Regarding the article, “All combat jobs are now open to women”: In Vietnam I was in the infantry and fought North Vietnamese regular line infantry units of nearly all women. You couldn’t tell they were women at 200 meters. But you noticed that they were a little harder to kill. At 75 meters you could tell they were women under all the gear. It didn’t matter they were women because they were killing my men and I had to stop them as quickly as possible.
When I served in Africa later we had 16-year-old boys as school crossing guards with sub-machine guns due to the shortages of men. We were looking for more police officers and there were just not enough men to go around so I suggested we train women to do it. There was quite a lot of resistance from the administration for this but they were between a rock and a hard place, so I finally got permission to go ahead and help train 350 policewomen for combat roles. It worked out great. Then the shortage for army officers became apparent and there was tremendous resistance from the administration to train women for this. Finally, we got permission, so I helped train 450 women army officers. I knew it would work out and it did.
In 90 days of training your mother can become a calculating killer. In all this I have found that women have little to no preconceptions about this and so do in combat what they are taught in training. We teach them what works best so they do that. Men have all that macho stuff in their heads and commonly revert to John Wayne movies, etc., which does not work. I would rather go into combat with both men and women like they do in Israel.
Douglas Kerley
Lynnwood
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