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Theodore Roosevelt once lifted a lagging but sprinting reporter aboard a departing train amid much laughter and cheering. Woodrow Wilson came back to his car to spy a couple of hobos hanging under it. Wilson invited them to ride inside with him. Over-awed, the tramps declined, suggesting that the President had more important concerns...
...Navy has come a long way since then. Kelso, who was tarnished by the scandal, retired early. In his wake, women stormed aboard warships. They are now assigned to 155 vessels--106 of them combatants--and they account for 11,400 of the 155,000 officers and sailors afloat. Some ships have substantial numbers: the carrier Eisenhower has 600 women in a crew of 4,700. The Jarrett has only four, all officers, because the lack of berthing space has kept the enlisted ranks all male. By 2004, when nearly all vessels will be opened to women, the Navy...
Ultimately the Navy relented and found her an open slot in the surface school. After graduating, McGrath flourished aboard the Navy's fleet of support vessels. She served on four different ships from 1983 to 1994, including an 18-month stint as a commander of a salvage ship. Onshore she earned a master's degree in education from Stanford. Still, by the early 1990s she was beginning to be worried that her career had run aground. "I'm a dinosaur," she remembers thinking, "because the combatant ships aren't open to women." That changed in 1993, when Congress made warships...
...under battle conditions. In one exercise, McGrath trains her binoculars on an object in the distance. As a nondescript oil tanker comes into view, a dozen sailors cram into a small boat that's lowered over the Jarrett's port side. Armed and nervous, they're preparing to climb aboard the tanker (actually a Navy supply ship) to ensure it is not smuggling Iraqi oil in violation of the U.N. sanctions. It's risky business: despite a radioed message from the tanker granting the sailors' request to come aboard, an ambush could await. But the captain is confident...
Having women aboard--and especially one in command--has changed the atmosphere on the Jarrett. Personnelman Second Class Eldukl Ngiraingas was worried that working with women might make the crew less efficient. "I had a different kind of bonding when I was with all guys on a carrier," he says. "We didn't have to worry about offending people--everyone swore." But then he worked with a female colleague on a fire drill. "I found out that I didn't have to yell to get her to do something," he says. Another difference: modesty prevails. "You can't walk around...