Personally, any woman who would want to be in actual combat where physical close quarters combat is a reality is insane. Only those that know not the animal savagery such combat conditions would even contemplate or suggest the idea. My perspective is Viet Nam related and some things are different today, but many things remain the same from the time of the Spartans, thru WWI and WWII, thru Viet Nam, until today. Close quarters combat is nasty business. It makes a major bar room brawl seem like a love fest. Battles that last for days with no sleep, little if any food, limited water, no bathroom relief facilities, etc.
And one gets to live with that carnage for the rest of their life. It taints one's entire perspective on work, life, relationships, etc. The slightest of smells that don't affect some bring all of that past into technicolor imagery in the mind of someone who has experienced it. Like the smell of urine in a men's restroom that has been sitting. When someone is killed in combat, their body will usually evacuate urine and waste. Now it gets cooked along with the rotting carcass for a few days in the hot sun. I have spent over 45 years trying to have just one day of those past events not going thru my mind in some way. If not for the sanity of the Holy Spirit, I would have long since gone over the edge.
And any woman would want to experience that? And any man who thinks they should be allowed to experience it voluntarily should be taken out an flogged. Sure, there are many instances of women serving admirably, like in Russia during WWII. But any nation should only allow such things if the country is in immediate and imminent danger of being destroyed and having women serve in such roles only a last resort.
That makes an awful lot of sense to me. I read a book by man called Gregg who had served as an infantryman, initially with the Sherwood Foresters, but then the Long Range Desert Group for a spell, and then the paras. He was a POW between camps (en route to execution) on the outskirts of Dresden during the repeated bombing raids by our air crews, and was absolutely incensed by what he believed was a massive overkill that slaughtered relatively innocent civilian families.
He was clearly traumatized by his experiences, before that by multiple bayonet charges. One very sad thing he said was that he could see in the eyes of his opponents 'if they had it in them.....' In other words, was the bloke too empathetic to really go 'all out' to run him through with his bayonet again and again ; 'relish' doing so, would perhaps be too strong a word, as even Gregg was clearly not entirely without empathy, himself.
I suspect a psychopath would get the 1000-yard stare, as well, however, but as a very interesting American soldier remarked in a fascinating documentary on snipers, remarked, if you tried to walk past such psychos, you'd do so on the other side of the room, if possible. He remarked with a chuckle that the rest of the lads in the unit called the snipers, 'Murder Incorporated' !
I've just seen an article on this subject replicating almost almost word for word, those of a Scottish soldier, after the Battle of Culloden : 'If you had been where I have been... if you had seen what I have seen....' And as for the smell of a dead body ..... as a hospital porter (one of my many jobs), we sometimes had to go to the mortuary, and the smell of a decaying corpse, without any excretions mixed in with the decaying flesh and stewed in the sun, was very, very unpleasant, and I believe, unique.
I believe the very top sniper in Vietnam was a guy called Hascock, and he seemed to me to have been very traumatised by his kills, when I saw a brief clip of him in later life. But perhaps I'm mistaken.
My late stepfather, Vince Clay, would not have been much over 5', but after joining the Black Watch transferred to, I think it was no 3 Commando, which he was in until the war's end, when it was disbanded - presumably like the SAS, only for a time.
He showed me a photo of himself with Mountbatten who he was body-guarding at the time ; when he, himself, injured ! He was very proud and amused that he'd been punched by a big goon in the Hermann Goering division, when they were being marched to a prison camp, and he was playing the fool. Later, All commandos and SAS were ordered by Hitler to be shot on sight.
(When feeling aggrieved, after being told they were being disbanded with immediate effect, by an officer, an SAS lad asked why, they were [hilariously] told by His Royal Nibs, that they didn't like having 'gangsters' in the British Army ! It might have been 'brigands' or hoodlums').
Anyway, Vice told me that he had had to see a 'trick-cyclist' after the war - they all had to. In my naivety, it surprised me at the time, but it makes sense of course.
