WASHINGTON — As a helicopter pilot in Iraq in 2004, now-Sen. Tammy Duckworth stopped drinking water hours before she climbed into the cockpit of her Army UH-60 Black Hawk for combat missions.
Even in Iraq’s heat, she’d purposefully dehydrate herself because there was not a safe way for her to use the restroom in her one-piece, zip-up flight suit.
“I would have to take off my side arm. I wore a shoulder holster, so I would have to take off my shoulder holster. Then I would have to take off my flight vest, my survival vest, then I would have to take off my body armor and then I would have to take off my flight suit in order to go to the bathroom,” said Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat.
