Band of Brothers? - Women on the Front Lines

A discussion of women in combat, with some weak steel-manning of the side I disagree with. Also many reflections on the miniseries and book "Band of Brothers"

I- Setting the Stage

Three things converged for me recently and at the point of their convergence was the issue of placing women in frontline combat roles.

The first leg of the convergence was the election of Donald Trump. We’re still debating the reasons why he won, but certainly a reassertion of gender differences are near the top of everyone’s list. For example, allowing natal men into women’s sports.

The second was Trump’s nomination of Pete Hesgeth for Secretary of Defense. Hegseth’s nomination is controversial for a lot of reasons, but one of the controversies is his opinion that women should not be allowed into front line combat roles.

Finally, I just got done watching the miniseries Band of Brothers, while at the same time re-reading the Stephen E. Ambrose book it’s based on. I would highly recommend the exercise (see my review of the book here.) In addition to being enjoyable it reminded me of how physical, grimy, and desperate combat can be. And of course the theme of both the book and the series is that Easy Company was so effective because they had developed strong bonds of brotherhood through the numerous challenges they overcame. These challenges include D-Day, Market Garden, liberating concentration camps, and finally being the first into Hitler’s stronghold at Eagle’s Nest. But if you were to pick the hardest thing they did, it was probably defending Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.

Watching and reading about Bastogne was a sobering experience. It is also the point where the three things I just mentioned crystallized into this line of inquiry. Given that it might be helpful to give you a brief overview of the Siege of Bastogne.

The German offensive took the Allies completely by surprise. As a result there was a serious lack of manpower available to counter it. Having no other alternative Eisenhower ordered that every available unit, no matter their status, needed to be mobilized. This ultimately meant that the 101st, which had been recuperating, was rushed to Bastogne, a major crossroads in the area. This all happened at the end of December 1944, during a particularly harsh winter. Not only was the 101st hugely outnumbered, but the soldiers lacked cold-weather gear, ammunition, food and medical supplies. Nor could they easily get those things. The Germans quickly surrounded them, and the weather was so bad that planes were grounded. As a result they didn’t even have the option of being supplied by air.

If you really want a full sense of the situation I would urge you to watch the Bastogne episode of the miniseries. It’s available on Netflix. But I suspect even that depiction is only the palest imitation of what they actually went through.

II- The Issue

That was how I came to think about the issue of women in front-line positions, which raises the question: what thoughts was I having? Anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time knows that I have a pretty conservative attitude to things like this. To put it in the familiar terms of Chesterton’s Fence, for a long time there was a fence which served to keep women out of front-line combat. Certainly there were exceptions, but the vast majority of the time women got into that position by climbing the fence, not because the fence had been removed.¹

Our own fence against women in combat was removed in 2013, and even then there was a carve out for special forces which wasn’t removed until 2016. So the fence hasn’t been gone for very long. You might think, based on this, that I’m going to argue for putting the fence back. But actually I’m going to be doing the opposite, at least somewhat. Chesterton says that you shouldn’t remove a fence without understanding what its purpose is. In keeping with that, before I recommend putting the fence back up I’m going to examine some reasons why maybe we don’t need it anymore.

III- Technology will change wars

One might argue that the sort of warfare we engaged in during World War II and Bastogne has been made permanently obsolete by technology. We will never again have soldiers in shallow foxholes trying not to freeze to death as they confront other soldiers across a front. Instead combat will be conducted using large quantities of drones, and rather than soldiers we’ll have drone operators. If this is the case then one might argue that the change, which seems so very recent, is in fact perfectly timed. Perhaps people had legitimate reasons for objecting to women in combat previously, but if frontline combat consists of sitting in a comfy chair in front of a screen, how could one object to that?

This seems like a fair point, but it might nevertheless be premature. Even if this is eventually the way wars will be conducted, it’s not the way they’re conducted now. Also if there’s one thing war teaches us is that it’s hard to predict exactly what technology is going to be important. While the war in Ukraine has involved lots of drones, it has also revealed the continued importance of artillery. This is to say nothing of all the ways in which the war in Ukraine strongly resembles WWI (i.e. lots of trenches). If one has a hard time imagining female soldiers in Bastogne, imagining them in the charnel house of WWI is even more difficult. All of which is to say that this defense of women in the military is at best premature, and at worst based on predictions which will turn out to be inaccurate.

IV- Technology has already changed wars

Another approach is to point out that technology has already changed. Not in terms of the weapons being used, but in terms of the creature comforts the military is able to provide. Recently, US dominance has been such that there has been no shortage of clean barracks, hot food, and adequate lavatories. In other words bringing up something like Bastogne is pointless because US soldiers will never again have to face such appalling conditions. Also even if the comforts I listed aren’t always available there does seem to have been a trend of military conditions getting better. The seven days of Bastogne were less harsh than months in a WWI trench which were probably better than the “sodomy and the lash” of the 18th century British Navy. As such it seems only natural that as this trend continues to improve that it would eventually reach a point where any objections based on harshness would dissipate.

