Women In Combat.

It's beyond the scope of this article to debate the operational combat history of the Soviet Union's air forces, but I do mention this because it may come as somewhat of a surprise to you that the top-scoring female fighter pilot in history was out there flying the unfriendly skies and shredding Fascist fuselages in the name of the Motherland. Lydia Litvak, the "White Rose of Stalingrad" (she is sometimes referred to as the "White Lilly" as well, but I'm not going to argue semantics here), was out there testing her mettle against some of the most well-trained, battle-hardened, and highest-scoring fighter pilots to ever strap themselves into a cockpit, and spent some of the most critical moments of World War II making all of them her bitch.

Growing up in Moscow, Lydia Litvak always knew she wanted to fly, and she wasn't going to f*#k around with big dreams when she could have been out there doing awesome barrel rolls and finding out what happens when you barf while pulling a half-dozen Gs – she just went balls-out (in a manner of speaking), learned to pilot a prop plane by age fifteen, and was a flight instructor within three years. The same day that she heard our old pal Adolph Hitler had double-crossed Uncle Joe and invaded Russia in 1941, she was standing outside the military recruiting office looking to fly combat missions for the Soviet air force. The guy behind the counter told her that she wasn't eligible because she hadn't logged over 1,000 hours of flight time in her short, five-year career as a pilot, so she thanked the guy, walked up the street to the next recruiting office, filled out her paperwork, and put "1,000" in the box asking how many hours of flight time she'd logged in her career. Next thing you know, she was shipped out to boot camp.

It only took Lydia Litvyak two combat missions to score her first kill, shooting down a German Junkers Ju-88 bomber and becoming the first woman in military history to ever score a solo aerial victory in combat. About ten minutes later she became the first woman in military history to score two aerial victories, when she outdueled a badass motherf*#ker who oh yeah just so happened to be an eleven-kill fighter ace and a recipient of the Iron Cross. When this proud German officer was captured by the Russkies, he demanded to meet the pilot who finally took him out of action. Lydia walked up to him and stared him in the eyes, and of course this guy's first thought was that the Communists were f*#king with him and being total dicks by playing some joke on him. It wasn't until Lydia described the entire dogfight turn-for-turn that this guy's mind was completely blown. Since he'd been completely pwnd out of hand by this chick, he got really pumped and offered her the super-expensive gold watch he always wore around his wrist. Lydia didn't even look at it. She kept her gaze straight in the dude's eyes and calmly said, "I do not accept gifts from my enemies." Then she got so pissed that she went out the very next day and shot down another German fighter plane.

For the next year, the White Rose of Stalingrad ignited enemy fuselages up and down the Eastern Front. She was transferred to a Guards Regiment, the elite of the Soviet military, and flew as a Junior Lieutenant and Flight Commander in the recently-established all-female 586th Fighter Air Regiment. She flew bomber escorts, attack missions, and was so ridiculously awesome that she was given a James Bond license to kill at will – she was assigned "Free Hunter" status, meaning that she was free to go balls-out into enemy airspace without orders to do so. Over that year she flew 66 combat missions, sometimes four or five a day, including one attack when she busted through a gauntlet of AA guns and fighters to shoot down an observation balloon that was f*#king with the Red Army and helping Nazi artillery range their shells on Russian positions outside Stalingrad. So f*#k those guys. She notched twelve solo kills – the most of any woman ever – and had four or five more assisted kills. Basically, she kicked some Fascist ass.

Eventually, Lydia's luck ran out. In 1943, after an intense battle, the hardcore 21-year-old ace was last seen busting through enemy airspace and hauling ass towards the horizon being chased after by eight German fighter planes. One of only two female fighter aces in history (the other, Katya Budanova, was Lydia's wingman and was killed just a month before Litvyak – the two of them combined for 23 of the 38 confirmed kills of the 586th Fighter Regiment), Lydia Litvyak was never heard from again. Her body was eventually recovered in 1989, and she was posthumously awarded honors as a Heroine of the Soviet Union – the highest military award for bravery offered by the USSR.

PVT. CATHAY WILLIAMS, U.S. ARMY

Born into slavery in September 1844, Cathay Williams worked as a maid on a Missouri plantation until being “liberated” by the troops of the 8th Indiana Regiment in 1861. While strictly speaking she was no longer a slave, she was officially drafted into the Union Army as part of their support troops. For the next few years, she served the 8th Indiana as they marched through Arkansas, Louisiana and Georgia, and was believed to have encountered one of the handful of uniformed black regiments like the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry or the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, a unit of escaped slaves.

