I have a different slant than the writer of the letter, “Have men, women serve separately” and feel compelled to write.
I served the military for almost 50 years — 20 in uniform and almost 30 more as a Navy civilian — time spent mostly all over east Asia, including six years in Vietnam with three back-to-back outfits. All this began when I joined in 1955 and my senior petty officers were hard-bitten, alcoholic warriors who had often joined up before World War II as kids with no education off the streets of the big cities. You learned nothing from these men except how to be a warrior — and how to be an alcoholic.
And as someone who has seen how things are in recent years with employment in ship repair working with our forward- deployed ships in Japan and at Navy shipyard Pearl Harbor, and have seen day-to-day the work of men and women on our ships — military personnel, both men and women, are so much better educated, smarter and all-round better human beings than when I first joined up. And there is really very little of those “smell distractions” as asserted in the letter. I have seen women on shipboard more than pull their weight and many times out-perform their male counterparts — they fit in with the guys just perfect — and without any nonsense — and commanders keep it that way.
But in my opinion, the problem especially with the female assault scandal can be backed up by the continuous tawdry headlines in the Army Times and Navy Times showing the failure of a very small number of officers in command and senior enlisteds to be professional, and instead use their power over female subordinates to get what they want. This is not the fault of the female. The Navy for a number of years has had one scandal after another about ship commanders being relieved “for cause” (i.e. not doing their job) for various reasons, many having to do with them not being able to keep their hands women — usually female subordinates.
I advise the writer not to blame politicians or women serving with men (they will continue to serve with men so that won’t change), but the quality of many military leaders, both officer and enlisted, too closely reflects the weaknesses of our modern society and can be changed. I think the military knows they have a problem with enlisted and officer recruiting standards being too low — and I understand that is being addressed. And many of the military men caught in the female assault scandal probably never should have been recruited in the first place.
So, my opinion, what needs to happen is for military men in positions of authority to be completely professional toward all subordinates and much of angst that many persons have about women serving with men would go away because like it or not, women are going to keep serving in the military alongside men.
Al Rogers
Marysville
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