FORT SILL, Okla., May 20, 2016 -- One of the first two female Marine artillery officers who graduated from the Basic Officer Leader Course May 17 at Fort Sill has earned a place at the top of her class, and the second woman ranks sixth out of 137 in the BOLC class.
2nd Lt. Virginia Brodie of Manhasset, N.Y., is a distinguished honor graduate, and 2nd Lt. Katherine Boy of East Rochester, N. Y., has earned a spot on the honors list in the top 5 percent. Both will make Marine history as the Corps' first female artillery officers.
They, along with 135 Marines and Soldiers, completed the final phase of the 19-week training May 12 by integrating their skills into a four-day exercise called the Redleg War. During the exercise each student took turns in various roles such as fire support officer who planned the firing data and maneuvers, and the fire direction officer who fired the artillery.
Then they and the 17 male Marines who finished the course with them will attend Marine Artillery Officer Basic Course here for four weeks to learn Marine-specific tasks related to their 0802 military occupational specialty (MOS). That is equivalent to the Army's field artillery officer 13A MOS.
After that, Brodie, who graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., will join 1st Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., and Boy will be assigned to 1st Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N. C.
Boy, a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., was commissioned in May 2015. She said of her choice to become a ground combat officer, "First of all I was just lucky. I was in the right company in TBS (The Basic School for newly commissioned officers) at the right time. I had a great SPC (staff platoon commander) and a great company commander and they vouched for myself and Second Lieutenant Brodie."
Brodie said seeing the howitzer in action for the first time helped fuel her desire to be an artillery officer.
"My SPC and the whole company in TBS viewed me as someone who wanted to be an artillery officer. So as soon as it opened we already had our foot in the door and he made it happen. We had a ton of peers at TBS who really supported us and saw us as just Marines and future artillery officers."
"I'm a mechanical engineer," said Boy, "and seeing how the FDC (Fire Direction Center) worked to get the rounds downrange was what made me excited about being in artillery."
Since the artillery MOS was not open yet to women, they had to wait until after January when the last remaining ground combat positions were open to women.
"Our company commander said that any females that were interested in having a combat MOS could apply," said Boy, "and so I told my SPC that's what I wanted and he really helped make it happen."
Brodie said, "The Marine Detachment here has done a great job of viewing us as just Marines and treating us as any other lieutenant would be treated."
Maj. Eric Pickelsimer, 1st Battalion, 30th Field Artillery officer in charge, Officer Instructor Group, agreed.
"I haven't treated them any differently than any male student," he said. "They didn't want to call attention to themselves either. The goal is for them to be successful here just like every Marine student."
Although there were many challenges, being female wasn't really one of them, the women said.
"I think it's not that big of a deal," said Brodie. "We stand on the shoulders of so many people who have done things and haven't really gotten the credit for it. We're not looking for credit. We just thought this was a cool job. There are plenty of women who came before us who did awesome things. We're really lucky we were in the right place at the right time and got this awesome opportunity because we were lifted up by these people who came before us."
Boy said the decision to be in artillery meant she wouldn't have to sit behind a desk. She started her military career as a college programmer in the Navy's ROTC program, but interacting with Marines there made her change her career goals.
"After seeing the esprit de corps that the Marine officers had in my unit, I really understood and appreciated the Marine Corps and what they stood for," she said. Her aspiration is to "just be a damn good Marine."
The events of 9/11 impacted Brodie's hometown on Long Island, which lost 50 family members when the World Trade Center was attacked. Joining the military was "a way I thought I could give back or help fix that," she said.
Brodie said she is looking forward to leading other Marines and "setting the example and showing you're capable enough to serve them."
The most challenging aspect of her artillery officer training, she said, was the academics.
"Just learning how to do all the math -- there's a lot of theory behind it and figuring that out took awhile."
"There are so many places you can go and different billets you can hold," said Boy. "That kind of unknown is exciting because you could literally be doing anything."
In 2014-2015 the United States Marine Corps conducted a year-long experiment, the Ground Combat Element-Integrated Task Force (GCE-ITF). The GCE-ITF pulled together enough females from across the force and assigned them combat arms jobs: infantry, artillery, tanks, amphibious assault vehicles, said Pickelsimer.
"We had some females go through our cannoneer course here (at Fort Sill)," he said. "Those females who successfully made it through that entry level training spent the next year participating in the study and in January, upon the announcement of the opening of all jobs, were given the opportunity to have that MOS added to their records and to be assigned a position within that MOS."
Along with Army Pfc. Katherine Beatty, who was her class's distinguished honor graduate in March as the Army's first female 13B cannoneer, Brodie and Boy are at the beginning of a wave of women entering the combat arms positions.
"We're all Marines," said Brodie of their accomplishment. "We just have a different haircut."
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