Nation: She Gives the Orders

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Bonnie Stratton, 22, has a baby face and little pigtails that stick out underneath her cap, and she describes herself as a "free spirit." But for Army 2nd Lieut. Stratton, succeeding in a man's world means being tough. As one of two female company executive training officers at Fort Dix, N.J., Stratton is in charge of 250 recruits and 18 drill sergeants of Charlie Company. The company is 95% male, and the recruits test Stratton. TIME Reporter-Researcher Barbara Dolan watched her in action and filed this report:

Bonnie Stratton's day begins at 6:30, when she joins the recruits and drill sergeants for one hour of morning exercises. "I love to run, dodge and jump," she says. "The males keep going because they see me doing it." Not long ago, she raced one of them. "We were neck and neck all the way," she recalls. "The other trainees rooted him on, but we finished together. It would have been a sorry mess if I hadn't matched up."

Both of Stratton's parents are ministers, but she was a predental student at Indiana University in Pennsylvania when she joined ROTC for the physical challenge and the $100-a-month paycheck. She liked ROTC so much that she decided to concentrate on soldiering. She won her commission in June 1977.

As the workday gets under way, a batch of new recruits files in to get M16s. Stratton unlocks the weapons-room door and distributes the rifles. That done, she strides over to the trainee barracks, a nearby three-story brick building. "Female on the floor! Female on the floor!" a door guard loudly yells. Stratton enters so briskly that the men have time only to stand up. "What's this?" she demands, spotting a crumpled white towel tied to the end of a bed. A senior drill sergeant explains, "It's there so we know who to call for K.P."

Stratton moves on to a corner of the third floor where the 13 female trainees are quartered. Twenty additional women are due soon. "I'm not looking forward to it," says Stratton. "I end up telling them about Tampax and the Pill and making sure they wear cotton underwear." Despite her own youth, Stratton thinks she is in danger of becoming a surrogate mother to the teen-age recruits. Her solution: "I'm too much of a bitch figure to be a mother figure."

Back in the office, she can overhear the complaints brought in to the outside orderly room. "I drank Brasso," one frightened recruit whimpers. While the sergeant first class calls the base hospital, Stratton mutters, "He didn't drink Brasso. He's just trying to get discharged." Later an MP walks in with an 18-year-old AWOL soldier, who tries to explain that he was worried about his wife. "He's going to get 14 days' extra duty and 14 days' restrictions," remarks Stratton in the inside office, while the downcast recruit waits outside. "He's essentially ruined himself." Suicide attempts, car crashes, family problems, all end up with Stratton.