Women veterans note progress in military

Veterans Day is a reminder to 90-year-old World War II veteran Rosalind Henneman about what the role of females has been in the military.

"We're the cherry on top," laughed Henneman, who served from 1943 to 1945 with the Navy's Women Accepted for Voluntary Service (WAVES) during WWII.

Iraq war veteran DeeAnna Baxter, 32, agreed with Henneman but described a current role that sounded a little different than the dessert metaphor. In Iraq, Baxter drove a 20-ton dump truck near Balad in support of building weapons bunkers.

"Women in the military have to work 10 times harder to get up in ranks," said Baxter, who was in the Utah National Guard from 1997 to 2005, receiving an honorable discharge with the rank of specialist.

Henneman and Baxter were at an event Monday honoring female veterans at the George E. Whalen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Both talked about how far females have come in the military.

Out of the 23.6 million veterans in the United States, 1.8 million are female, U.S. Census Bureau figures show. As of 2007, 16 percent of the veterans from the Gulf War were females. In Utah, there are approximately 10,400 female military veterans.

Back in the early 1940s, Henneman was working as a designer and maker of hats when she learned that one of her brothers was unable to join the war effort.

"I decided I would serve in my brother's place," Henneman said. She was a WAVES member from 1943 to 1945.

A woman in a military uniform was still unusual then but also very much respected in a time when females were called on to fill traditionally male roles in the States while men went overseas to fight. Henneman wanted a WAVES job that was "exciting and stimulating," and she landed a role training pilots.

"They were looked up to a great deal," Henneman said about female military members in World War II. "I think they were respected."

To earn that level of reverence then and now, Henneman said, females need to pay attention to their language, manner and rapport with their male counterparts. She described today's women in the military as more assertive and less feminine, as women increasingly have become the ones giving orders.

Baxter said earning respect in the military comes with working harder than the men, who tend to rise in rank faster than women.

"That's with any occupation," said Baxter, who is now a college student intent on becoming an engineer.

Baxter said she carried her own weapon and went through all the same training as male Guardsmen, never getting special treatment because of her gender. But serving as ground troops that actually do the fighting in a war, she noted, is still off limits to females.

Baxter has one wish for women on Veterans Day as members of a male-dominated military are remembered and honored. "We'd just like to be recognized," she said.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com