AWOL moms and orphaned children: Mothers ought not be in combat

Not too many people have ever heard of Army Specialist Simone Holcomb, a U.S. Army reservist who was serving a tour of duty in Iraq only to go absent without leave (AWOL) in order to stay home with her children, but she may quickly move to the front of the line as another reason that women with children ought not be permitted to serve in the military.

Holcomb is married to another soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Vaughn Holcomb, who is also deployed in Iraq.  Both members of the Holcomb family were granted emergency leave in September in order to return to the United States in order to fight a custody battle that would have two of their children returned to the ex-wife of the male Holcomb who believed that her children would be better off with their mother than with the stranger parents of the Holcomb’s.

A Colorado judge agreed with Holcomb’s ex-wife and informed the Holcomb’s that one of the two parents had to stay in Colorado or the two children would be returned to their mother.  Vaughn Holcomb is a platoon sergeant in a combat role and Simone is a combat medic – the couple decided that she had the more expendable career and she remained in Colorado long past the expiration of her authorized term of leave.

The U.S. Army informed Holcomb that she faces disciplinary action related to her decision to simply not return to Iraq – that action could be as much as imprisonment or a less than honorable discharge.  Her family believes that she should simply be assigned to a base close to home so she can care for her children and many would agree, but one has to ask why someone with children and a husband serving in the military would choose military service as a career knowing that deployments and war could force her far from home.

Many things have changed in the last few decades with respect to service in the military.  One of the unfortunate changes has come in the fact that so many people in the military have children and in many of those families they are headed by either a single mother or by families where both the husband and wife are members of the armed forces. 

Political correctness and the insane belief that women should serve in every role that men serve is not only bad policy for women, as they are not equipped for combat duty or other such grueling service, but also bad for children who have become orphans because their single mother went off to war or because both parents were required to deploy.  Children are quickly becoming the victims of war in a way that was predicted during the march to full integration of women into combat roles.

The most famous story during the war in Iraq was the harrowing tale of Jessica Lynch’s lost convoy and her subsequent rescue from her Iraqi captors.  The more important story, though, is the story about the young woman driving the HUMVEE that Lynch was riding in when her lost convoy was ambushed.  PFC Lori Piestewa, a single mother with two children, was killed during the ambush that left Lynch a prisoner of the Iraqis.  Piestewa was a Hope Indian and left her children to live in poverty with her parents in Arizona while she went to Iraq.  Two children left orphaned because their mother was permitted so close to combat that she will never return home again.

The Department of Defense is always under enormous pressure from Congress and interest groups who want women to play ever increasing roles in combat operations.  The problem is that these politically correct decisions seem fair and balanced on the surface, but disproportionably affect children when they are implemented. 

Military readiness and the ability to fight wars is fundamental to having the most powerful and successful service in the world – readiness surely suffers when commanders have to not only prepare their units for combat, but also worry if single mothers and dual service families will end up AWOL in the United States or unable to serve in combat when the time calls for it.  The time has long since past for the United States military to reconsider allowing single mothers the ability to serve in the armed forces or for service members to marry one another without forcing one out of the military to lessen potential readiness consequences.

There is no question that women have long provided a great service to the nation.  What has changed, however, is not that women can and should serve the nation, but since families are no longer the stable, father headed institution they once were, one has to see that the military policies change with the times.  There is no greater calling than public service, but there is also no rule that says that single mothers or two-soldier headed families are required to be permitted to serve. 

Orphaned children of married servicemen and single mother soldiers are quickly surpassing the total number of actual dead in the Iraq war and the only way to make sure that more children are not left without parents or that more soldiers go AWOL in order to fix their custody battles is to make sure that the military is made up of single men and women without children and men and women whose wife or husband are not in the military.  Anything less than this fix affects readiness and morale of the troops already serving and turns the military into just another job – which we know it is not.

And when, as in the case of Specialist Simone Holcomb, soldiers disobey lawful orders by their superiors or abandon their posts and go AWOL in a time of war – the military ought not to bow to political pressure and simply reassign the soldier.  Holcomb should go to jail for leaving the war zone and should receive a less than honorable discharge – a discharge commensurate with her dishonorable and careless behavior.