Not Looking for a Husband

MADISON, WI, UNITED STATES

03.15.2017

Story by Maj. William Geddes 

103rd Sustainment Command (Expeditionary)

“There was a school of thought out there that female Soldiers were coming in to find a husband,” said Sgt. 1st Class Diana Moyers-Siebels, one of four remaining female Soldiers to have entered the Army through the Women’s Army Corps program. “They thought we were wasting all this training money, that it was going to cause all these problems, sexual encounters left and right – it was a lot of to do about nothing.”
The change in perception about women joining the Army is just one of the changes Moyers-Siebels, an Army Reserve Soldier and paralegal in the 646th Regional Support Group out of Madison, Wis., has seen since she joined in 1978. She went through the WAC program as a part of the last battalion of female Soldiers to join the Army before all WAC units integrated with male basic training units. She is set to retire at the end of the month.
Moyers-Siebels joined the Army to become a military police officer, theorizing that the experience she would gain might give her an edge in joining a civilian police force when she left the Army.
“I was attending college taking law enforcement classes,” Moyers-Siebels said. “I was working third shift at a factory, getting off, and then going straight to classes.” Her dad recommended checking out the Army, and she found out the MPs had just opened up training to women.
She went to Fort McClellan, Ala. for WAC training, then stayed in place to attend advanced individual training. As one of the last female Soldiers to enter the Army through the WAC, and one of the first to attend gender desegregated MP training, Moyers-Siebels saw a profound difference in a short period of time. “When I went through WAC training, we literally had to stop and do an about face and turn our backs if men were marching by,” she said. “We were not allowed to have any contact with men.”
The MP training had male and female Soldiers training together and staying in the same buildings. The change did not cause any issues for the students, but the cadre took a while to adjust and get comfortable with the change, Moyers-Siebels said. Ultimately, it wasn’t a big deal.
She served on an active duty status for almost six years before leaving for a break in service with the birth of her second child. She returned, joining the Army Reserve 17 years later in 2002, this time serving as a paralegal. Coming back in, she noticed that perceptions of women in the Army had shifted. There are many more opportunities available to women, a change that has continued since she returned, with women now able to serve in virtually any job in the Army. “Women now have more opportunities in the military,” Moyers-Siebels said. “The playing field has been pretty much leveled at this point. When you can be a combat engineer, and you can be on the tanks and be the gunners—when female Soldiers can become Rangers – it has come a long way, and I think that is a good thing. Not everybody can do everything, but those who can should have the opportunity to do it. There are more jobs now that women can do that some women are perfectly capable of doing, the same as our male counterparts. That has progressed women even that much further along in the United States Army.”
Those changes that the Army has undergone has effected change on society as well, Moyers-Siebels said. “It brought about a whole new perspective in society on men and women working together. These men and women (in the Army) were a unit, they were a team. You did not have that as much on the outside, you don’t see that in corporations or in most businesses.”
Much of the change is due to the path blazed by Moyers-Siebels and other WACs, according to former Deputy Commanding General of U.S. Army Reserve Command Maj. Gen. (ret.) Marcia Anderson, who pointed out that there were only 500 female Soldiers in the Army Reserve when the WAC program ended and basic training underwent gender desegregation. That number increased to more than 35,000 ten years later. “Those women took a leap of faith,” said Anderson. “Their families probably did not want them in the Army. Their moms their dads, their sister, their brothers all wondered what they were thinking. It was not a hospitable place for women during that time. But they wanted to serve. So they took the jobs they could take, and they excelled, and by doing so they set the example for the rest of us, and they made it clear that women can do anything. They showed that a successful organization means that you have a diverse organization. They were an example of that.”
As a Soldier who also was a pioneer for female Soldiers in the Army (Anderson was the first federally recognized black female officer to attain the rank of major general in the Army, which is the highest rank any female officer has attained in the Army Reserve), she knows how hard it can be to lead the way. “I am grateful that the Army has reached a point where it didn’t really dawn on me until 30 minute before I pinned on my second star that I was a first,” Anderson said. “It brought with it a responsibility, but that was a good thing. It made me step up my game even a little bit more, it made me recognize that whenever I went somewhere or did something that people were watching me to see what I did. I also know that it motivated a lot of people, men and women; I mentored a lot of people.”
Anderson allowed that for the Army Reserve to remain a trained ready force it must have everyone taking part, and that the Army Reserve could not be successful without female Soldiers. “We need everyone at the table,” Anderson said. “Those people at the table all have different experiences in their lives, they have a different way of looking at a problem. The last thing we want to do is get caught up in a group-think, where we all think the same way and we all approach the problem the same way.” Moyers-Siebels and the other women who led the way for women joining the Army through the WAC helped bring that to the Army.
As Moyers-Siebels finished her Army career (her final mission was to appear on the CWIowa Live morning show on March 6 in Des Moines, Iowa), she was circumspect, proud of her service, but eager to embrace retirement. Ultimately, Moyers-Siebels is grateful for the time she had in the Army. “If I did not have my military career, I do not think I would have come as far as I have today,” she said. “I have much of what I have on the civilian side because of what I did in the military. When I came back in the Army Reserve I had goals, and I have exceeded my goals. The Army has been a fantastic life for me and I will always cherish it."

• Date Taken: 03.15.2017
• Date Posted: 03.15.2017 15:10
• Story ID: 226944
• Location: MADISON, WI, US