Ground Combat Not for Women, Marine Chief Says

The new commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Charles Krulak, says women are important to the success of his force but have no place in ground combat.

“Why? Because I don’t think they can do it,” the four-star general said in an interview Friday with a group of wire service reporters.

Krulak, who took over as the Marine Corps’ top officer on July 1, said he does not doubt women have the intelligence and courage it takes to fight on the battlefield.

“It just is damn tough being a grunt,” he said, using the slang for an infantryman.

He believes, as do most other U.S. military leaders, that the physical challenge is too great. As Krulak put it, “Humping a lot of gear for a long distance and then putting steel on target [shooting accurately]” is too much to ask of female Marines.

Women make up 4.7% of the Marine Corps--by far the smallest proportion of the uniformed services, although the share has grown in recent years.

Krulak, 53, has many changes in mind for the Marines, but he sees no reason to drop the existing prohibition against women serving in infantry, artillery and armored units. Women, however, can serve in combat support roles, such as engineering, which in time of war face the same risk of direct enemy fire.

The Army has the same prohibitions.

All the services allow women to fly combat aircraft, although the Marine Corps has only one qualified woman: 1st Lt. Sarah Deal of Perrysburg Wood, Ohio, who earned her wings in April, 1995, and is now training in a CH-53E helicopter.

Krulak said he is “more on the side of women than most Marine generals,” and he is working on ways to knock down psychological barriers to their success.

He cited as an example the practice at Marine boot camp of making men run twice as long as women in physical fitness tests.

“What signal do we send to the Corps when, at the end of a mile and a half, all the women drop off to the side and the men keep running?” Krulak said. “To me that’s insanity.

“I’m going to do away with those things that send a signal to my Marine Corps women and men that women are somehow--in their mind--disadvantaged,” he said. He will continue the practice of requiring men to achieve faster speeds than women for the same test grade; he said this is based on the same logic as the practice of making younger men run faster than older men for the same grade.

Krulak acknowledged that women recruits are dropping out of boot camp at a higher rate than men, but he indicated he was not particularly troubled by that.

Last year, 20% of women recruits dropped out of boot camp, compared with 13% of men. In officer training camp, the dropout rate for women is even higher.