
DATE: Monday, October 18, 1997              TAG: 9710170153

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

                                            LENGTH:   62 lines

WOMEN ON BOARDTODAY'S DEDICATION OF THE MILITARY WOMEN'S MEMORIAL IN ARLINGTON IS A TRIBUTE TO THE MANY WHO SERVED AND THE MANY WHO ARE STILL ON DUTY.

THEY HAVE been part of the American military from the beginning: As the aides to the guerrillas of the Revolution, as nurses in the Civil War and every war since, as ``yeomanettes'' and ``Marinettes'' in the first World War and WACs and WAVEs and SPARs in the second.

They have tailhooked on carrier decks and carried rifles into desert combat, commanded the brigade at Annapolis, skippered warships.

Today, more than two centuries after women took up the fight for a frontier nation-to-be, they will get long-overdue recognition from the country it has become.

The Women in Military Service for America Memorial will be dedicated in Arlington at noon. It honors a proud history - that of roughly 1.8 million women who have served in the armed forces.

It is a history still being written. For even thousands of women gather at the new memorial, as thousands more participate in a candlelight march across Washington tonight, women in uniform will be at work.

And some of those working the hardest will be aboard the Navy's ships.

Just 30 years ago, federal law mandated that no more than two in every 100 enlisted sailors could be women.

Today, one in eight members of the Navy's enlisted ranks is female.

Twenty-five years ago, the service tentatively launched a trial program to put women aboard noncombatant ships.

Today, nearly 8,000 women serve on Navy vessels, more than 4,800 of them on ships built for combat and in deployed carrier air wings.

Women are an integral part of shipboard life today, and an ever-greater, ever-more-influential part of the service's life in general.

They have broached Navy tradition and quieted old salts' doubts with skill, smarts and a willingness to sweat. On ship and shore, at Stateside bases and in faraway seas, women are working alongside their male counterparts not only in the glory jobs that capture headlines - fighter pilot, ship's captain - but in the dirty, exhausting labor that keeps the fleet at sea.

Wearing blue shirts and boondockers, eating grilled cheese on the mess decks, missing home.

Standing lonely watches, and suffering boredom, and enduring zero privacy.

Being sailors. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photos by Tamara Voninski

On deployment: Crew members on the Theodore Roosevelt...

Cori Slade, center,...

Men and woman take their places together...

Petty Officer 2nd Class Chistina Beal,...

Airman Linnea Helgemo in the tool room...

Seaman Melanie Sprull carries a bag full...

Lt. Susan Geis, ships navigator...

Lt. Kristin "Rosie" Junbluth,...

Woman relax in an airwing...