Four women undergo warfare training in N.C.

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Four women undergo warfare training in N.C.

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C.

The street vendor emerged from a building and disrupted the patrol as it moved quietly up the sandy street.

“Hey, you wanna buy a soda?” he asked as he pushed the can in sailors’ faces.

Then, a gunman with an assault rifle appeared up the road and sprayed the patrol with bullets. Sailors scurried behind walls, some returning fire sporadically.

“I’m ready to move!” Seaman Anna Schnatzmeyer called out from a compound, where she found herself alone. No one answered. Her comrades were across the street, fighting inside a building where they’d taken shelter.

She called again, but getting no answer, sprinted across the road without covering fire. She thought she had no choice. An assailant had entered the compound behind her. Orange paint pellets from his gun splattered the back of her body armor and helmet.

If this had been real combat, Schnatzmeyer would be dead. So would most of her squad of coastal riverines, which was getting its first exposure to the hard realities of ground combat.

Twenty-two men and four women participated in the Riverine Combat Skills course in Camp Lejeune that ended May 2 – one of the first warfare training programs to integrate women since the secretary of defense lifted a ban on women in combat in January.

Perhaps the biggest lesson for many of these sailors was realizing just how much warriors rely on one another in battle. That dependency calls for an extraordinary level of trust, and it highlights some of the questions the military must answer as it integrates women into combat units.

Does it matter if a woman isn’t as strong or as fast as a man? If she needs help climbing a high wall during a firefight or dragging a heavy colleague off the battlefield – does that make her less of an asset? Can focus, determination and commitment compensate for physical shortcomings?

In many ways, the women in the five-week course blended seamlessly with their male counterparts. They all faced new tasks that challenged them mentally, physically and psychologically.

Some women struggled with physical tasks. For other sailors, the sensory overload of combat was most difficult – bullets flying, noise everywhere, fear, exhaustion and confusion all hitting them at once.

So, when the course was over and it was time to reflect, instructor Bryan Henley was not just addressing the women when he gave trainees one last piece of wisdom:

“When you go home, you gotta look yourself in the mirror and see if you got what it takes,” said Henley, a former Marine with combat experience. “It’s not about ‘God and country.’ When the shit hits the fan, it’s about the guy to your right and to your left. You gotta have what it takes to finish the fight.”

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Coastal riverines protect internal and coastal waterways from enemy action. This puts them at risk of possible ground battle, something most Navy units don’t train for.

During the course, sailors were introduced to various weapons, learning not only how to fire them, but also how to break them down. They learned navigation, communications and fighting strategies, how to secure a room, guard an area and patrol an open road.

The challenges were particularly daunting in the final week, when the trainees applied all the skills they’d learned during three days of strenuous mock fighting in a wooded area of Camp Lejeune known as Combat Town.

There, they donned more than 30 pounds of gear, were issued assault rifles that fired blanks, and went into battle scenarios that had them exchanging fire with attackers, ducking into buildings and compounds, and devising routes of escape.

From the beginning, the women – all masters-at-arms based at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth – said they were so busy learning that they didn’t worry about what they couldn’t do.

“I love learning new things,” said Seaman Apprentice Audrey Warren, a 22-year-old from Henderson, Tenn. “I felt like I had to prove myself a little bit, but most of the guys here are really nice.”

All acknowledged having trouble with an exercise that involved running 100 yards, lunging 50 yards, dragging their partners across a field, and then calming their heart rates enough to fire at a target.

Several said they weren’t able to drag their male partners that distance alone, but they believed that wasn’t a game-changer.

“We all struggled. I got halfway, then we had to assist each other,” said Petty Officer 3rd Class Linda Phonesaithip, a 21-year-old from Wisconsin. “I know I have a lot of work to do when I get back.”

Seaman Apprentice Susan Seibert, 24, from Illinois, said she signed up looking for action. The challenges, she said, will only make her work harder.

“During the PT, the instructors treated us like the guys, so we had to push ourselves more to keep up,” said Seibert, whose blond curls slipped out of her helmet in sharp incongruity with the camouflage paint that stained her face.

“I am very stubborn,” she added. “If someone tells me I can’t do it, I am going to keep on trying. … I am going to prove them wrong.”

