Battleground: Female Soldiers in the Line of Fire

[thedrifter]

November 5, 2008
Battleground: Female Soldiers in the Line of Fire
By FELICIA R. LEE

After Shannon Morgan returned from serving in Iraq, the memories of killing and carnage continued to haunt her, memories that some told her were unexpected for a female soldier.

Department of Defense policy bars female soldiers from direct ground combat, but for Ms. Morgan, like the four other female soldiers profiled in the documentary “Lioness,” that regulation meant little in the heat of battle. Attached to all-male combat units in the Army and the Marines as part of the Lioness program, the female troops were used to search Muslim women as needed and to defuse the cultural tensions caused by strange men interacting with Iraqi women. But when fighting broke out, the female soldiers fought back.

“We’d been downtown searching houses, and fighting would break out,” Staff Sgt. Ranie Ruthig, a former mechanic with a Lioness team, said in a recent interview. “We’ve had grenades thrown at us, shooting at us with AK-47’s. It’s a fight-or-flight thing. When someone is shooting at you, you don’t say, ‘Stop the war, I’m a girl.’ ”

As Ms. Morgan says toward the end of “Lioness,” which has its broadcast premiere on Wednesday night at 9:30 on Channel 13 in New York, “This is a new thing for people to realize that their daughters are over doing the exact same thing that males are doing now.”

The documentary makes the point that the nature of the Iraq war — fuzzy front lines and guerrilla tactics — has thrust more female soldiers (who represent 14 percent of active-duty enlisted personnel) into enemy fire than ever before. And, like the men, the women sometimes find the return to civilian life difficult, suffering the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and the depression and sleeplessness that come with it.

The New York filmmakers Meg McLagan (a cultural anthropologist whose work includes “Tibet in Exile”) and Daria Sommers (“Eastern Spirit, Western World” and “Duncan’s Shadow”) said they expected that their film “Lioness” would reinvigorate a debate about the role of women in combat and how best to serve the needs of veterans.

Their 82-minute film, part of the “Independent Lens” series, is scheduled to be shown nationally on public television stations on Nov. 13. It has been screened at the Full Frame, Tribeca and Human Rights Watch film festivals and at numerous conferences and other gatherings for female veterans, social workers, military personnel and others.

“This is not an antiwar film,” Ms. McLagan said. “It takes a position that we need to talk about and recognize what women are doing. The gap between the policy and the reality needs to be closed.”

But Eileen M. Lainez, a Pentagon spokeswoman, disputed the premise of a gap. “A recent RAND report confirms that the Army and all other services remain in compliance with the DOD policy regarding the assignment of women in the military,” she wrote in an e-mail message.

A 1994 Department of Defense policy prohibits assigning women to any unit below brigade level when the unit’s primary mission is direct combat on the ground, Ms. Lainez said in her e-mail message.

“Women will continue to be assigned to units and positions that may necessitate combat actions within the scope of their restricted positioning — situations for which they are fully trained and equipped to respond,” she added.

Ms. Sommers argues that the Lioness teams are in a “gray zone” when it comes to combat. The filmmakers sent “Lioness” to the public affairs office at the Army for fact-checking and as a courtesy, Ms. Sommers said, and “they said O.K.”

The profile subjects were in an engineering battalion (which included about 20 women) deployed to Iraq from Fort Riley in Kansas to be support troops. They were in the first Lioness group, created by their battalion commander, and they volunteered to accompany all-male Army (and later Marine) combat units in Ramadi, in central Iraq, in 2003-4.

“A lot of this is a cultural story,” Ms. Sommers said. “The culture has a lot of ambivalence about what women should be doing in a war.”

When filming began, the documentary focused on five women: Specialist Morgan and Sergeant Ruthig, both mechanics; Specialist Rebecca Nava, a supply clerk from Jamaica, Queens; Maj. Kate Pendry Guttormsen, a West Point graduate whose hometown is Toledo, Ohio; and Capt. Anastasia Breslow, a communications specialist from Fort Bragg, the Army post in North Carolina, according to biographical information supplied by the filmmakers.

The women have all stayed in touch. They are seen in the film taking care of their children, trying to return to civilian life, discussing their feelings about war. Captain Breslow is seen reading accounts of the war from her diary. Except for Ms. Nava and Ms. Morgan, the women have remained in the service, Ms. McLagan said.

