G.I. Jane: women are still officially barred from combat, but realities on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq mean they're fighting--and dying--alongside men.

• Author: Alvarez, Lizette
• Position: Cover story

As the convoy rumbled up the road in Iraq, Army Specialist Veronica Alfaro was struck by the beauty of fireflies dancing in the night. Then she heard the unmistakable pinging of tracer rounds and realized the "fireflies" were actually illuminated bullets.

She jumped from behind the wheel of her gun truck, grabbed her medical bag, and sprinted 50 yards to a stalled civilian truck as bullets kicked up dust near her feet. She pulled the badly wounded driver to the ground and got to work. Despite her best efforts, the driver died, but her heroism last January earned Alfaro a Bronze Star for valor.

"I did everything there," Alfaro, 25, says of her time in Iraq. "I gunned. I drove. I ran as a truck commander. And underneath it all, I was a medic."

Before 2001, America's military women had rarely seen ground combat. Their jobs kept them mostly away from enemy lines, as military policy dictates. But the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, with no clear battle lines, have changed that. In both countries, women have repeatedly proved themselves in combat.

"Iraq has advanced the cause of full integration for women in the Army by leaps and bounds," says Peter R. Mansoor, who served as executive officer to General David H. Petraeus, formerly the top American commander in Iraq. "They have earned the confidence and respect of male colleagues."

Women have long played a role in the American military, officially or unofficially, with some going so far as to disguise themselves as men to fight in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. In the early 1900s, both the Army and the Navy formed all-female Nurse Corps, and during World War I, thousands of these nurses served overseas.

During World War II, the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines all created women's divisions in what was intended to be a temporary wartime measure: To free men for combat duty, women would fill jobs as typists, clerks, drivers, and mechanics.

THE 2 PERCENT RULE

In 1948, President Harry Truman signed bills that ended racial segregation in the military and made all women's branches a permanent part of the armed services. But the number of women could not exceed 2 percent of any one branch of the military, and women were barred from combat. The 2 percent cap remained in place until 1967.

Today, women make up 16 percent of the U.S. military, including the Reserves and the National Guard. They are still officially barred from direct combat. Yet over and over, in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army commanders have resorted to bureaucratic trickery when they needed more soldiers for jobs like bomb disposal and intelligence.

Women's success in these two wars--widely known in the military--remains largely hidden from public view. In part, this is because their most challenging work is often the result of quietly getting around military policy.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, women have patrolled streets with machine guns, served as gunners on vehicles, and driven trucks down bomb-ridden roads. They are indispensable when it comes to searching Iraqi and Afghan women for weapons, a job men cannot do for cultural reasons. A small number of women have even conducted raids, engaging the enemy directly in total disregard of existing policies.

Many experts say it's only a matter of time before regulations that have restricted women's participation in combat will be adjusted.

More than a dozen countries already allow women in some or all ground-combat operations. Among those pushing boundaries most aggressively is Canada, which has recruited women for the infantry and sent them to Afghanistan.

But there are those who vigorously object to women being sent into combat. Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a group that opposes fully integrating women into the Army, says women are doing these jobs without congressional...