[jambutty]

Originally Posted by Eric

A little question to clear up some confusion: you say that there are no women in the infantry; does this mean that the British don't employ women in combat roles? The Canadian forces do employ women in combat tho' not to the same extent as they do men, of course. In fact, one of the 88 Canadian KIAs in Afghanistan was a woman: Captain Niccola Goddard, forward artillery observer in the RCHA was killed in action near Kandahar last year.

It depends on how you define combat roles.

Women serving on warships are in potential combat roles even if they don’t actually man the guns and missile launchers as is every person on board. Incoming missiles and shells do not discriminate as they shred a ship to ribbons. Neither does an exploding shell in the field.

I understand that no woman will be knowingly be placed in a position where hand to hand combat might occur - in other words the infantry.