Lynn-area military families had mixed reactions Friday after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta this week announced the lift on the ban on women serving in combat beginning in 2016.
Swampscott Veteran Services Officer Jim Shultz said the move is “a long time coming,” but he does not consider all the combat roles appropriate for women.
“If you assign a female to a tank and that tank is under fire, you have to button up and close the hatches,” said Shultz, a former Marine sergeant. “The bathroom facilities are inside the tank. There is no privacy. That is a situation. Being in a foxhole is a situation.”
Shultz said his daughter, Jenna, 21, is a medic in the 101st Airborne Division and training to be deployed. Shultz said his daughter’s husband, also a medic, can be assigned to go on patrols with the infantry and “obviously be in harm’s way,” but Jenna currently would have to stay at an aide station because of her gender.
Shultz said his daughter would tell you women could do anything. “And I agree,” he said. “I have no doubt women are capable of doing pretty much anything a guy does. It’s just the living conditions ”¦ If they can work that out, it won’t be a problem.”
Army National Guardsman and Saugus native Lisa Meucci told The Item in an interview from Afghanistan on Friday that the close-quarters argument doesn’t fly with her. “Honestly, I don’t see the problem,” she said. “We all signed up for the thing to defend our country no matter what. If you as a woman decide you want to go infantry then you know what you have coming. If you can’t deal with using the bathroom in front of the guys or that you wouldn’t have any privacy, then don’t sign up to do it, easy as that.”
Meucci, an automotive supply specialist, said the problem with men and women working side-by-side in the military is that chivalry isn’t dead.
“Males tend to try and help out females more than they help out males,” Meucci said. “They would just have to treat females like they would males. If we can’t do something let us learn how to do it just like they do.”
Meucci said it’s not just the men who need to adjust. “Females would have to realize that the males shouldn’t have to act any different around us,” she said. “The way males speak and joke with each other shouldn’t be censored because a female is there.
“As a female, if you join the infantry, then you have to be tough-skinned and just as much of a smart-ass as they are. There’s no room in the infantry for females who are sensitive,” Meucci said.
Saugus resident Denise Sanders, mother of Airman 1st Class Ashley Sanders, she worries about how men would react to women in terms of their job security. “The men may not like it,” Sanders said. “I would say it’s more the effects of them being more mean because they feel like their job is being taken over because now there are women there.”
Kait Taylor can be reached at [email protected].
