It's My Country Too

by Jerri Bell, Tracy Crow

  There was one girl in Beast Barracks who got the worst hazing of any of us. She was physically hazed . . . one time a gang of guys grabbed her. They shut her up inside a metal locker and then started pounding on it. The poor girl was terrified. She was reduced to a trembling nothing; by the end of the summer she quit. When she gave up, one of our female classmates said, “She didn’t have what it takes.”

  Most of us couldn’t tolerate weakness. . . .

  Admittedly, we weren’t highly comforting friends to women who were struggling. Everyone’s image was linked somehow. In fact, there were times when we’d cringe at the performance of a less capable female classmate. We’d think, To hell with unity; I’m a member of my platoon. There was constant tension between showing solidarity with female classmates and wanting to be one of the group. As [one] said, “Sometimes, you just wanted to belong. For crying out loud, you just wanted to belong.”

  We weren’t always hostile toward those women who couldn’t keep up—but we would snap at them or make caustic comments. We knew we were living according to an intensely competitive system governed by a stopwatch. We’d distance ourselves from any woman who wasn’t performing up to par. We’d damn her with silence by refusing to defend her against a male classmate’s negative observations. Because, factually, the men’s assessments of the women were generally true—yes, the woman did fall out of X number of runs. If the men were saying something slanderous, we might have said something in her behalf, but if it were related to performance, we wouldn’t. We didn’t want to get into the issue of performance indicators; we just didn’t want to open up that wound.

  Linda Maloney

  (1961–)

  U.S. Navy

  Linda Maloney served twenty years in the Navy, first as an enlisted air traffic controller, and later as a naval flight officer. She flew both the A6 Intruder and EA6B Prowler. One of the first women in U.S. history to join a combat military flying squadron, she received numerous military awards, including the Distinguished Air Medal for combat, awarded for flights flown over southern Iraq in support of the no-fly zone during her deployment to the Arabian Gulf. She retired in 2004. In 2016 former Army pilot and author Shannon Huffman Polson interviewed Maloney; the excerpts below are transcribed from Polson’s blog.

  I was flying in the EA-6A for about 6 months when on a warm February day in 1991 I was scheduled to fly an electronic attack aggressor flight with a senior pilot in the squadron. We were flying up Jacksonville, with another EA-6A. The flight would be a training exercise for the USS Forrestal and its battle group, about 100 miles off the Florida coast. The pilot of my aircraft was the Mission Commander and he briefed the flight for the two EA-6As and all the emergency procedures. The flight would take all day since we would do a couple of “runs” on the USS Forrestal and then fly into an Air Force Base up near Tampa to refuel and then fly back out to conduct an afternoon mission.

  We launched from NAS Key West in our vintage EA-6A and headed up the coastline to work with the carrier battle group for an electronic warfare exercise. It was a beautiful sunny February morning. It took about an hour to fly from Key West to the area east of Jacksonville, Florida, where the battle group was stationed. I radioed the ship that we were ready to begin our simulated electronic and missile attacks. After several runs on the ship, about 12:30 pm, we radioed the ship we were complete and would see them later in the afternoon. We told our wingman to rendezvous and then go to a cruise position. Then we headed for Patrick Air Force Base (AFB), approximately 200 miles away. The area controller cleared us on our way at 15,000 feet.

  As we started our climb, the plane acted a little sluggish. The pilot adjusted the controls. The aircraft fishtailed as though we had flown through some mild jet wash. Then the master caution light on the front display panel began flashing and the backup hydraulics light illuminated. The flight hydraulic system indicated zero pressure.

  I started going through the procedures for a single hydraulic failure, instructing the pilot to secure the automatic flight control system. He pulled back the throttle to slow down from our 300 knots. We called our wingman, and discussed options, deciding that we needed to take an arrested landing over at Naval Air Station (NAS) Cecil Field.

  I radioed to the Air Traffic Controller that we were declaring an emergency and needed clearance to Cecil Field for an arrested landing. He cleared us directly to NAS Cecil Field. My pilot and I quickly discussed our game plan, and then began to climb to 15,000 feet and slow to 270 knots. Neither of us expected what happened next.

  The master caution light illuminated again and then the rudder-throw light came on. A quick glance showed the combined hydraulic system at zero. No sooner had I noticed the reading, the aircraft began a rapid roll to the left and the nose fell below the horizon. The pilot pulled the stick to the right and aft to no effect. He fed in full right rudder, but the airplane did not respond. The aircraft continued to roll left and descend. As we passed through 60 degrees left bank, and 20 degrees nose down, I heard the pilot say, “I don’t have control, Eject!”

  I grabbed the upper ejection handle and my seat exploded through the canopy glass. I recall a tremendous explosion, riding the rails of the ejection seat upward amidst the yellow confetti of my kneeboard paper. I lost consciousness and when I came to, I was hanging in my parachute descending towards the ocean. I usually would wear my contacts but that day I’d decided to wear glasses. My helmet visor had ripped off from the force of the ejection and my glasses were gone. All I could see was the ocean below me and the shoreline far in the distance.

