Short Shorts | Women

VIVA LA DIFFERENCE
Did you read the book review of Mixed Company: Women in the Modern Army by Helen Rogan? It was in Time magazine, Nov 16, 1981. It was about the program of integrating the sexes in the Army. I liked the way the review started: One cold April dawn in 1979, the new, integrated Army arrived at Fort McClellan, Alabama. The jittery recruits of Alpha Company, 87 men and 76 women mostly between the ages of 18 and 22, stepped off the ramshackle buses and began basic training together. They shared barracks (on alternate floors), mess halls and bivouacs, and a few occasionally made clandestine love in the laundry room or the latrines. When the six weeks of marching, spitting, polishing, obstacle coursing and weapons training were over, and the tears, exhaustion, pride and exhilaration forgotten, writer Helen Rogan asked their commanding officer, a woman, what differences she had noted between the men and the women. Said she: “The men overloaded the…