Women soldiers in CM2

[Richard Morgan]

Recently, troop trials took place in the Brecon Beacons in Wales (Great Britain) with the purpose of assessing the suitability of women for service with infantry and cavalry. It seems that the (current) British Labour Government were very much in favour of the idea - the Army completely against it. Now that the dust has died down, it appears that the proposal has been quietly dropped - almost certainly because the Army fought an extremely successful rearguard action against it. This in part, consisted of leaking information to the media with regard to the results of the trials.

This (as I recall) is what this leaked information consisted of. 1) Women soldiers were five times more prone to injury than men soldiers. 2) A woman's body has to work 25% harder than an man's (on average) to achieve the same result. 3) When women soldiers were injured, this had a disproportionate effect on men soldiers, who tended to stop doing their job; and perhaps most damaging of all - 4) Anything that it was felt that women couldn't cope with was dropped from the trials, which as a result were invalid and amounted to little more than "aggresive camping."

Now I have personally observed women in the field on one occasion, and served with them in the field on another. In the first, a section of women soldiers took part in a section match in which I was competing. The general male reaction I must say, was to take our hats off to them for taking part and to wish them all the best. In the event, they came last. They certainly didn't disgrace themselves on the various stands, but what let them down, and let them down badly was the brute strength aspect: 15km night nav plus march & shoot (both in CEMO): nul points. The second occasion was on my sigs course. With regard to signals, the women were right up there with the men - indeed one lady was exceptional as I recall. The problems began when they had to manpack the radio, spare batteries plus all of the clobber that the infantry soldier has to carry from a to b.

I remember reading on a previous thread that BTS were planning on making no distinctions between women soldiers and their male counterparts at all - apart (presumably) from giving them female voices!!! It seems to me that this smacks very much of political correctness and that points 1 - 3 of my second paragraph should certainly be considered very carefully and that some differences should actually be modelled. I am 5 foot eleven inches and weigh 12 stone. My girlfriend is 5 foot 1 inch and weighs a tad over 7 stone. Put 80 lbs on her back and she couldn't even stand up.

Maybe Russian women are much more butch and hairy arsed than their western sisters, although my (limited) experience of them would indicate the contrary. Perhaps Russian manhood circa 1941-5 made far fewer concessions to gender than we did - coming from a different society: I don't know!! I certainly haven't seen the official results of the Brecon trials, I only have my own first hand observations to go on plus what I have gleaned from the papers. It strikes me that certain members of this forum coming from armies that allow/have tested women in front line service might be able to produce hard evidence or data on this subject. I would certainly be most interested in hearing from them and receiving BTS's justification of their stance. I await your replies with interest.

Richard.

[Michael Dorosh]

How many men wear 80 pounds on their back while firefighting?

During a tactical engagement, the first thing infantry does is drop their packs and rolls. Average web gear weighs in at 20 pounds, though photographic evidence suggests most men shed much of this as well - ie blanket or greatcoat, entrenching tool (though the Germans used them for close combat), mess kit, even water bottles - were abandoned during an engagment like we would see in CM, leaving them unencumbered.

Which is all beside the point, since Russian women soldiers did not serve in infantry companies - they were snipers, tank crew, etc.

And I was under the impression women soldiers were not going to be modelled in CM at all. Has this changed? I don't see the need for their inclusion.

[ 09-08-2001: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[PiggDogg]

Richard,

I fully understand what you presented and I agree. Women just do not have the brute strength that men have. Period. Also, the detrimental morale effects of women casualties upon their male comrades is nearly obvious to anyone (1) with brains, (2) uses those brains, and (3) understands basic human genetics.

Cheers, Richard :cool:

[Scipio]

I guess a point is : femal and male units have the same combat abilities. A woman can fire a gun or throw a grenade as accurate as any male. And about close combat - I wouldn't underestimate a woman (or man) with a knife or a spade...

[Andrew H.]

I didn't think that CM was going to specifically model women, either. Although I suppose if someone wanted to, they could use the new "fitness" modifier to simulate weaker units.

Although, as Michael pointed out, women were mostly (although not entirely) used in non-infantry roles, where the absence of sheer physical strength would not have been much of a disadvantage.

It appears to be true that, due to basic physiological differences between men and women, men always have the potential for greater upper body strength. However, the actual physiological strength potential of women is greater than comparisons of modern western women with modern western men would suggest. I.e., for various social reasons, women in the west today do not approach their physiological strength potential as closely as men do.

If you look at pictures of American farmwives of the mid 1800's, or of female slaves of the same era, it's often striking how large these women's hands and forearms are...basically from a lifetime of hard labor starting as a child. Including stuff like pushing a plow, chopping wood, carrying water, etc. They're not particularly attractive, but they sure are strong. I would suspect that many peasant women in the USSR in the 40's would have a similar physique.