  [Maloney remembers her post-ejection procedures and is picked up by Navy search and rescue.]

  I still have [the rescuer’s] nametag in my Navy Scrapbook.

  [Maloney’s squadron deploys for weeks at a time to conduct training for ships and for combat squadrons. During one detachment to Puerto Rico, an aircraft carrier pulls in and the aviators onboard the carrier host a Foc’sle Follies, a party with skits and jokes for only the squadron members assigned to the carrier. The air wing extends the invitation to Maloney’s squadron since they are in the area.]

  I remember thinking it was great to be included, but that changed quickly when several of the jokes and skits were directed towards the women in my squadron. The A-6 squadron guys stood up, lifted their shirts and yelled towards several women sitting behind them, “Show us your t * * *!” while the F-14 guys yelled “No c * * * * except in the rack.” We were taken aback a bit and not quite sure how to respond. After the party, they invited us to the Officers Club to have drinks but I remember feeling conflicted and uncomfortable knowing we had been insulted but also expected us to take it as a joke.

  [In 1993 Secretary of the Navy Les Aspin ordered the military to drop restrictions that prevented women from flying combat missions. By April 1994 more than sixty female naval aviators received orders to combat squadrons deployed on aircraft carriers and other naval combatants.]

  A year after the law’s repeal, I got my wish. I was assigned to a fleet combat squadron as a naval flight officer in the EA-6B Prowler, a four-seater jammer jet, and deployed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln heading to Iraq in April 1995. . . .

  I didn’t understand the implications of what it was to live under so much scrutiny and attention. It was like living in a fishbowl. In my opinion the naval aviation community didn’t handle it well. We all knew the behaviors exhibited at Tailhook were part of naval aviation . . . it was part of the ego and camraderie ingrained in being a naval aviator. But initially, many in the naval aviation community denied there was anything inappropriate going on instead of admitting what we all knew happened at Tailhook and agreeing to change going forward. Tailhook grew into an ugly scandal and along with many careers negatively impacted, the incident pitted many of the guys against the women aviators. The combat exclusion law was officially repealed within a few years of Tailhook, but the whole time period was angst-ridden with strong antagonism by some male aviators toward the women
in their ranks.

  • • •

  During an October 1994 detachment on the Lincoln, as the squadron duty officer for the day, I was in the ready room, coordinating the Prowlers’ flight schedule, answering the phone, and documenting the squadron pilots’ carrier qualifications. I could see all the aircraft conducting their approaches on the ready room television. When my aviator girlfriends approached the carrier in their F/A-18 Hornets and F-14 Tomcats, I paid particular attention; our excitement and pride at being assigned to combat squadrons remained extremely high. As I documented one carrier landing, I saw Kara [Hultgreen] approaching the Lincoln in her F-14. Within seconds, I knew something was horribly wrong.

  Horrified, I watched her aircraft lose altitude and start rolling to the left. The landing signal officers screamed, “Power, power, power!” and then yelled for the crew to eject. Kara and her back-seater, the radar intercept officer (RIO), ejected.

  I waited anxiously for the carrier’s loudspeaker to announce that both aviators were safe. The call came that one of the carrier’s helicopters had picked up the RIO, but Kara was missing.

  I watched in shock, unable to believe what was happening, expecting to see the boat’s helicopter land on the deck with Kara aboard. About two hours later, a few women aviators met in one of our staterooms, looking at each other in disbelief, fearing the worst. We kept hoping Kara would be found, until it was obvious she had not survived. Several weeks later, divers discovered her body on the ocean floor, still strapped in her ejection seat. . . .

  When we had arrived, the attitude toward us was tentative. But after Kara died, it went downhill.

  [Polson asks what advice Maloney would give a new officer today.]

  Become the best at every job you have, even if it’s the worst in the command. Strive to be a professional in all aspects of your job. Take advantage of every professional and educational opportunity that comes your way. Be a team player, but stand up for your convictions. I’d also say to take time to really contemplate what you want in life. The earlier you take time to really listen to yourself, the better the decisions you’ll be able to make along the way. When I initially joined the squadron—VAQ-135, the Black Ravens, the command leadership was very supportive of having women aviators as part of the aircrew. However, when a new squadron commander took charge, bringing along several aviators from his previous squadron, the aviators that followed him to our squadron changed the environment of the command literally overnight to one extremely hostile toward women aviators.

  I actually was okay with the men who you knew didn’t want you there. At least you knew where they stood. It was the guys who would act like you were part of the team but would turn on you in a group setting that bothered me. The guys who were the most supportive and trustworthy were the other minority aviators in the squadron. I still keep in touch with some of them and am thankful to have served with them.

  It was a difficult and challenging time. As I look back on it now, I would have handled it much differently. I was passionate and determined but also naïve and immature, and wore my heart on my sleeve too much. Of course I have age and experience now on my side. If I had had a mentor to confide in and with whom to discuss career or professional decisions, and even personal challenges or decisions, it would have made a world of difference. . . .

