When Elisa Smithers was deployed to Iraq in 2005, there was a ban on women serving in ground combat operations.
Smithers was a “female searcher” with the National Guard and was attached to an infantry unit to help with searching detained Iraqi women, among other tasks. But she returned home to find she wasn’t offered the same support by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that male combat veterans were offered, Smithers said.
Now, the 48-year-old veteran fears the progress made for women in combat since then will be reversed after president-elect Donald Trump announced Pete Hegseth this week as his pick for secretary of defence – a Fox News host and Army veteran who has criticized efforts to allow women into combat roles.
The ban on women serving in ground combat units was lifted …