It had to start dawning on the brass that this story wasn't going away.
I was in New York City on December 3, 2015, when my phone rang. A Pentagon contact called to say Secretary of Defense Ash Carter was going to announce the repeal of the Combat Exclusion Policy for women and open all military jobs and units to women who can meet the standards.10 I rushed back to my hotel room to watch the press conference on my laptop. It felt really good to know that Kate contributed in some way to that decision.
On March 23, 2017, I learned that Private First Class Maria Daume graduated from the School of Infantry and would be the first woman to be awarded the 0311 military occupational specialty. She headed out to the fleet and was assigned to our friend Lieutenant Colonel Warren Cook's 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Corps Regiment.11 She was in good hands. A few Marines in the unit made some sexist remarks about her. Warren stomped that out quickly.12 We hear she's hard as a coffin nail and doing great. She was born in a Siberian prison camp.13 No joke.
“I like to prove people wrong,” Daume told Voice of America in her first interview since completing her training at the Marine Corps School of Infantry at Camp Lejuene, North Carolina. “No matter what your belief is, you can't argue that I didn't do it, because I did.”14
On September 28, 2017, we learned that a female second lieutenant graduated from the Corps’ Infantry Officer School.15 As of today, the senior leadership seems to be playing games by not releasing her name. We don't know her identity, but we do know she is remarkable and we celebrate her success.
I like to think that Kate had a little something to do with helping create these conditions. She certainly forced the conversation.
It's gratifying to see these women smashing through walls of low expectations—proving the naysayers wrong. These are clear wins.
But we can talk about mobbing theory and we can talk about the future of gender integration, and we can talk about wins, and none of it will change how it felt for Kate to have the senior leadership of the Corps attack her reputation. She's a Marine. She's a good Marine. She's kind and strong and stable, and they attacked every piece of her, bit by bit, until she questioned everything she had known about herself.
Two weeks after she was relieved, we went back down to South Carolina to retrieve her belongings from her apartment. We still hadn't received an official copy of the investigation, despite Kate having requested it during the meeting in which Williams relieved her, and despite the Marine Corps leadership releasing it to the press.
With her in the passenger seat of a big U-Haul truck, I pulled into the parking lot next to the depot headquarters—Williams's headquarters.
On a quiet Saturday morning, I met with Williams's executive officer to pick up her official orders assigning her to a dusty closet at the Navy Yard—heading the Department of the Navy's parole board.
It was awkward as hell, and I was still pissed.
The XO met me at the door and offered a cheery, “Good morning!”
I just bored into him with my eyes.
The look on my face cut him short.
He turned away and unlocked the door.
I followed him in and picked up her orders, and I saw that the heavily redacted investigation was included.
I was still pissed that the press had it immediately after her relief; but it took us two weeks to get a copy.
Let's just say I was devoid of warmth in my interaction with the XO.
He couldn't get me out of there fast enough.
As I pulled away behind the wheel of that U-Haul, all I could think of was Kate and how glad I was that she was still next to me in one piece.
I told her that she'd be okay.
And that we'd figure out the next steps together.
She did the right thing.
She stood up for what she believed in.
I was so goddamn proud of her that it took all of my strength not to break down on the spot.
That drive from South Carolina to just outside of Washington, DC, where Joe and I lived was always a long one. After you get to North Carolina, it's essentially nothing but flat farm fields occasionally interrupted by scraggly pine trees and signs for barbecue joints and strip clubs. But that day, that awful day, it felt like the longest ride of my life. Luckily, I had Mr. Fitzwizzle to keep me company.
I think I might have mentioned that there were days leading up to my relief of command where the pendulum would swing, leaving me feeling despondent and confused. Late in the evening on those days, I would pull up to the crazy pink Victorian house where I rented a small ground-floor apartment, and I would think about quitting.
Worse, I questioned my own sanity. I simply could not understand what was happening.
When I began my tour at Parris Island, I thought it would be my redemption tour as a CO. Unlike when I was a CO on recruiting duty, I was not going to handle every problem as if it were a nail and I was the hammer. I would not use profanity or raise my voice with my Marines, because I didn't need to prove how tough I was. I was going to be authentic. Me.
And I had done just that.
Yet, there I was, pulling up to that apartment, with complaints against me piling up. Although I knew that I had done the right things for the right reasons, the investigation caused me to question myself. Did they see something I didn't? Were they right and I wrong? I felt like I couldn't quite grasp reality, even with the facts so glaringly obvious in front of me. By the time mid-June
