Women in the forces? Not at the sharp edges, but certainly back in the hospitals and medical tents.
There is a huge psychological difference in being treated by a male or female nurse. A female not only makes you draw on the remains of your masculinity in order to gird your spiritual loins about yourself and fight to recover, but the subliminal sex thing, always there, even with your accountant or architect, makes you a better more brave version of yourself. Which unless taken to extremes, keeps the juices active in your head, where you often most need them.
A woman fighting in the same trench? Could lead to self-sacrifice, in absurd macho endeavour, which gets two killed. You can't trust sex. It is stronger than morality, promises or reason. Were that not so, how would you explain the barrage balloons that walk the street pushing prams? You might sit at a pavement bar, Campari soda in hand, wondering how what you see ever happened, but you can't distance yourself from the fact that it did. Truth is stranger than fiction. And don't bring up engaging personality: that wasn't what dunnit. Yeah, stuff best not mentioned, but there it is, mentioned not brushed under the carpet.
Fighting women make me think of rainbow warriors and street parades.