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One squad patrolled the main street of Combat Town, taking enemy fire. A second took position on the other side of camp, inside a residential compound where an assailant hiding in the woods had pinned them down with machine-gun fire.

One of their own was outside the compound, injured.

The third squad portrayed the enemy.

Camouflaged behind trees, Schnatzmeyer lay on her belly, her legs splayed and her focus on the sights of the M-240 machine gun she fired at her fellow riverines.

She was intent on laying down perfect fire.

It worked. The sailors in the compound were so overcome, it took them a while to pull their fallen comrade to safety so they could apply first aid.

Schnatzmeyer, who barely passes 5 feet tall, joined the Maritime Expeditionary Security Force a year ago before it merged with the riverines to become the coastal riverines. The merger brought women into the new coastal riverine force just in time for the ban on women in combat to be lifted.

As a master-at-arms – the Navy’s equivalent of military police – Schnatzmeyer thought she’d be manning a gate somewhere, checking IDs.

But once opportunities opened for women, the mother of a toddler decided she was ready to step up.

“Why would you join the military if you are not prepared to do the calling of being in the military?” she asked.

“Nobody wants to be away from family, in combat, in danger. But you can’t just say you are going to be home all the time.

“If they send me, I’ll go.”

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The course included riverines from Yorktown, who are about to deploy to the Middle East, and a squad from Portsmouth.

Several men said they’d joined the riverines as a backup choice after failing to get into other elite Navy fighting units, such as the SEALs or divers.

The women, on the other hand, were thrilled to be getting the opportunity to join a combat unit and were determined to succeed.

“We feel like we are almost making history,” Phonesaithip said. “We are not the first, but we are creating a path for other women to do this.”

The five-week combat skills course is designed to educate sailors about the rigors of combat – not weed out weaker sailors, something that occurs later in the process.

Seaman Nathan Vincent, a Yorktown-based riverine, had doubts about serving alongside women in combat.

“A couple of them don’t meet the standards,” he said. “We were doing our runs, carrying the wounded, and a couple of them couldn’t do it. If a woman can meet the physical standards, then I don’t care.”

The current riverine standards don’t assess whether a sailor can carry another person or climb a wall in a firefight.

With some added requirements specific to the job, riverines follow Navy standards for physical fitness.

That could change: The Pentagon has given military leaders the task of presenting plans for integrating women into their units. But a riverine spokeswoman said the physical standards will be the same.

The Navy’s physical readiness test uses a sliding scale for men and women. It also adjusts the requirements by age group.

So, for example, while a 20- to 24-year-old man must do at least 37 push-ups and run 1½ miles in 13½ minutes, a woman the same age must do 16 push-ups and run 1½ miles in 15½ minutes.

“What we lack, males can pick up,” Warren said. “What males lack, we can pick up. It’s a give-and-take.”

On their second night in Combat Town, as the group prepared for a night mission, Seibert emerged from the barracks with an extra backpack layered over her body armor.

“Warm gear,” she said, when asked what she was carrying.

“Foundation, eyeliner …” quipped Petty Officer 3rd Class Christian Gvist, who is in Seibert’s Portsmouth unit.

“We all tease each other,” he explained.

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On the last day was the obstacle course – a challenge for men and women alike.

But short women such as Schnatzmeyer and Warren had it particularly rough.

Having to jump up to grab a bar or climb a high wall made some of the obstacles insurmountable.

So the women jumped and reached, and when they couldn’t make it, instructors would allow one to climb on another’s back in order to reach the bar and continue.

When it was over, Seibert had a bandage on her hand where her calluses had ripped off as she slipped from the bar. And none managed to climb the ropes. But they were satisfied.

“The stuff you go through here, it teaches you a lot about yourself,” Schnatzmeyer said as she cleaned weapons – the final task of the course. “It teaches you that you can always do better.”

To get herself through the tough parts, she said, she thought about her family: her husband and her 3-year-old daughter.

“I want her to have someone to look up to, and to just be herself, whether she’s really girly or really a tomboy,” Schnatzmeyer said, pushing up her ballistic goggles to swipe away a tear. “I would like to be a role model for her.”

Then she got back to work scraping grease off the inside of a rifle.

Dianna Cahn, 757-222-5846, dianna.cahn@pilotonline.com

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