Marking 100 Years Of Women In The USMC & Making It About Me
A whole century of women serving in the Marines! 100 years! Bring on the adulation & adoration, bitcces!
Ah. Well. For the record, I have always been open about being a large ‘Hanes’ gal & not the ‘Jockey’ type, as seen here in the pastels of my Afghanistan laundry bucket.
As the day comes to a close, I’d be remiss if I didn’t blog about the 100th anniversary of vaginas landing on the beaches of the Corps personnel roster & make it about me.
From having to scream it over & over at boot camp, I can tell you “OPHA MAE JOHNSON!” was the first woman in the Marine Corps. She joined the Reserves in 1918; the first of over 300 to enlist during WWI. Today women make up about 8% of the Corps and though I wish the number were higher, I’m glad to have been one of them.
I’d never been out West until I joined & it opened up a new world for me… I still remember heading to my first duty station, Camp Pendleton, CA, & being excited to see real cactuses & palm trees. On one of our first field ops I was even more blown away to see other Marines catch hissing tarantulas in their covers (hats) so they could put them in boxes to make them fight. What a planet.
A rite of idiot passage, I did all the “boot” (newb) things. I took selfies with various weapons & posted them on Facebook like I was out saving the world & not doing training that literally every Marine has to do. Oh this old thing? Just a 50cal I’m going to fire for a total of 30 seconds all day. Check it out, hometown homebodies, I’m far away & wearing a gas mask. Wild.
I wore the government issued “birth control” glasses which definitely worked when taken in combo with my face. And kept my dog tags on me everywhere I went, often on the outside of my shirt. And those shirts were usually of the ‘Moto’ variety & worn unironically, like the the one I loved with a bulldog on it that said, “Taking a BITE out of the Middle East!” Neat.
In 2010 I was lucky enough to be part of a Female Engagement Team, an all-woman unit from the officers down. We got sent out in groups of 2 – 4 to different infantry battalions in Southern Afghanistan & lived in the villages where we performed searches, took atmospherics on the local vibes, and tried to make connections with the community through medical clinics, food & hygiene supplies & basic communication to help answer questions, etc.
The infantry guys loved having us attached to them & most importantly, we won the war.
Alright, perhaps there have been some ups & downs. The war *might* still be going & maybe there’s a *little* resistance out there when it comes to those of us with those vagina things who want to serve our country, too. But today’s not about the 1st Internet Trolling Battalion. Women of every branch will continue to make great contributions & sacrifices. As we continue to make progress, I’m looking forward to what we’ll accomplish.