At the end of the war, Williams found herself working at Jefferson Barracks just north of St. Louis. After a year as a civilian worker for the military, she decided she wanted to serve alongside other newly free African-American soldiers, and after a wardrobe change and an apparently very brief physical, “William Cathay” joined Company A of the 38th U.S. Infantry Regiment stationed in St. Louis. No one in her unit (except a cousin and a close friend) ever suspected Williams, not even her doctors during a brief stay in a hospital due to a smallpox infection. After her unit moved to New Mexico, she served for two years before her worsening health finally lead to her being discovered as a woman.

Williams went back to being a civilian cook for the Army, and lived out the rest of her days in the West. She chose not to publicize her career, and her story became widely known only in 1876 after a St. Louis Daily Times investigator tracked her down. Close to the end of her life and crippled by neuralgia and diabetes, Williams sought pension and medical aid from the government for the first time, but despite the precedents set by Margaret Corbin and other Revolutionary War women, she was denied aid and died in a pauper's grave.

Sorry, I don't think putting women in combat is anything to be proud of.
They have certainly proved their worth in combat, but that doesn't mean that's where they need to be.

SGT. LEIGH ANN HESTER, U.S. ARMY
Official American policy is to allow women access to nearly every role in the armed forces except those that explicitly require front-line, face-to-face, infantry combat. Women can control fighter jets and even assault helicopters at the front because that would mean they would only be fighting with a rifle if they're shot down or under similarly unwanted situations, but they can’t be part of standard infantry, special forces, Air Force combat controllers or medevac teams, or even armor and APC crews, since all of these professions tend to involve small-arms fighting more often than not. If this doesn’t really seem to make that much sense, don’t worry, because Silver Star recipient Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester proved emphatically and empirically that it’s all a bunch of bull anyway.

Sgt. Hester was a Kentucky National Guard trooper and part of the 617th Military Police, escorting a supply convoy during March 2005 in what was supposedly a secure rear area in Salman Pak, Iraq (remember, most women in modern militaries get shuffled to second- or third-line areas where they’ll be “safe”) when roughly 50 insurgents snagged the entire convoy with RPGs and light machine guns in a carefully planned and potentially lethal ambush.

Hester ordered her squad to charge through the kill zone to reach a position where she knew she could fight more effectively, at which point she and her superior, Staff Sgt. Timothy Hein, personally assaulted an enemy trench with grenades and rifle fire. After a half hour of furious, close-range combat, 27 of the enemy had been killed, with at least three kills credited to Hester personally. Hester, Hein and combat medic Jason Mike each received a Silver Star for heroism (and Hein later found himself upgraded to a Distinguished Service Cross), and while other American women have received the Silver Star for courage under fire, Hester became the first female Silver Star recipient for showing courage by returning fire.

LADY TRIEU / TRIEU THI TRINH, THIRD-CENTURY VIETNAM
Virtually all of Vietnamese history consists of a seemingly infinite struggle against incredibly powerful and overbearing foreign interests determined to control the nation through military might, economic control or cultural dominance. When people think of the countries that have tried (unsuccessfully) to tell Vietnam what to do, they typically think of France (the original European colonial occupiers of the territory), Japan (who attempted to draw Vietnam into their World War II Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere) and the United States (who just wanted to set a bunch of Communists on fire and didn’t really have many plans beyond that stage), but Vietnam’s oldest and most intimidating enemy has always been China. Fortunately for Vietnam, they’ve always had women like Trieu Thi Trinh.

Lady Trieu, as she was known, had one of the most badass sayings in history: “I’d like to ride storms, kill sharks in the open sea, drive out the aggressors, reconquer the country, undo the ties of serfdom and never bend my back to be the concubine of whatever man” Maybe a little bit wordy, but a hell of a lot more impressive than “Girl power!”

Facing the armies of the Eastern Wu Chinese state, Trieu was a half-real/half-legendary figure said to have commanded her troops from the back of an armored elephant (very possible), to have worn a suit of solid-gold armor (possible, but impractical and unlikely), and to have stood over 9 feet tall with breasts 3 feet long (uhh, yeah). Whatever Trieu Thi Trinh’s real accomplishments and attributes were, she served as an iconic figure for generations of Vietnamese women, and to this day many Vietnamese cities feature a Trieu Street.

But starting in 2014, they will. And a study of over 300 female Marines found that only 21 percent could do at least three pull-ups.