Nation: Women May Yet Save The Army

A hopeful view of the change sweeping all the armed forces

It is one of the strangest remodeling jobs undertaken by the U.S. Navy. Inside the aging repair ship U.S.S. Vulcan, anchored at Norfolk, Va., aluminum sheeting is being stretched from floor to ceiling to divide the sleeping quarters. Near by, urinals are being ripped out, while extra electrical outlets are being provided for hair dryers.

When work on the Vulcan is completed next month, the Navy will be able to pipe aboard the first women crew members ever to serve on its ocean-going vessels (other than a transport or hospital ship). The service had been barred by law from so using women until this summer, when a federal district court ruled that sex cannot be used as a criterion to prevent volunteers from serving on combat-related vessels. To comply with this ruling, the Navy is refitting the Vulcan and four other support ships to take on 16 female officers and 375 enlisted women. Fifteen more ships are expected to be remodeled in the next five years, and it is estimated that women will constitute 25% of all support ships' crews by 1983.

Ten years ago, a mere 35,000 women were in uniform, making up 1% of the nation's military personnel. In fact, they were limited by law to a maximum of 2% until that ceiling was abolished in 1969 because of the shortages caused by Viet Nam and the expanding role of women in the labor force. Today some 110,000 women constitute 5.5% of the services' 2 million uniformed members. Some 15,800 of the women are officers. It is projected that five years from now nearly 220,000 women will provide more than 10% of the armed forces.

In no other country do women assume such major military responsibilities. In the U.S.S.R., for example, although 1 million women were mobilized during World War II and some flew bombers and drove tanks, today's 4 million-strong armed forces contain only 10,000 women. Even Israel, which has used women as soldiers from the beginning, has only 5% and keeps virtually all of them out of combat.

American women share in control (as of two months ago) of the mighty Titan II intercontinental missiles at bases in Arkansas, Kansas and Arizona. They are undergoing the Marine Corps' rugged boot-camp training in the forests at Quantico; are in charge of the Army's firing range at Fort Jackson; are chief instructor pilots at Williams Air Force Base; are overhauling U.S. tank engines in West Germany; and are helping create the new MX missile at the Strategic Air Command's missile design center outside Omaha.

So integrated into the regular structure of the armed services have women become that the WAVES and WAFS have been disbanded and the WACS are about to be. The only remaining restrictions on women warriors, all of whom receive combat training, are the 1948 statute forbidding them to serve on combat vessels and planes and the formal Army policy barring them from combat branches such as infantry and armor.