So you might find, among women who performed a lot of manual labor in the USSR in the 40's, that, say 30% of them were able to perform at a level that the top 50% of men could perform at. Which is probably good enough for most common infantry purposes. It's probably also true that 0% of women would be able to perform at the level that the top 10 or 15% of men could achieve -- but that's not really relevant for infantry, as no country could afford to make infantry training so demanding that only the top 10-15% of *men* were able to do it.

However, IIRC, most women used in infantry-type positions were in all-woman quasi militia units. I don't think that these women should perform worse than men in similar units. There shouldn't be a moral problem with men because the infantrywomen weren't integrated into male units

[Doug Beman]

Some points to Richard Morgan: first, it seems from your post that you are current or ex-military, meaning that it was SOP for you to march about w/ 80 lbs of kit. What of your girlfriend? Is she also ex-military, or was she/is she engaged in a career that involves constant physical exertion? Personally, I (male, 6'3" 155lbs) am WAY out of shape and don't know how well I could carry an 80lb rucksack. However, given several months training I could do it.

Second: re the formal trials you reference. These women who took part in the trials, were they coming from identical training backgrounds as the men? Were they graduates of the same boot camps etc? If not, and they came from some different experience from the men, then the test is invalid.

Third: I believe the reason BTS decided to model men and women in CM2 (if, indeed, there are women in CM2) the same was to simplify coding and speed production. Having to include the "female variant" of each troop type would increase the coding work needed and make the game more complex than necessary.

DjB

[ 09-08-2001: Message edited by: Doug Beman ]

[PawBroon]

Next thing you know someone we'll ask for a woman MOD.

Gordon, what will be the RuleSet number for women?

[Monkeybutt]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by PawBroon:

Next thing you know someone we'll ask for a woman MOD.

Gordon, what will be the RuleSet number for women?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yeah a naked women MOD! Make them horny and sexy! The bigger the boobs the better!

-Monkeybutt

[Richard Morgan]

What prompted this thread was a comment about women soldiers in a previous thread plus a couple of excerpts read a long time ago. One of these, I managed to dig up. It is from the "Close Combat - The Russian Front" rulebook and is as follows.

"The horrific losses in the first year of the war forced the Soviet Union to mobilize the entire population. As a result, women served in virtually every capacity in the Russian military. Women filled then-traditional roles as secretaries and nurses; however, Russian combat nurses often served in a front line role similar to the American medic. Entire units of transport and combat pilots were composed of women. In fact, several units of women pilots flew biplanes in precision bombing missions - at night. In most cases, the only concession to having women in regular Russian units was the addition of a gynaecologist to the medical staff."

The other passage was from a Sven Hassel book (long since donated to a jumble sale) which mentioned some horror story or other concerning Russian women serving as infantry. Let me make it quite clear that I would take anything written by Mr Hassel with a whole bucket load of salt. Also a quote from a game rulebook is something that I would hesitate to use academically, but they are of interest and someone on this board might be able to confirm or debunk them. It is worth mentioning that "Ivan" set a far, far lower value on human life than we did in the west, and it seemed quite plausible to me that some women may indeed have been used as infantry/cannon fodder. However, I DO NOT KNOW and I would be most grateful if anyone has any hard info on the subject. I was also amazed previously to see a reference in a thread about women in CMBB. This one should be a lot easier to give an answer on: Dear BTS, are women being considered at all - and if so, why?

Finally, answers to a couple of questions. Doug, I am indeed ex military (infantry). With regard to loads carried, 60lb would be about the minimum weight for a bergen (rucksack) - much more if sigs kit was in it. My belt kit (which also had to contain 2 days rations) nudged the scales at 25lb. Add an 11lb 3oz rifle and work out the total for yourself My girlfriend's size was mentioned purely as a comparison with mine. I think most (but not all) of us blokes are considerably heavier and more muscular than our better halves. You questioned the validity of the trials based on what physical training the men and women who took part had received previously. This is an excellent point. It was also leaked in the papers that arrangement had already been made to include women soldiers in the platoon commanders course at Warminster - and this long before the outcome of the trials. This led a lot of people (including myself) to conclude that the whole exercise had been designed as a rubber stamp to allow women to serve in teeth units. Were the women participants lean and mean, and were the men gutbucket REMFS selected to show them in a favourable light? I would like the answer to that one myself!!! The present British Government (none of whom have served) show IMO an obsession with politically correct social engineering which may be fine in civil life but which would cause chaos within the military. Women in "teeth" units is only one service example, there are alas more... I'd better stop before I start frothing at the mouth.

Regards,

Richard

[Madmatt]

Okay, i don't want to see this get outa hand so I am stepping in now.

No, we are not specifically modeling female troops. It would require new models and graphics and our time is already at a premium.

As suggested above you could model them yourself in a variety of ways using the tools given you in the game and using your own mods (sound/graphics).

By the way, there are many females that are every bit as capable as men to haul heavy loads, endure stress of fighting and yes, perform up to the exact same standards as men. For that reason we see no need to model them specifically considering the abstractions already at play in the games display of troops.

Madmatt