Look, women are women and men are men, but that doesn't mean women don't have important contributions to make to the U.S. armed forces. When I was toward the end of my Army career in 7th Infantry Division at Fort Ord in '82-'84 I dated a woman who was a captain in Ordnance with a specialty in vehicle maintenance. When we met I was a Battalion Motor Officer and she was the staff officer for Division Support Command responsible for monitoring readiness rates of equipment. She and I became intimate and we had a lot of fun together.

Eventually we stopped seeing each other when the spark went out and our relationship became predictable and boring. She began dating a Major of Ordnance.

When her new boyfriend was away on temporary duty she phoned me with a problem -- her car had a flat tire, could I come over and fix it? Well I did, but I thought it was kind of strange, seeing as how she had been the Distinguished Honor Graduate of her U.S. Army Ordnance Officer Advanced Course, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, vehicle maintenance specialty, a couple of years earlier.

This brings me back to my first sentence, men are men ane women are women. Mary was a very competent officer, she had a successful company command, and the last time I saw her in '87 she was a Major and Secretary of the General Staff of Army Materiel Command, Alexandria, Virginia.