For the first time in history, a woman has enlisted in the infantry of the U.S. Army.

Tammy Barnett, a 25-year-old police officer from Robeline, Louisiana, took the oath of enlistment on Thursday at a processing station in Shreveport, Army Times reports.

“I have served the front lines in my hometown ... and now I am going to serve the front lines for my country,” Barnett said in a news release, according to Army Times. “I want to deploy, see action, and I definitely want to go to Airborne school.”

The historic enlistment comes roughly four months after Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s announcement that the military would open all combat jobs to women.

“They’ll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars and lead infantry soldiers into combat,” Carter said at the time. “They’ll be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers, and everything else that was previously open only to men.”

Barnett has been meeting with recruiters since November. She said she hopes her enlistment will inspire other women, reports KSLA 12.

“I hope that I give them the courage, because I’m a small female, if I can do it, they can do it too, this could give them the courage to step out of their comfort zone,” Barnett told the TV station.

Barnett will report to basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia, in June 2017, according to Army Times. The long lead time will give the Army time to place trained female officers and non-commissioned officers in positions to ease the transition.

ValerianSteel:
Such a brave young woman.Hope to see more women on active frontlines.

Kachisbarbie:
Aww, that's nice. She must be really tough and brave.
You mean she would carry go for missions right @ infantry?
She is so beautiful, make wound no spoil her fine face o

New Fertility Options for Female Soldiers:
The U.S. military now covers egg freezing for active-duty servicewomen—but while some celebrate the new benefit, others worry that it will become an expectation

In early 2012, a few weeks before Annie, a captain in the U.S. Air Force, deployed to Afghanistan on a special operations combat mission, she and her husband had their first conversation about egg freezing.

Annie, a former intelligence officer (who asked that her last name be withheld), was one of an extremely select group of women recruited for Army Ranger and Navy SEAL combat missions. This would be her fourth—and by far most dangerous—deployment. Egg freezing seemed like a kind of insurance policy: If Annie suffered an injury that threatened her fertility, she might still be able to one day have biological children using frozen eggs.

But when the couple learned of the procedure’s prohibitively high price tag—up to $20,000 in some cases—they immediately stopped discussing it.

“Egg freezing is something I personally would have liked to have had as an option,” Annie told me. “If that option had been available, especially when I was deploying, it’s something we would have seriously considered.”

Hundreds of veterans have sustained injuries to their reproductive organs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their often grisly stories rarely make headlines, but when they do, they elucidate the stark realities of fertility risks troops face in wartime. With all combat positions now open to women, an increasing number of servicewomen will risk injuries that could compromise their reproductive abilities, making pre-deployment fertility-preservation options especially important.

In January, the Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that the Pentagon, as part of its efforts to embrace more family-friendly policies, will cover the costs of egg and sperm freezing for active-duty service members who want to preserve their fertility. The benefit—which came as a surprise to many in both the medical and military communities—is one of several personnel reforms under the Defense Department’s Force of the Future Initiative, a series of strategic policies to improve quality of family life in the Armed Forces. Other benefits include increased maternity leave, from six to 12 weeks; increased paternity leave, from 10 to 14 days; extended day-care hours; expanded adoption leave; and lactation rooms to be installed at more than 3,600 bases.

Kooldude01:
G I Jane.

The first two women to graduate from the U.S. Army’s Ranger School shared their experiences from training during a press panel Thursday in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver, along with some male graduates of the grueling program, discussed their struggles and accomplishments. But it fell to their male colleagues to explain how Griest and Haver, both graduates of West Point, overcame doubters.

“I went to school with Shaye and I knew she was a physical stud. But I was skeptical of whether or not she could handle it because this is my third time at a Ranger School,” a fellow graduate, 2nd Lt. Michael Janowski, said. “I saw what Ranger School was like before entering this class and I was skeptical if they could handle it physically.

“Then we got to the mountains, and there was one night we were doing a long walk,” Janowski continued. “I was the 320 gunner [a grenade launcher], so I had a lot of weight on me and I was struggling. And I stopped and I asked at halfway point, ‘Hey, can anyone help take some of this weight?’ I got a lot of deer-in-the headlight looks, you know. A lot of people were like, ‘I can’t take any more weight.’ Shaye was the only one to volunteer to take that weight. She took the weight off me and she carried it the last half of that road. Literally saved me. I probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now if it wasn’t for Shaye. So from that point, no more skepticism.”

Other men shared similar stories about Griest. Both women scored among the highest in group evaluations, according to their fellow graduates on the panel.

Griest said she hopes Haver’s and her accomplishments are considered when military officials decide whether to open more courses for women.

“The decisions to open up further combat units, of course, will be up to senior leaders in the military,” Griest said. “But I do hope that with our performance in Ranger School we’ve been able to inform that decision as to what they can expect from women in the military.”
“I think [keeping the standards] is extremely important, if they do go forward with opening further job opportunities and schools to women,” Griest said. “No woman that I know wanted to go to Ranger School if they changed standards, because then it degrades what the tab means.”

The two women started the course with 381 men and 17 other women. Only the two women and 94 men met all the requirements for graduation.

CFCman:

She is a brave woman indeed. If she can meet the standards of the army, then she should be a Private soon.
Missy89

Missy89:


The fear most people have is that having more women in the infantry will drop the standards significantly. Personally, i have always been opposed to the idea.

Good for her thou

Zoharariel:
When caught in battle as POW, using these female Amerikan soldiers to hone my sexual acrobatic skills would be priceless