As for Ms. Morgan, who joined the Army to pay for college, she is now 27 and studying nursing, caring for her aging parents in Pocola, Okla., and doing well these days. She said she agreed to talk about her bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression for “Lioness” in the hopes of helping other women. Despite her struggles, Ms. Morgan said she “absolutely” still supported allowing women to take combat roles.

“There are women who are prepared,” she said.

Preview: 'Lioness'
Enlarge This Image

Stephen T. Maing/ITVS

Shannon Morgan, a former Lioness, with her parents.
Enlarge This Image

Lloyd Francis/Army Times, via ITVS

Staff Sgt. Ranie Ruthig, left, and Sgt. Patricia Moreno were part of the Lioness team in Ramadi, Iraq, when the documentary about that group was filmed.

Department of Defense policy bars female soldiers from direct ground combat, but for Ms. Morgan, like the four other female soldiers profiled in the documentary “Lioness,” that regulation meant little in the heat of battle. Attached to all-male combat units in the Army and the Marines as part of the Lioness program, the female troops were used to search Muslim women as needed and to defuse the cultural tensions caused by strange men interacting with Iraqi women. But when fighting broke out, the female soldiers fought back.

“We’d been downtown searching houses, and fighting would break out,” Staff Sgt. Ranie Ruthig, a former mechanic with a Lioness team, said in a recent interview. “We’ve had grenades thrown at us, shooting at us with AK-47’s. It’s a fight-or-flight thing. When someone is shooting at you, you don’t say, ‘Stop the war, I’m a girl.’ ”

As Ms. Morgan says toward the end of “Lioness,” which has its broadcast premiere on Wednesday night at 9:30 on Channel 13 in New York, “This is a new thing for people to realize that their daughters are over doing the exact same thing that males are doing now.”

The documentary makes the point that the nature of the Iraq war — fuzzy front lines and guerrilla tactics — has thrust more female soldiers (who represent 14 percent of active-duty enlisted personnel) into enemy fire than ever before. And, like the men, the women sometimes find the return to civilian life difficult, suffering the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and the depression and sleeplessness that come with it.

The New York filmmakers Meg McLagan (a cultural anthropologist whose work includes “Tibet in Exile”) and Daria Sommers (“Eastern Spirit, Western World” and “Duncan’s Shadow”) said they expected that their film “Lioness” would reinvigorate a debate about the role of women in combat and how best to serve the needs of veterans.

Their 82-minute film, part of the “Independent Lens” series, is scheduled to be shown nationally on public television stations on Nov. 13. It has been screened at the Full Frame, Tribeca and Human Rights Watch film festivals and at numerous conferences and other gatherings for female veterans, social workers, military personnel and others.

“This is not an antiwar film,” Ms. McLagan said. “It takes a position that we need to talk about and recognize what women are doing. The gap between the policy and the reality needs to be closed.”

But Eileen M. Lainez, a Pentagon spokeswoman, disputed the premise of a gap. “A recent RAND report confirms that the Army and all other services remain in compliance with the DOD policy regarding the assignment of women in the military,” she wrote in an e-mail message.

A 1994 Department of Defense policy prohibits assigning women to any unit below brigade level when the unit’s primary mission is direct combat on the ground, Ms. Lainez said in her e-mail message.

“Women will continue to be assigned to units and positions that may necessitate combat actions within the scope of their restricted positioning — situations for which they are fully trained and equipped to respond,” she added.

Ms. Sommers argues that the Lioness teams are in a “gray zone” when it comes to combat. The filmmakers sent “Lioness” to the public affairs office at the Army for fact-checking and as a courtesy, Ms. Sommers said, and “they said O.K.”

The profile subjects were in an engineering battalion (which included about 20 women) deployed to Iraq from Fort Riley in Kansas to be support troops. They were in the first Lioness group, created by their battalion commander, and they volunteered to accompany all-male Army (and later Marine) combat units in Ramadi, in central Iraq, in 2003-4.

“A lot of this is a cultural story,” Ms. Sommers said. “The culture has a lot of ambivalence about what women should be doing in a war.”

