The First Four Women to Pass Marine Infantry Training Took This Selfie
This Instagram shows the new faces of Uncle Sam's Lean, Mean Green Killing Machine.
These four young women are the first enlisted females ever to complete the Marine Corps' infantry combat training regimen. They took this pic on November 9, the day before the Corps' 238th birthday. It appeared on the Instagram account of the recently minted Marine who is front and center, Private First Class Harlee "Rambo" Bradford ("I lift, I like blowing shit up"), whose nickname suggests both that she is tough — she went through training with a stress fracture — and that no one actually reads the Rambo novels anymore.
These women have now definitively proven what fatuous Congressional oldsters for so long prevented other women from demonstrating: the ability to hump 90 pounds of gear over rough terrain for days; an aptitude for killing people with grenades, radioed-in air and artillery strikes, bare hands, and the M249 Light Machine Gun, which is not all that light; and a general comfort with serving at the tip of the spear, being first-in-last-out, and all the other man-meat-inspired metaphors for combat infantry service.
Now, if they can demonstrate the courage to offer their commanders minority reports, to dissent from unlawful orders, and to treat everyone they come into contact with — even adversaries — with compassion and respect, we and they will have really gained something.
In the meantime, they can strive for humbler goals, like someday being these guys.