I think people making a defense like this realize that nothing lasts forever, but should we not take advantage of these conditions while they exist? Yes, there are worries about a rising China, and an increasingly bellicose Russia, but the US military still has an enormous amount of resources. Certainly it’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where we have to worry about fighting on home soil in a fashion similar to the Ukrainians.

I understand all of this, and I’d say I’m almost persuaded, but it’s also true that wars can turn on a dime. Here the Siege of Bastogne is once again instructive. Part of the reason the Allies were caught by surprise is that they similarly felt that the hard part of the war was over. That Germany was beaten and all that was left was a slow march towards Berlin. This is why the 101st didn’t have cold weather gear; they were resting and recuperating, and the plan was that they wouldn't see combat again until spring at the earliest. But as we saw then, and as I believe we will see again, wars have a history of not going how you expect them to.

V- What if things truly were gender blind?

Perhaps in the past the absolute restriction on women in combat came about because logistically it was impractical to accommodate the rare female who really was suited for combat. However, these days we have very sophisticated systems, systems which can accommodate all manner of exceptions. Perhaps if this is the case there’s no reason not to admit women. That is, provided the standards for admission remain gender blind and the exceptions don’t reduce combat effectiveness.

To put it in more concrete terms, one does get the sense that Bastogne would have been very different if the 101st had been 50% women. But what if there had been only a handful of women? Women who had passed all of the same tests as the men, and fulfilled the same physical requirements? (And furthermore that these requirements had not been softened just for their sake.) I’m picturing someone like Vasquez from the movie Aliens.

This all seems pretty reasonable, but it also seems to lean heavily on a narrow set of measurable metrics, while overlooking a lot of intangibles. We could spend several posts arguing about those intangibles, but perhaps there’s a shortcut. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) seems to have gone the farthest down this path and conducted the most rigorous research. I had ChatGPT summarize it. (Follow the link to see the full conversation.) It does seem to be a mixed bag. Some highlights:

Studies have shown that female combat soldiers experience unique adaptation processes compared to their male counterparts and non-combat female soldiers. Challenges include physical demands and social dynamics within combat units, contributing to a higher dropout rate among women in these roles.

Research has highlighted physiological differences that may impact performance in combat roles.

Despite challenges, female combat soldiers have demonstrated exceptional performance. Notably, during the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, female soldiers played crucial roles in defense operations, showcasing their capabilities in active combat situations.

The phrase “physiological differences” covers most of the objections we’ve been talking about. And it’s perhaps the one most people focus on. It does seem like the “Vasquez argument” would mitigate a great deal of that, but it’s impossible to say for sure. The soldiers profiled in Band of Brothers served for over three years, in some of the hottest action of the European theater, and yet the seven day Siege of Bastogne was constantly being brought up as the true crucible. You can imagine physiological differences which wouldn’t have emerged in training, and might not have emerged on the first few days of the siege, but what about day five or six? Of course this is the sort of thing the IDF couldn’t possibly test for. It would be barbaric to subject people to the conditions of Bastogne as part of an experiment, so we really don’t know.

But perhaps the biggest intangible is covered by the phrase “social dynamics”. The idea of unit cohesion which is stressed over and over again in Band of Brothers—an emphasis so strong it ended up being the title of the book. Being very selective about which women are allowed to participate in frontline combat might (or might not) eliminate the physiological differences, but my sense is that social dynamics is a much harder nut to crack.

VI- War is the one thing we can’t afford to get wrong

There’s a well meaning and understandable effort to have the same rules that apply to a normal job also apply to the job of frontline soldier. And many, if not most of the arguments I raise, are precisely arguments for why being a soldier has become more and more like holding a normal job. But of course we’re worried about those times, even though rare, when it’s not like a normal job. When it may in fact be the most important job in the whole nation. A job that allows for the existence of all the other jobs, everything else we call normal, and of course the existence of the nation itself. Sometimes success is balanced on the edge of a knife, and even small changes might mean the difference between glorious victory and ignominious defeat.

I know that using the term “glorious victory” is archaic. And maybe the concept of war itself will eventually be equally archaic. But I don’t think we’re there yet. As such it’s possible that the old fence we removed also happened to be a very important fence. Given that possibility, it’s entirely appropriate to continue to discuss our, still very recent, decision. I hope my own attempts at contributing to this discussion have been useful.

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Allow me to make one final plug for the reading and watching Band of Brothers at the same time. Perhaps you’ve read the book, but not watched the miniseries, or more likely you’ve watched the miniseries, but not read the book. Doing both is more than the sum of its parts.

Speaking of something that’s less than the sum of its parts… Consider subscribing if you haven’t already.

1. ChatGPT was able to provide a half dozen historical examples where you could credibly say that the “fence had been removed”. All of which are very interesting, but they should be weighed against the thousands and thousands of occasions where the fence was very much intact.