When filming began, the documentary focused on five women: Specialist Morgan and Sergeant Ruthig, both mechanics; Specialist Rebecca Nava, a supply clerk from Jamaica, Queens; Maj. Kate Pendry Guttormsen, a West Point graduate whose hometown is Toledo, Ohio; and Capt. Anastasia Breslow, a communications specialist from Fort Bragg, the Army post in North Carolina, according to biographical information supplied by the filmmakers.

The women have all stayed in touch. They are seen in the film taking care of their children, trying to return to civilian life, discussing their feelings about war. Captain Breslow is seen reading accounts of the war from her diary. Except for Ms. Nava and Ms. Morgan, the women have remained in the service, Ms. McLagan said.

As for Ms. Morgan, who joined the Army to pay for college, she is now 27 and studying nursing, caring for her aging parents in Pocola, Okla., and doing well these days. She said she agreed to talk about her bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression for “Lioness” in the hopes of helping other women. Despite her struggles, Ms. Morgan said she “absolutely” still supported allowing women to take combat roles.

“There are women who are prepared,” she said.

Video

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/l...reviewpop.html

Ellie

[thedrifter]

U.S. women fight to soldier on in Iraq in 'Lioness'

Wednesday, November 5th 2008, 4:00 AM

LIONESS. Wednesday at 9:30, PBS.

Under U.S. military guidelines, female soldiers are not supposed to be placed in direct ground combat.

Like so much else about the war in Iraq, that didn't play out quite as planned.

"Lioness," a 90-minute Independent Lens documentary by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers, talks with a group of women who found themselves in precisely that situation, and who came out of it with pretty much the same range of aftereffects as their male colleagues.

Mostly they were glad to have come out of it at all, since thousands of their comrades did not.

"Lioness," a name given to units of female soldiers sent to Iraq in 2003, shows how women function as equals in a situation as extreme as armed combat.

As with all good military documentaries, of course, the ongoing subtext is that war is madness for everyone.

Spc. Shannon Morgan describes finding herself in a firefight with a company of Marines and a band of insurgents. She looked back at one point and saw a fellow soldier waving a frantic "Get out of there!" gesture.

She looked around and realized all the Marines had left.

It turns out that the Army, where Morgan got her training, has a system for withdrawal from a firefight. Each soldier taps the soldier in front until everyone is notified. The Marines apparently do not, which is how Morgan found herself all alone under insurgent fire.

The role of female soldiers in Iraq, "Lioness" explains, was first designated as support services, like supply units.

But the lines soon blurred. When military units went on search missions, for instance, they had to include women because male soldiers could not, for religious and cultural reasons, search Muslim women.

More telling, our Army now has a high enough percentage of women that keeping them out of potential combat situations would severely hamper the military's ability to function.

"Lioness" shows California Rep. Duncan Hunter, in 2005, publicly asking the Pentagon to clarify its policy on women in combat. The documentary says word was then passed to Hunter that this was not the time to raise that question, so it was dropped.

Some women comment on the war. Capt. Anastasia Breslow talks about night raids on suspected terrorist houses and muses that if she were an ordinary Iraqi, this kind of incursion into her own home might make her want to take up arms.

But the larger message of "Lioness" is that women in the military, like men, do the jobs they were trained and are paid for - and often a lot more.

dhinckley@nydailynews.com

Ellie

[thedrifter]

From the Los Angeles Times
TELEVISION REVIEW
'Lioness' looks at women in the U.S. military
By Tony Perry

November 13, 2008

"Lioness” is an up-close look at the evolving role of women in the U.S. military -- not just in traditional roles as nurses and support personnel but as weapon-toting frontline troops.

The 82-minute piece, by veteran documentarians Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers, deals with five women who found themselves attached to a Marine battalion in the middle of prolonged fighting in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2004. Retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, now of the Women's Research and Education Institute, says they were among the first U.S. women to experience combat on an equal footing with men.

Federal law prohibits assigning women to direct combat, but that distinction has been blurred on the ground in the Iraq war. Among other things, U.S. troops, particularly in the combat-heavy phase of the war, were stretched thin and needed help. Also, there are Islamic cultural prohibitions against men searching Iraqi women or even talking to them.

As a solution, the Army began Operation Lioness, female soldiers assigned to accompany male troops on patrol and at checkpoints, although they had not had infantry training. The combat experience seems to have badly shaken some. Staff Sgt. Ranie Ruthig, a mechanic who never expected to fire a weapon, remembers a late-night mission in which troops forced their way into Iraqi homes to search for weapons and insurgents.

