CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq -- Retracing he...

CAMP ANACONDA, Iraq -- Retracing her path to becoming a brigadier general in Iraq, Rebecca Halstead remembers her first command back in 1981 where, as a freshly minted lieutenant, she was teamed with a sergeant who had serv in Vietnam.

After a month at the U Army's base in Vicenza, Italy, Halstead plucked the sergeant aside and outlined brace of the three strikes she fancy he held against her:

She was now another officer for him to train; she was from West Point; and -- as the petite Halstead stood in succession a rock to look the sergeant in the sight -- she told him strike three was that she's short.

"And he just started laughing because I know he idea I was going to say 'because I'm a woman.' And that probably was what the issue was," Halstead recalled.

15% OF ARMY IS FEMALE

That attitude has helped her become the first West Point woman to rise to the rank of general. And as top officer of the 3rd Corps Support Command, she is the highest-ranking female serving in Iraq as a battlefield commander.

Gender? "You can make it an issue if you want to, or you can figure public other ways to skin that cat," said Halstead, 47 from Willseyville, NY

Women make up about 15 percent of the Army's ranks. And Halstead said a male-only military is no longer an option.

"If you were to say tomorrow we cannot have women in the Army and you took all the women without we could not do our mission," Halstead said.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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