Female POW Recalls Gulf Experience

Monday, January 15th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) â€” The mission â€” to rescue a downed pilot â€” was going very wrong. Enemy fire riddled the helicopter carrying flight surgeon Maj. Rhonda Cornum, and the aircraft was plunging to the Iraqi desert.

She felt strangely calm.

``I remember very distinctly thinking as I was crashing, `I have had a great life,' because I thought it was ending then,'' Cornum said. ``I really got to do more stuff than most people get to do, so I should not complain.''

Five of her fellow soldiers were killed and Cornum, seriously injured, became one of two American servicewomen taken prisoner during the Gulf War.

Ten years later, the pain and fear of the experience haven't dimmed her zeal for Army life.

``I feel exactly like I felt 10 years ago, when I thought I was going to die in the middle of the desert,'' said Cornum, now a 46-year-old colonel in charge of a field hospital unit at Fort Bragg, N.C. ``Every day is a gift. I feel really lucky.''

Cornum is a wife, mother and physician whose Gulf War exploits earned her the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart and â€” for better or worse â€” a role representing women in the military.

She spent a week as a prisoner of war, enduring abuse from her captors with stoicism.

``I knew going into the Gulf thing that it was a high-risk activity, so I was pretty accepting, I suppose,'' she said.

After the war, Cornum testified before a presidential commission on women in the military, and air combat roles for women subsequently were expanded. She also spoke out against Virginia Military Institute's men-only admissions policy before the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1996.

Her 1992 autobiography, ``She Went to War,'' was declared one of the most notable books of the year by The New York Times. Her yellow POW uniform and a sling she wore on her left arm became part of an exhibit at the National Museum of American History in Washington. Cornum makes occasional public appearances.

Still, she doesn't consider herself a crusader for women in uniform.

``I guess if I'm a crusader for anything, it's equal opportunity for everybody,'' she said. ``If you want to go do something, then you need to go identify with the activity first, not your gender. You shouldn't think of yourself as a female colonel. You should think of yourself as a colonel who just happens to be a woman.''

Cornum never envisioned herself in the military while growing up in upstate New York, coming of age in the '60s and early '70s.

``I lived in a log cabin and had my kid at home and raised chickens and goats,'' she recalled. ``I wasn't a druggie, but I wasn't exactly establishment.''

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Cornum grew up in East Aurora, N.Y., and attended Cornell University, where she earned a graduate degree in nutrition and biochemistry. She never gave the Army a second thought until she was approached by a man in uniform at a scientific conference and offered a research position.

``He said, `We're looking for somebody who does exactly what you do, the only catch is you have to join the Army,''' she recalled.

So at 23, the young mother donned a uniform.

``At that time, I just wanted to be a medical scientist,'' she said. ``This is much more fun than I expected it would be.''

She earned her medical degree in the Army in 1986 from the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Md.

At the time Cornum was shot down, there was no official role for women in combat. The issue had come up a few weeks earlier, however, when Cornum was preparing her battalion medical plan. It included the possibility that she, as the flight surgeon, might have to enter the combat zone on a search-and-rescue mission.

``I remember the executive officer looked at me and said, `Do you suppose the colonel knows you're a woman?' I told him, `Well, I don't know, but if he hasn't figured it out by now, let's not tell him until the war is over,''' she recalled. ``And that was the only thing that was ever said.''

Upon returning from the Persian Gulf and recovering from her injuries, which included two broken arms and a gunshot wound, Cornum attended command and staff college in Alabama.

Cornum's husband, Kory, is an Air Force doctor. Her daughter, Regan, is 24.

Cornum has been stationed at Fort Bragg since July as commander of the 18th Airborne Corps' 28th Combat Support Hospital, the modern Army equivalent of a MASH unit. In March, she will be sent to Bosnia for six months.

Cornum will not say whether there are any roles in the military â€” such as those that could result in capture by the enemy â€” for which she thinks women are unsuited.

``I would not make that generalization about anybody,'' she said. ``I don't think that women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. I think they're just more likely to be asked about it. Have you ever seen an interview in which a male POW was asked if he had been sexually assaulted?''

Only one thing has shaken her desire to stay in the Army â€” the chance that former Gen. Colin Powell would run for president. She said she might have quit the service so she could work on his campaign.

``It's not that I'm a Pollyanna. I do occasionally get frustrated,'' she said. ``But there's no place that I think I would be less frustrated. Where else could a 46-year-old woman who is also a physician and a surgeon get paid to jump out of an airplane?''