"I felt like the Gestapo," she said. "All I could think of was 'What would I feel like if somebody did this to me?' "

Spec. Shannon Morgan shot and killed an insurgent during a street fight. "I don't regret what I did," she says, "but I wish it hadn't happened."

"Lioness" follows the five after their return to the U.S. Home front scenes are spliced effectively with combat footage from Ramadi. At some points, the work is repetitive and drags, but the cumulative effect is powerful.

Capt. Anastasia Breslow reads from her journal: "Our hearts are in the right place, we kill for peace, we kill for each other, [but] even sitting here writing this I am still amazed that I am part of this."

Beyond the Lioness program, other women in Iraq are assigned as dog-handlers, interpreters, drivers, public affairs officers and other jobs that take them into harm's way. Although the military may be in compliance with the strict letter of the U.S. policy, the spirit is something else.

If there is to be a postwar dialogue about the role of women in war, "Lioness" is a good starting point.

"We are waiting for the policy to catch up to the real-world practice," Manning says.

Perry is a Times staff writer.

tony.perry@latimes.com

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Independent Lens: Lioness

Regular airtime: Thursday, 9pm ET (PBS)
Cast: Specialist Shannon Morgan, Specialist Rebecca Nava, Major Kate Guttormsen, Captain Anastasia Breslow, Staff Sergeant Ranie Ruthig

US release date: 13 November 2008
by Cynthia Fuchs

PopMatters Film and TV Editor
What She Was Supposed to Do


I didn’t foresee the need. I didn’t foresee the circumstance to set itself up such that we would utilize the female soldiers in the role we did.
—Lt. Richard Cabry

I think my soldiers had a difficult time figuring out if they think they should be there, because every unit that goes over there, people are losing people. It’s the way of Iraq.
--Major Kate Guttormsen

“She done what she was supposed to do.” Jean is proud of Shannon Morgan, the young woman he and his wife Vivian raised as their own. The two of them head into the woods nearby their home in Mena, Arkansas, where they hunt small game and tease one another ("Turtle killer!"), quietly enjoying one another’s company. “When I came back from Iraq,” Shannon says, “It was so emotional for me, I didn’t really know what to say.” Shannon sits in front of her computer, playing solitaire on screen. Vivian nods, drawing, on her cigarette. “She sees all the things from the war again, and so she stays up. I’ve known her to stay up for two nights in a row.”

Shannon’s distress is both like and unlike that suffered by male combat veterans. While she has “done what she was supposed to do,” as Jean says, it’s actually not exactly clear what that was or is. As a woman in the U.S. military, Shannon has no official role in combat. Indeed, this is the first point made in Lioness, Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers’ understated, affecting documentary on women serving in combat in Iraq: “U.S. policy bans women from units whose primary mission is direct ground combat.” This means they operate in a “grey zone,” not quite legal or formally ordained, but following orders. It’s a status left deliberately fuzzy by the current Administration because, as noted by Captain Lory Manning, retired from the U.S. Navy, “They do not want that question coming before Congress again or catching the public interest while operations in Iraq are still going on.”

The conspicuous lack of discussion, debate, or decision within the civilian government or in any sort of public forum means that he military—as it so often does—must contend with the resulting confusion in its own way. Women combat vets, deployed as communications, supply, and support troops, find themselves in combat situations without proper training when they go in or structures of support when they come home. While this situation is surely not unique for women, it is pretty much the norm for them. The documentary, which makes its television premiere tonight as part of PBS’ Independent Lens, points out that the contradictions they bear can be impossible to sort out.

“I don’t watch the news, I don’t read newspapers,” Morgan says, “but you don’t ever forget the experiences of war. They stay embedded in your memory every single day.” Her particular experiences have to do with direct engagement in Ramadi, where she and other women were deployed in 2004 as Team Lioness. Their initial role was described as supporting the male front line troops, primarily supposed to search Iraqi women and provide a “reassuring” presence for women and children, especially as U.S. troops assaulted their houses in pursuit of insurgents. Lt. Richard Cabry, commander of the 1/5 Field Artillery Unit, recalls, “The goal is to insure that nobody is smuggling anything, but culturally, we knew that male soldiers could not search women with our hands.” The American women soon took on other duties, based on the teams’ needs and women’s abilities, official or not. Morgan, for example, was a good shot ("In fact,” Jean says proudly, “She outshot all of the others in the platoon that she was in, men and women"), and so was assigned to carry her saw (the M249 light machine gun) into the streets alongside male Marines. Originally with the Army, Morgan admits, “I found the transition from the Army to the Marines definitely a shock… The Marines, they’re used to a lot of intense combat, they actually go into the city and draw out insurgents.”

