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Shana Johnson joined the army because she wanted to be a cook. She left the University of Texas at El Paso and enlisted four years ago so she could get professional training. Her father remembers the meals his daughter likes to make at home--jerk chicken and curry rice, specialties that reflect the family's West Indian heritage. Sometimes these days, however, he forgets to eat. He wonders what his daughter was doing in the line of fire. The 507th wasn't trained for battle, though Shana knew how to shoot an M-16 rifle in defense. Unlike pilots and special-ops teams, who are at higher risk for capture, maintenance outfits usually don't receive specialized training in evasion and escape techniques, much less how to handle interrogations--or worse--during captivity.
The Army has been good for the Johnsons, especially the women. Shana's sister Nikki left last week for officers' training school in Virginia. An aunt is a former Air Force nurse. (Two uncles and two cousins are also in the military.) But Shana Johnson's capture has sparked anew the debate over the proper role of women on the battlefield. Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, was in Washington last week to urge a change in the Clinton-era reforms after the war. She argues that women in combat risk rape by their captors. The two other women missing from the 507th may well be POWs too, she notes. "Feminists are heralding this as a step forward for women's rights, but it's a step back for civilization," she says. "If we say it's O.K. to put women in combat, we're saying it's O.K. for sex abuse by the enemy."
Proponents of an expanded role for women in the military disagree. For one thing, if rape is the concern, men too have been victims while in captivity. Besides, women POWs are not new. There have been dozens of female prisoners in U.S. history, including about 90 nurses captured in the Philippines during World War II.
Lory Manning, director of the Women in the Military project at the Washington-based Women's Research and Education Institute, wonders what women serving so ably in Kuwait and Iraq will do if they are pulled back from the front lines. "I hate to think their thank-you is 'Sorry, girls, you can't do this anymore,'" she says.
In the Johnson family's vaulted living room, Shana's dad is glued these days to the all-news TV networks. As a break, he walks the neat subdivision, tying yellow ribbons around trees. The streets are named after baseball heroes: Roger Maris, Casey Stengel, Yogi Berra. Just to the north lies the Fort Bliss military reservation, spread across white sands. With winds kicking up the Chihuahuan Desert last week, the sky over El Paso was filled with irritating sand--much like that coating the troops in Iraq. Johnson, trapped in his own hell, doesn't notice. "The wait is extremely painful now," he says. "We just don't know what's going on." Until the International Red Cross confirms that his daughter is still alive and well, he will watch--and worry. --With reporting by Douglas Waller/Washington and Sally B. Donnelly/Doha