had been expecting a very austere event, at which a small group would gather at the parade ground flagpole to salute the colors as they were lowered at the end of the day.

Instead, when my cousin Valerie Haygood Thompson, who had accompanied me to Arizona, and I arrived at Grierson Field, we found the post Army band and several hundred soldiers standing in formation before the podium. Among them was B Troop, a small ceremonial cavalry unit wearing the Army uniform of the frontier days. Their dark, broad-brimmed hats, wide suspenders, and riding boots silently evoked the Old West. For the rest of us, the uniform of the day was BDUs.

I was surprised and touched to have the opportunity to attend this final Army ritual with soldiers who represented every Army MOS with which I had been closely associated during thirty-two years of service. Although the World War II-era wooden classrooms in which I had attended the Advance Course as a young captain had been torn down, I drove past the old stucco bungalow where I had lived that year. Looking northwest, the high desert dropped away toward Tucson and the coppery Huachuca Mountains. Isolated columns of cloud drifted overhead, trailing skirts of rain so thin it felt like mist. Thunder echoed from the mountains.

The band played. General Thomas spoke briefly. Then I spoke. But I was so overcome with emotion that I cannot remember to this day the nature of the music or the words. But I will never forget when the band lowered their instruments and sang a cappella the words of that quintessential Army ballad, “Old soldiers never die. They just fade away.”

And I never forget the words of one of our most revered leaders, General George C. Marshall. In 1951, as the former Secretary of State, he spoke to the graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, several hundred young cadets, most of whom would be locked in bitter combat in the frozen mountains of Korea before the year was out:

I think it is too early to talk to you regarding some of the trials and tribulations that are bound to be yours during your service to come. You will often be misunderstood. You will frequently find the democratic processes of this country difficult to assimilate in a military pattern. But never forget that this is a democracy and you are the servants of the people, and whatever complications may arise, you have a duty to your country which involves not only the final sacrifice if necessary, but a generous understanding of the role of an officer in a great democracy.

General Marshall's words speak to all of us who have chosen the military calling.

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