It was in this capacity that Morgan was first abandoned by her male fellows (she was unfamiliar with Marine signs or language, different from those used in the Army, and, in any event, was left in the street alone), then found herself shooting at enemy fighters. Her memories, which emerge piece by piece in the film’s multilayered storytelling, are still difficult to articulate. “I remember hesitating,” she says, “and they told me, ‘If you hesitate, you’re dead.”

For that second, I was like, “God, is this right?” Because nobody really knows. I don’t want to go to hell someday because I killed somebody and stuff like that. But then I realized, I betcha he’s not caring over there or he wouldn’t be shooting at me. And I got him right in my peach, you know, and fired. It’s something you learn to deal with… I don’t regret what I did, but I wish they never would have happened, in that aspect. Yeah.


Morgan’s visible disquiet “dealing with” what happened is compared in the film to her Uncle Glenn’s description of his experiences in Vietnam. “You’re there,” he says, “And don’t question why. If you ever come back and question, then you’re gonna have trouble. Just be proud of what you done and don’t question if it’s right or wrong.” She nods, glad for his encouragement but not wholly convinced. “For the most part, I agree with Uncle Glenn,” she says. “But you can’t help but just wonder, if somebody had done something different, things would have been different.”

Other women in Lionessgo through similar wondering. Sometimes the confusion has to do with returning from war. Sergeant Ranie Ruthig, a mechanic, first appears in the film working in a factory, her head bent, her focus intent on her task and tools. “When I first got home, I realized, you have a lot of tension and aggression you didn’t have before,” she recalls in voiceover as she winds back a huge wrench. “There was a time or two I had to apologize to my daughter, because she wanted a bowl of cereal and it didn’t fit with what I was doing at the moment. I might have yelled, I guess. I didn’t feel I was doing anything right. It’s just weird to be a mom and come back to it like that.” This after her encounters with young Iraqi girls in the street, whom she describes as around her daughter’s age, filthy, shoeless, asking for water and food. It “broke my heart,” she sighs, “We were warned beforehand, ‘Please don’t feed the people begging by the side of the road.’” Specialist Anastasia Breslow nods. “It was like Mad Max, where it’s like after the destruction’s occurred.”

For Major Kate Guttormsen, the only female company commander in her battalion, the trauma extended from events to aftermaths. While, she notes, the enemy outside the wire “doesn’t care what gender you are,” she and her soldiers, male and female, contended with gendered expectations daily. Reprimanded by a male officer for hugging Morgan following one incident, Guttormsen says, “It bothered me because there’s still an emotional side, which… I found women dealt with much better than men.”

Guttormsen’s point concerning masculine and military conventional repressions of emotion (and trauma) is of a piece with other repressions, institutional and cultural. Chief among this film’s many revealing moments is a scene in which the Lioness team reunites. After exchanging comments on new tattoos and babies, they sit down to watch a History Channel documentary on the battle in Ramadi, in which they participated. Their eyes go wide and their jaws drop, as they realize that they are not even mentioned in the film, which refers repeatedly to the dangers faced by courageous U.S. men. Erased from the public record, the women point out events and images they shared on that day: “You and I were on that one, weren’t we?”

While the women in Lioness don’t doubt their own experiences, they are expected again and again to forget, cover over, and “move on.” The filmmakers argue that U.S. civilians tend to think of women in the current wars as existing within a reductive range (between “Jessica Lynch at one extreme and Lynndie England at the other”). Their documentary effectively refutes those limits, imposed by popular culture and, insidiously, by an administration in search of simple narratives and self-serving rationales. War, by definition, is always traumatic and costly. Still, the film argues eloquently, it is hardly sane, healthy or patriotic that more trauma and more costs have been imposed on women combat troops. It is past time to tell the truth about their sacrifices and acts of courage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRDRJ...-lens-lioness/

Ellie