Women Special Operations Veterans Remember Their Battles
The only fraternal organization for women special operations veterans held a gala to mark the wars that began 25 years ago. It came as the Pentagon questions women’s roles in the military.
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The only fraternal organization for women special operations veterans held a gala to mark the wars that began 25 years ago. It came as the Pentagon questions women’s roles in the military.
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· 7:01 min
Sept. 11, 2026
Inside the tall brick and glass walls of the Bowery Hotel in New York on Thursday, hundreds of women in dress uniforms and evening gowns gathered in a solemn ceremony to mark the events that had sent them to war.
Some were still on active duty or in the reserves. Others had long retired. All had signed up for the toughest jobs in the military, including service in combat with the nation’s most elite counterterror teams.
The women belong to a nonprofit organization called ALLTRU — a play on the word altruism — founded five years ago by two female veterans as the only fraternal organization for women in special operations. Now numbering roughly 375, its membership has expanded to those in other military occupational specialties, law enforcement and the intelligence community.
Holding the gala on the eve of Sept. 11 was a way of acknowledging the terrorist attacks that had led so many of the women to join the military. The event also coincided with the 10-year anniversary of the Pentagon dropping the last remaining restrictions on women serving in combat.
That decision is now under review by the Defense Department’s top policy official, part of a series of recent moves by the Pentagon that have questioned women’s roles in the military. The percentage of high-ranking officer nominations going to women is currently at its lowest level in over two decades, according to a recent New York Times analysis. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has repeatedly fired or removed senior women officers from promotion lists.
That context went unspoken. The gala avoided politics or any discussion of Trump administration policies, styling the night not as a defiant statement but as a celebration.
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Originally published by nytimes.com. Syndicated material does not necessarily reflect the views of Glamour Canada.
