A Female Officer's Perspective on Military Service and the First Gulf War by Ann Gospe
Our Speaker for our Thursday, November 10, 2022, Veteran’s Day program was Ann Gospe, who served as an officer in the Marine Corp for 11 years, including a deployment to the Middle East in the First Gulf War from 1990-1991 as an intelligence officer. Ann’s presentation focused on her perspective as a female officer in the USMC. Ann is currently President-Elect of the downtown Santa Rosa club and has a long history of focusing on local and international service projects and hopes to raise the profile of Rotary in our community. Ann is a native of Sonoma County.
As a woman in the USMC Ann experienced sexism, discrimination, and outright hostility. She ignored much of that when she was in the service, but these issues have kept coming back to her over the years. Nevertheless, she thinks joining the service was the best decision she ever made. She has tremendous pride in her achievement, and in the Corp in general, despite the drawbacks. Ann attended the USMC’s Officer Candidate School in 1986. The school is hard to get into and 60% of the candidates do not make it through. Ann, however, was determined to graduate. She told us that 2 weeks before graduation she tripped on something during a night hike and suffered a compound hand fracture. She went into the hospital and when she returned to Quantico her bags had been packed because everyone expected her not to finish. She told herself “I AM NOT GOING TO QUIT.” She had a perfect score in the final fitness tests!
When Ann joined the USMC in 1987, 3.2% of active duties officers were female. By 2022, 86% of active duty officers were female. She felt unwelcome after graduation from Officer Training School and entering Cryptologic school. She experienced outright hostility at Camp Lejeune. She recalls that her commander promoted her to Company Commander for the sole purpose of watching her fail. At one point her company was selected to receive the first ever variation of a light armored vehicle for intelligence operations, without receiving any training or information about the vehicles. Fortunately, she had a great team and they all learned how to operate the vehicle together and performed well (other than the time she drove it into a mud pit while the commanding officer was in the vehicle – earning her the nickname “Capt. Mud Pit”).
One of her most disheartening experiences was the call-up to Desert Storm. Although her company was well trained and organized, she was not allowed to take the company to Middle East because at the time women were not allowed in combat. She was ultimately sent to Saudi Arabia where she served in an ancillary position but was allowed a 3-day trip to see her old unit in a forward position. When she got back to Saudi Arabia her boss allowed her to transfer a more forward position. The conditions in the desert were horrible, but she loved it!
There have been changes to women’s roles in the Marine Corp. In 1987 they could not engage in combat operations. By 2020, there were 23 women in combat positions. In fact, in 2022, Colonel Nicole Mann launched the International Space Station as commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission!
Many thanks to you, Ann, for the presentation and for your service in the armed forces! What an amazing and frightening experience!
Click HERE to see Ann's presentation. It will be available for a limited time.
