Drawn by the Hair*

German girls have been allowed
to fight since 2001 (©dpa)

We just learned in the press that women will be integrated into the US Armed Forces with all rights and duties. 

Three notions come to mind when thinking about American soldiers: Marines, leatherneck, and crew cut. So I wondered how the American girls would hide their superb head of hair below a mundane steel helmet?

Hair was an issue even with the boys in 1970 in the newly formed German army. The long-haired citizens in uniform regarded the old practice of putting the steel helmet on with a barber cutting off the protruding hair as incompatible with their habeas corpus. 

Our then Defense Minister Helmut Schmidt issued the now famous hair net decree (Haarnetz-Erlass) in February 1971 demanding that hair and beard be neat and that the former had to be controlled should its length hamper the tasks of the soldier by wearing a hair net. Our Federal Army (Bundeswehr) acquired 740,000 hair nets at that time. Soon the size of the hair of the drafted men was no longer an issue, so I wonder what the Bundeswehr did with all those unused hair nets.

How will the US Armed Forces deal with the hair of their female soldiers? In the photo, admire a ponytail hairstyle looking out from under a NATO steel helmet. How does the American Army helmet compare?

*Drawn by the hair is the translation of the German idiom an den Haaren herbeigezogen meaning far-fetched, but using this correct English title for the blog lockt keinen Hund hinter dem warmen Ofen hervor (does not attract a dog reposing behind a warm stove).

*