  [Aviation integration is] something I haven’t quite come to terms with yet. There is still a painful feeling looking back and contemplating the military aviation integration transition and those professional relationships with many of my male contemporaries. I wonder how many of them are dads now, especially dads of daughters. I wonder what they say to their daughters about achieving their goals and aspirations and if their attitudes have changed over the years towards women in non-traditional jobs such as flying military combat aircraft.

  It is interesting for me as a mother of boys now aged nine and twelve years. I feel like part of my job as a mother is train my boys to be encouraging to their friends and schoolmates, whether boys or girls. I tell them every day that I have confidence in them and they can achieve anything if they are determined and work hard. I love that they don’t think it is odd or out of the ordinary for girls to want to fly jets or pursue other traditionally male jobs. To them, life has always been that way.

  Victoria Hudson

  (1959–)

  U.S. Army

  Victoria Hudson, the author of No Red Pen: Writers, Writing Groups and Critique, earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Saint Mary’s College of California in 2008. Her poetry and essays have been published in a variety of online and print literary journals, and anthologies, and she sponsors an annual registration scholarship for one writer to attend the San Francisco Writers Conference. She is an urban farmer, voracious reader and photographer. She coaches women’s and youth rugby and is a mom and wife. In 2012, she retired after thirty-three years’ service. The following is an original essay submitted for inclusion in this collection.

  My Army Wife

  In a way, 9/11 helped solidify my relationship. When the towers went down, Monika and I had been dating about nine months—and the U-haul hadn’t been pulled up to the door yet. I was packing and checking my field gear, getting ready to mobilize right after the attacks when we had a discussion about being gay in the military and what that might mean for us. I pretty much said if you can’t do this, break up with me now. And no. We can’t be friends if you do.

  Three years later, we got married. We had a year engagement and then a wedding at Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis, Missouri, where I’d been stationed on my second recall to active duty after 9/11. Two weeks before our wedding, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco decided to allow same sex marriages and the night before Valentine’s Day in 2004, I asked Monika if she wanted to get married the next day. Surprised is not the word. Given my military status, getting married to someone of the same gender was a specific prohibition in military regulations. Two weeks later, we had our religious ceremony. I wore a civilian suit with my military medals on the lapel, and cut the cake with my officer’s sword. We spoke at the reception about how the very act of wedding, both of them, were acts of civil disobedience and grounds for my discharge from the service.

  The San Francisco weddings were declared invalid. In 2008, same sex marriages were declared legal, but we decided two weddings, legal or not, were enough. Then Monika became pregnant. Just before election day, with the risk of Proposition Eight passing and once again making marriage not legal, we were married again, locally, at San Leandro Temple Beth Shalom. We registered the marriage license as a protected marriage. It would not show up in any public record search. This was our only means for protection against any action of DADT pursuit or normal security recertification of my Top Secret clearance for the military. The prospect of parenthood and not being legally married, which would have left me without solidified parental rights to our child, was unthinkable. We are a family, and marriage so our child would have two parents was an important value.

  When our daughter was born, a new issue with the military came up—how to register her as a dependent without outing myself at the same time. I had to register her before she turned a year old. We spent the year trying to find the best way. If I adopted her, Monika would be required to renounce her parental rights. That certainly defeated the point of our third marriage and first legal one intended to secure parental rights. We tried to do a special adoption where Monika would not have to give up her rights, but no judge would assist with that process. In either course, a new birth certificate would have been issued, without Monika listed as the mother. This would certainly have protected me from the military, but how could I deny our daughter her own biological mother?

  In the end, Bridget Wilson, one of the attorneys that is a resource for what was then the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (now a different organization), noted that the wheels of military justice turn slowly and the military is after all a bureaucracy. With that in mind, I took in her birth cer
tificate, which had both my and Monika’s name as parents, and registered our daughter. No one actually looked at the document. Which I’d been counting on. No questions were asked. I was no longer a single soldier with no dependents, I was a single mother with one child dependent.

  Single parents are required to maintain a “family care plan” which married service members do not have to maintain. It’s a plan with power of attorney and notarized agreements regarding who will care for the child if the “single” parent is deployed. Obviously, Monika was on my plan. As a “friend.”

  Monika was also listed as “friend” on the DD 93 emergency data form. The DD 93 is the document that provides direction when a service member is killed or wounded in service. Because I declined to list any “related” kin, and had “no” spouse, I was required to receive counseling regarding my “unusual” choice of beneficiary for my death benefits. I found this particularly insulting and offensive given the ten years we’d been together. Monika, like every other military spouse, like every other Army wife, steadfastly supported me while I deployed to war and otherwise served the nation. She took over and cared for all aspects of my life while I was gone. Paid my bills, fed and cared for my pets, took care of our home, raised our child while I was gone on duty, was the support that enabled me to serve without worry about the home front.

  And she did it all alone. No family support group, no phone calls to check in and see if she needed anything, no lifeline of unofficial information via the Family Readiness Group grapevine. No one to talk with about her fears and worries when she didn’t hear from me for a few days or longer while I was in a war zone. All alone. The DD-93 is the form that tells the service who to notify. I was not allowed to list my spouse on that form as a spouse, which would ensure that she would receive the respect, courtesy, and dignity of a family notification.