[Matt Wiser]

In a way, we already have women who have acted as de facto grunts: female MPs, the Lioness teams in Iraq and A-Stan, and the women who are TDY'd to infantry units to search local women-one of the latter (a medic in the 82nd Airborne) won a Silver Star in A-Stan for going after some wounded guys whose Hummer ran over an IED, all the while being under fire, and in between treating the injured, returning it. The Houston Chronicle article (she was from a town NE of Houston IIRC) mentioned that some in the unit she was attached to wanted her to get something bigger than a Silver Star, but Division declined. Trouble was, that medic got pulled from the TDY assignment and back in the aid station when all the publicity broke. Then there was KY NG Sgt. Leann Hester and the Raven 42 incident. She was the first woman to get a Silver Star since an Army Nurse at Anzio won one in WW II.

Paul, isn't one of the Russian women you refer to Ludmilla Pavalchenko? She had 303 confirmed kills before being pulled from combat duty on Stalin's orders and sent on good-will visits to Britain, Canada, and the U.S. When she got back, she was commissioned as an officer and given a free hand to set up a sniper school and to be the OINC. That's also the Soviet system: there were captains and majors galore, but she was a Senior Lt., and since there was this order from Uncle Joe appointing her OINC of the school, guess who those guys had to click their heels to?