The Trump nomination of Pete Hegseth to run the Pentagon has sparked talk about his argument that women should be barred from the front lines in battle.
Actually, any remaining barriers to women serving in combat evaporated in 2015, when the Defense Department ordered the military to open all jobs to them, no matter how dangerous.
Women serving in war zones had long been exposed to peril before the 2015 order; many were wounded and some were killed during the extended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That was nothing new – battle heroics by women have been part of American life ever since Revolutionary times.
Maybe Hegseth was unfamiliar with the valor of Margaret Cochran Corbin, known by soldiers in 1776 as “Captain Molly.”
Four years earlier, as a 21-year-old, she married John Corbin, and when he joined the Pennsylvania military three years later she followed him into war – cooking for soldiers, doing their laundry, and caring for the wounded.
Her role changed dramatically on Nov. 16, 1776, when she dressed as a man and fought with her husband in the Battle of Fort Washington in Manhattan.
When he was killed while operating a cannon,”Molly” took over and fired on Hessian troops commanded by the British.
According to the National Women’s History Museum, “Other soldiers commented on Captain Molly’s steady aim and sure-shot.”
But an agony was just beginning: She was herself wounded by hostile fire that damaged her jaw and left breast, and rendered her unable to use her left arm ever again.
This was a battle won by the British command, which took her prisoner. Later released, she joined a regiment at West Point that cared for the wounded.
“Molly” was never registered as a soldier, but recognizing her bravery, in 1779 the Continental Congress awarded her a lifelong annual pension of $50 – about half what male veterans received. And the government issued her a new suit of clothes to replace the one that was ruined when battle maimed her.
Captain Molly died in 1800, and although there’s uncertainty about her actual gravesite, a monument at West Point was installed “In appreciation of her deeds for the cause of liberty and that her heroism may not be forgotten.”
Tales abound of other women doing valorous service in America’s wars.
How fitting that one of the objectors to Hegseth’s nomination has been Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D- Ill). As a 36-year-old Army captain in 2004, Duckworth lost both her legs in Iraq when a rocket-propelled grenade shot down the Blackhawk helicopter she was piloting.
Around the world, tales even from ancient history speak of female heroics in battle, none more impressive than the deeds of Vietnam’s Trung Sisters in 40 A.D.
Born to Vietnamese aristocrats and chafing under Chinese domination, they led 80,000 men and women in a successful revolt.
How impressively they fought was vividly described a few years ago in a military journal by Mary Raum, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport:
“Both sisters are experts in knife fighting and ride into the fray atop two white elephants in full battle armor, their ornately carved breastplates signaling their status as nobility. The sight of the monolithic beasts and the two women wielding handheld weapons instills fear in their enemies and breaks their ranks.”
It must have been quite a scene; maybe famed anthropologist Margaret Mead had it in mind when she once declared, “I do not believe in using women in combat – because females are too fierce.”
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
