UK:Female soldiers say "remove us at your peril"

Remove us from the front at your peril, say women soldiers
As the war in Afghanistan claims its first British female fatality, the debate about the role of women in war zones has been reopened. But the message from the 1,600 women in Afghanistan and Iraq is clear: mutiny would follow any attempts to withdraw them from danger. Mark Townsend reports

Her 'girls' called it roadside roulette - the lottery of the landmines and bombs that haunt the highways of Helmand province where Captain Alli Shields spent months squinting through the Afghan dust clouds for the tell-tale signs of hidden explosives.

Last week the bombers struck again, taking the life of Corporal Sarah Bryant, Britain's first female fatality in Afghanistan, another bleak milestone and one that not only raised familiar questions of whether British women should serve on the front line, but also on whether they could handle the unique challenges that Helmand presents.

For Shields, 39, the reaction to the death of Bryant from a largely male-dominated media was a shock. Until last week she and her friends had assumed the debate about women being able to handle the pressures of war had been laid to rest. Yesterday the message from the 1,600 women currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan was that mutiny would ensue if attempts were made to remove them from the front line. Any moves by the Ministry of Defence to withdraw British women from danger would be fiercely resisted, they said. Some warned it would precipitate an exodus at a time the undermanned armed forces are coping with two major conflicts, insisting they would rather resign from the military than endure a career where they were ordered out of harm's way.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/22/military.gender