Fort Benning, GA – A 26-year-old military police officer from Connecticut is among the first women to complete the Army’s elite Ranger School.
A defense official confirmed Wednesday to The Associated Press that Capt. Kristen Griest, who has served in Afghanistan and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is scheduled to graduate Friday from Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia. The official was not authorized to disclose the name publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
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Griest of Orange, Connecticut, will graduate alongside 25-year-old 1st Lt. Shaye Haver of Copperas Cove, Texas. Haver’s father confirmed that his daughter, an Apache helicopter pilot and West Point graduate, also finished the Ranger course.
The Griest and Haver families issued a joint statement Wednesday saying the women “are just like all the soldiers in Class 8-15 – happy, relieved, and ready for some good food and sleep.”
Is it so necessary to allow these few iconoclastic women to do what they want at the risk of undermining the morale of the entire army? American men like to feel a sense of machismo when they are serving in the military and the presence of even a few women undermine it. Obviously there are small thinkers at the Pentagong who think that technological superiority is the whole thing. I dont wonder how fast these women will succumb if they are ever in hand to hand combat on the front lines. And if the male soldiers naturally feel protective of them it could make an entire military unit that much more vulnerable. What was wrong with just permitting them to serve as combat pilots and snipers? In this case, less is definitely more.
29 years old? I failed that course at 25! Good for them!