Fight Like a Girl

carefully reinforced that point. Kate didn't wallow in self-pity. She didn't complain about the command. She unrelentingly pressed her point that the Corps was failing women, that decades of data proved this, that the leadership didn't care or were oblivious to the fact that they were sending women to combat with inferior training compared to men, and that this was wrong. If the Corps is going to send Marines into harm's way, the women need to be trained as well as the men.

A few days later, Dave Philipps at the New York Times released a story titled, “Marine Commander's Firing Stirs Debate on Women in the Corps.”⁷

Presto! Now we were firing on all cylinders.

Philipps wrote: “To many advocates of full gender integration, Colonel Germano's dismissal has raised questions about the willingness of the Marine Corps, the most male-dominated of the services, to open the door to women in leadership roles. Why, those advocates ask, should a service that reveres its tradition of tough and demanding male commanders have problems with one who is a woman?”

When I read his article, I had a mental image—that moment in the movies when a lit match floats through the air and touches a puddle of gasoline. Contact.

A few days later, Kate heard from Colonel Keenan at the Marine Corps Gazette, who told her he was tabling the piece she submitted in April criticizing the Corps’ recruiting and training practices and offering recommendations for improvement. It would not be published. Like many retired colonels, Keenan was stepping to the commandant's tune. Kate was dejected.

I reached out to my friend Chris Chivers, who ran the New York Times blog At War, and let him know what was going on.

Chivers, a former Marine Corps infantry officer and Pulitzer Prize winner, has, shall we say, a very robust understanding of the politics of the Corps.

On July 28, he published a piece in which he asked Keenan to explain his decision to suppress Kate's article, and then Chivers published the paper Kate wrote in full. Chivers is a fair man and a solid reporter, and he always calls it like he sees it. I'm eternally grateful he published Kate's piece and allowed her ideas to come to the light of day.

As he summarized it: “Colonel Germano was relieved of command at Parris Island in June under circumstances that remain contentious, setting off a controversy about whether she was being punished for what the Corps calls an abusive leadership style, or for forcefully expressing her views about the how the Corps trains and integrates women into its male-dominated ranks.”⁸

A funny thing started to happen.

Kate's willingness to speak up forced the Corps into having a national discussion about gender integration about six months before they wanted to, and people on both the right and the left started rallying behind her.

We had people on the left contacting us to say, “Proud of you and all that you are doing to advance rights and fair treatment for women!”

At the same time, we had the Fox News crowd contacting her to say, “Go Germano! She's calling for higher standards for women! (And she's saying all the non-PC stuff I didn't have the balls to say while I was on active duty.)”

It was bizarre. It was amazing. It was beautiful.

As I see it, in trying to deliberately torch Kate's reputation, the commandant and his generals had unintentionally set their own house on fire.

My Pentagon contacts started reporting back that leadership was confused by and fixated with her. They told me that every new media report about Kate was briefed at the next commandant's staff meeting.

Eventually, we started to see some humor in the situation. The next time a story posted that included her position, I told her that I could hear the Headquarters Marine Corps brass in the Pentagon standing up with the article clenched in a shaking fist, veins bulging, eyes popping, and screaming, “Germaaaaaaaaaannnnnnoooooooooo!” It was the first time I saw her laugh in months. To this day, every time one of our op-eds gets published, we look at each other, shake our fists, and scream, “Germaaaaaaaaaannnnnnoooooooooo!” and laugh and laugh. If you don't laugh, you'll go insane. Trust me.

I'd like to think that, in some small way, we contributed to the gender-integration policy change of December 2015 when we saw Secretary of Defense Ash Carter rescind the policy excluding women from ground-combat jobs and reaffirming that women could join the infantry, armor, artillery, and other ground-combat arms units if they could meet the standards.

Shortly after Kate was fired, General Bob Neller was selected to replace Dunford as the Marine commandant. Dunford had been selected to serve as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. During Neller's confirmation hearing on July 23 before the Senate Armed Services Committee, something special happened. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, when it was her turn to question Neller, asked about where he stood on gender integration. She also mentioned Kate by name after discussing the issue of chain-of-command retaliation in the Corps:

I know in the case of Colonel Kate Germano, she was trying to create even tougher requirements for them so they can meet standards. As you look at your standard review and as you look as to whether you are going to ask for waivers for any positions today, I would urge you not to seek waivers, because all you are saying is that there is no one who can meet the standards today. If we begin to create tougher standards to come into the Marines and begin to make them gender neutral, you will begin to have women who can meet those standards. They just might not be able to meet those standards today. So asking for a waiver says under no circumstances can any woman ever meet the standard. I would caution you not to take that action.⁹

It's rare for a Senator to name a field-grade officer by name. The implied message: I'm watching, so stop messing with Germano.

We kept a steady drum beat