"The Army is like a massive frat party with weapons and with girls there for the taking - at least some of the time," Kayla Williams writes of her yearlong war stint.
"I was stunned that guys would still flirt with me when I hadn't had a shower for weeks," she said in an interview. "Isn't there a limit?"
While the Army officially forbids sex between soldiers, it also sells condoms at base stores.
Pregnant females get sent home. "Are they careless, stupid or just cowards looking for a way out?" asked Williams.
The Army is still only 15% female, which makes it a challenge for women such as Williams who are hungry for respect from male soldiers, not lust for their tired, dirty bodies.
But the battle for equality is ongoing, she said. She once was the only woman in her platoon on a mountaintop near Syria, and watched fellow soldiers bid - unsuccessfully - $87 and a handful of M&M's to get her to flash her breasts.
All the social engineering experiments in the world will not change the basic instincts of soldiers and sailors in wartime. They were working their way through female enlistees during World War II and Vietnam when they weren't in close quarters in combat. That's when they weren't working their way through the local girls or prostitutes.
Putting women in combat quarters or on naval ships puts a pressure on women they shouldn't have to bear, and adds another strain on family relationships.
I've heard stories from family friends in the navy about how every extended cruise results in a family breakup because some sailor takes up with a crew woman on board, fights over crew women, and pregnancies taking them out of service.
Under the strains of war, with death an ever-present danger, a soldier or sailor looking for female companionship isn't going to think of his comrade's uniform; he's going to think of what's under it.
Source: New York Daily News
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