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Passing to the left...
NARRATOR: Before you can fully appreciate
what women have achieved in today's Coast Guard,
it helps to look back on the role women have played
in the history of our nation's coastal defense.
MAN: The U.S. Coast Guard is the oldest continuously operating
sea service in the United States,
was the first one that was enacted after the Constitution.
NARRATOR: Coast Guard historian William Thiesen
says women were a part of things almost from the beginning,
serving in coastal defense posts
as part of the Lighthouse Service,
a predecessor of the Coast Guard.
So actually, the U.S. Coast Guard pioneered
the role of women not only in a military service,
but in the federal government, as well.
NARRATOR: By the early 1940s,
women had made their presence known
throughout the Coast Guard,
both as civilians and in the uniformed service.
THIESEN: Oh, there were about 10,000 women
that served in the Coast Guard in World War II,
and it's really just grown since that time.
NARRATOR: Interest really took off in 1976
when the Coast Guard Academy became America's
first service academy to accept female applicants.
In 2011, Rear Admiral Sandy Stosz
took over as superintendent, becoming the first woman
in the nation's history to run a military academy.
So the Coast Guard really pioneered that, as well--
bringing women to the academy in the late Seventies,
integrating them onto ships in the Eighties.
NARRATOR: The trend towards full service integration
continued through the 1990s and on into the following decade
when Operation Iraqi Freedom created a demand
for combat support from the Coast Guard.
THIESEN: They were serving, actually, as force protection
for larger coalition assets, such as warships,
and a lot of times, they were serving
further into enemy territory during combat operations
than any other vessels.
NARRATOR: One of them, Coast Guard Cutter Aquidneck,
was commanded by Holly Harrison, the first female commander
of a Coast Guard vessel in a combat zone
and the first to receive a Bronze Star.
HARRISON: We were escorting humanitarian aid
up to the port so that that could then
be further distributed into Iraq.
So you're trying to keep the Iranians out of Iraqi waters.
They were harassing Iraqi fishermen in Iraqi waters.
Basically, we needed to make sure
there were no al-Qaeda on board,
there were no Iraqi leadership on board,
no wealth of the nation escaping and being taken elsewhere.
So we had to screen all these vessels
just pouring out of the river.
Right now, the way it looks,
we're gonna move the ship on Sunday.
Big week for us is really the second week.
Monday morning, we're gonna get underway.
THIESEN: I don't think gender really matters to her.
It was really just getting the job done.
She's another coastguardsman and a cutterman,
and she was there just to get the job done,
and I don't think anybody else in her crew
felt any different, either.
HARRISON: Make sure that you have the up-to-date information
so they when you update the Excel,
we can knock off as many of those discrepancies as possible.
You know, it's funny.
I get asked a question about being a woman in the military
quite a bit because people see it as a novelty,
but I never have.
It was a complete nonissue for the Coast Guard,
which is actually how I prefer it.
NARRATOR: As Commander Harrison sees it,
there's something of far greater significance
than gender that characterizes the men
and women she serves with.
I think Coasties are doers.
That's why we joined the Coast Guard.
We don't want to sit in an office.
We don't want to sit behind a desk.
We're here to make a difference, and whatever way
that we contribute to doing that--
and particularly, you're talking here on a ship, cuttermen--
we're out there to get the mission done.