THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 17, 1995 TAG: 9504150016
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A7 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Suzanne Fields
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
The aircraft carrier Eisenhower has completed its historic six-month cruise with the first women aboard a combat ship.
It steamed into home port in Norfolk last week, and ``steam'' is the exact word to describe it.
Some sailors say it was well worth more than a million dollars in renovations to create the private sleeping quarters and bathrooms - ``heads,'' in the slang of the sea - for the 450 women in the crew of 5,000. Others grouse that the Eisenhower is more showboat than warship, and the Navy is lucky not to be at war.
The ship performed ``as well as, if not better than, before women were aboard,'' Capt. Doug Roulstone tells a breathless correspondent for Time magazine. ``As a matter of fact, if you took women off the ship now, it wouldn't feel right.''
That's no doubt true for the six couples who told the captain they had fallen in love at sea. They'll be split up in the next deployment, half of each taking a shore job of choice. As for the 15 women who left early in the cruise because they discovered (hark!) they were pregnant, they're probably happier to be giving birth on dry land. Another 14 pregnant women were removed from sea duty before the ship left Norfolk.
When the Navy tallied up the pregnancies and saw a problem, it imposed new regulations stipulating that a woman will be returned to the ship or an ``equivalent billet'' after she gives birth. What she does with the baby, however, is her business. The Navy's attitude is don't ask, don't tell.
John Dalton, secretary of the Navy, told me over a breast of chicken lunch the other day that he will consider mandating pregnancy tests before female sailors leave home port, but he wants more data before he actually goes that far.
Submarines, he says, are off-limits for women because they're not practical: ``I know the close, confined quarters, and the people sometimes have to do what they call `hot' bunking, use the same bunk for more than one person.'' Mr. Dalton seems a bit at sea himself in discussing sex at sea.
One couple aboard the Eisenhower did a little (or a lot) of ``hot bunking'' of their own. They hid in one of the ship's compartments and videotaped themselves doing what, to the Navy's astonishment, comes naturally. They got caught when the male partner turned the video into show-and-tell entertainment for his shipmates. That was going too far even for the chief of naval operations.
``The Navy is willing to tolerate love - as long as love doesn't get in the way of fighting,'' Time reports, declaring the co-ed carrier a rousing success. It was at least an arousing success. Fortunately for all, the Eisenhower steamed into Haiti, circa 1995, not Saipan or Okinawa, circa 1945.
The co-ed sailors endured hardships bravely. The men cut down on their cussin', the ship's barber learned how to cut women's hair and gynecologists boarded the ship in case a woman suffered an ``unmentionable'' problem.
When the women found it inconvenient to walk the length of the 1,092 foot ship, for their nocturnal ablutions, the men gallantly gave up some of their urinals. When bras and panties were ruined in the ship's laundry because the washing machines had no ``gentle'' wash cycle, the ladies had to wash their lingerie by hand, gently.
Wives, worried lest their husbands be wounded by friendly female fire or by the piercing of Cupid's arrow, get to attend Navy seminars where they're briefed on the layout of the ship. If the accommodations were not reassuring, the wives were soothed, Time magazine reports, by receiving a better selection of homecoming gifts because husbands can now shop with female shipmates whose feminine eye is more attuned to a wife's womanly needs. Hmmmmm. Wouldn't any wife feel reassured?
Despite such fraternity-row bonhomie, some of Uncle Sam's good men afloat worry that the women in the cockpits might not be ready for rigorous sea duty. The Navy's bureaucrats, many of whom have never heard a shot fired in anger, cite the occasional case of female ``wash-outs,'' fliers returned to shore duty when they can't hack it as proof of a rigorous standard. They quickly cite the examples of male ``wash-outs,'' eager to make the point that men can be equally unqualified.
``Nobody wants lives on the carrier sacrificed to the altar of political correctness,'' Lt. Cmdr. Janet Marnane, a radar-intercept officer, tells Time.
No doubt. Such sacrifice would be mandated by the iron law of unintended consequences, which applies to the Navy, too. But skepticism abounds. ``We succeeded in this deployment,'' a male officer, wary of identification in the new politically correct Navy, says angrily. ``But would we succeed in combat?'' MEMO: Ms. Fields' column is distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate,
Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.
KEYWORDS: WOMEN IN THE MILITARY WOMEN IN COMBAT U.S. NAVY U.S.S
EISENHOWER by CNB