Ok, now here is your basic issue, 20 year old Ohio boy, circa 1968. He's a nice enough guy, kind to animals and little kids and all that. He is about to get a lesson from a tiny woman that will begin to change his perception of women, permanently. Many fixed bases in Viet Nam employed Vietnamese men or women to do the laundry and general cleaning. I generally did my own laundry and cleaning, never hurts to know a new skill you know.

One of the housegirls, a very diminutive and feminine lady, was in our room one day working in one of the other guys areas. She stopped to chat for a couple of minutes and then asked me if I wanted her to clean my M14 rifle, which was laying on my bunk. The M14 was neither a light nor small weapon. I know I must have looked at her in a way that said, "Yeah right...how could you...a girl know anything about this thing." I turned away and immediately heard the familiar clinking sounds of the weapon being disassembled.

She had it broken down into its component parts and nicely laid out on my bed faster than I have seen any man do it. When I looked at her she said something about her husband having taught her.

The incident doesn't sound like much. But to my Ohio-boy mind I had just encountered something which had not existed up till a few seconds ago; an attractive woman who was as dangerous as any man. I remember thinking, that if she was as good at soldiering as she was with that weapon, then she was likely a better soldier than I. If she happened to work for the other side at night and I ever met up with her, I would not likely be the one walking away at the end of the encounter. It was a very sobering thought.

Years later, when I became a sergeant I made a point of telling this story and encouraging my male soldiers to realize that when we put the uniform on we are all soldiers, regardless of which latrine we used. Many American men have a habit of not seeing women as a threat. I would argue that in a battlefield encounter with an enemy soldier who is a woman, these men will hesitate. That hesitation will cost them their lives.