Into the lost valley of the Dinosaurs - the response to Women on the Front Line.

It has been announced that the UK is going to admit women to every single role in the armed forces, including the Special Forces. For the first time in our history, men and women can apply to do every single job in the military, regardless of gender, providing they meet the appropriate standards.

To most people this seems a common sense outcome, but to some it has been the cause of outrage. There are former service personnel out there who have for some years now been deeply opposed to the role of Women in the infantry, and have made no effort to hide their anger. Just read these quotes, taken from a Daily Telegraph article in 2016:

“The people who have demanded this change – politicians desperate to be seen as “progressive”, feminist zealots and ideologues hell-bent on equality of opportunity without exception – would never dream of volunteering. Indeed only a very small number of women will want to join the infantry and of those only a fraction will have the physical capability. Hence the need to lower the bar….

I have not heard a single serving or retired infantryman say that admitting women is the right thing to do – unless their wives or senior officers are listening. The overwhelming majority are vehemently opposed and many have said that if women join they will leave…

Through no fault of their own, women will often become the weak link in an infantry team.”

Now, imagine reading those words and replacing ‘women’ with ‘black people’, ‘homosexuals’, ‘Muslims’ or other similar phrases. Hopefully that would make you feel deeply uncomfortable and alarmed at the flagrant discrimination on display. So why is it the case that seemingly educated people can still hold such views today?

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Life in the infantry is as much a calling as it is a career. There are relatively few people out there who willingly want to take on a job that involves living and working in often very uncomfortable situations, doing a lot of physical work and potentially being exposed to significant risk. It’s a difficult and at times very dangerous job. The British Army has struggled to fill its infantry units for years, yet in a time of recruiting crisis, a few people seem to be more obsessed with the idea that people who haven’t got a willy can’t possibly do the job and its dangerous to let them in.

One of the great strengths of the British Armed Forces has been their willingness and adaptability to embrace changed circumstances. Humphrey recalls serving before the ban on homosexual personnel serving was lifted, and hearing worried tales of how it would impact the military. For instance, Iain Duncan Smith MP, then Shadow Defence Spokesman said in 2000 on hearing the ban would be lifted:

"I believe and have always believed, as the previous government did, that we should follow the advice of the armed forces which has always been that lifting the ban would adversely affect operational effectiveness."  (LINK)

Today, just 18 years later, it is hard not to look at words like this and cringe a bit inside at just how pathetic they now sound. Similar words were probably spoken condemning women at sea or integration in the armed forces in general. In a world where the lifting of the ban seemed to cause a shrug of the shoulders and a ‘err okay, what time is scran’ reaction from most people, its hard not to feel that some people do protest too much.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

There is no doubt that the infantry is a particularly close knit group and that bonds are formed quickly in adversity. But some people, usually either never served or very long retired, seem obsessed with the idea that women are somehow the weaker sex and simply cannot ‘hack it’. They seem to believe there is some secret and ultra zealous unit of PC Commissars determined to force women onto the military without confirming they can meet the same standards.

In fact the Army has gone out of its way to make clear that the same physical fitness standards apply now to everyone. If you meet them then you can do the job – if not then you aren’t up to standard. It is particularly ironic that the same people are moaning about women not being fit to meet the standards when the Daily Mail gets to publish articles about modern British soldiers being too fat to fight (LINK).

The usual thematic arguments for opposition to women in the front line seem to boil down to three basic problems (a couple of US example articles are HERE and HERE).

           

a.       Physical Fitness;

b.       Risk of Sexual Assault if captured;

c.       Chances of couples forming in the field;

d.       ‘girly stuff’

It is understandable that people will have concerns that women may not be able to meet the same load carrying ability as men. But frankly those that push this argument forget that not all men can meet the standards required to carry heavy packs or advance for hours before fighting. It is always going to be a tiny percentage of people in society who meet these standards, regardless of gender. But if you are fit enough to meet the British Army gender neutral fitness test (HERE), then you meet the standard. Its not difficult – either you are fit enough to do the job, or you’re not.  

As for the risk of sexual assault if captured, there are quite a few hyperbolic comments on the internet out there that imply that somehow if a woman was captured then she would be raped. They’re probably quite right. What they don’t seem to realise is there is an equally high chance of it happening to male prisoners too as a tool of control. Humphrey recalls listening to some fairly grim and no holds barred training lectures setting out in very clear details what has happened in the past to people captured. The idea that being a male makes you inviolate is touching but very naïve. Bluntly, anyone captured is at risk regardless of gender – this isn’t a reason to not let women serve in the infantry.

Finally the perennial chestnut of ‘risk of people coupling up’. According to some people our modern young infantry soldiers are simply unable to cope with the idea that apparently you can’t possibly work with a lady in testing circumstances without them wanting to shag you. Therefore to avoid problems, these clearly sexually voracious women shouldn’t be let near those poor innocent little infantry lambs who clearly can't cope.

There is no doubt that operations, particularly when living together in close quarters can breed strong and intense bonds. There are plenty of accounts from WW2 of the ‘bonds of brotherhood’ that soldiers had in the front line. There is also no doubt that couples form in the armed forces, sometimes on deployment and that this needs to be carefully managed. 

Presumably the same risks doesn’t apply to homosexual couples - oh wait, the same excuse was used before that ban was lifted too.  But the idea that somehow every squaddy in a mixed infantry platoon is going to be coupling up and at risk of combat efficiency is a bit of a joke really.

Frankly we need a fairly mature conversation that recognises the men and women who serve are often young, often working in emotionally charged situations and sometimes get intimately close. That doesn’t mean they can’t do the job at hand of killing the enemy.

The final reasons cited seems to be that apparently girls have different ‘needs’ to men. This appears to be a damning indictment on the inbuilt repression of British puberty and sex education, where grown and educated men seem unable to say that ‘women tend to bleed out of their vagina once a month and use a variety of products to deal with this’.  Heaven forbid there is visible bleeding on the battlefield.

When the strength of your argument as to why 50% of the population by gender should be discriminated against and barred from joining is because they may occasionally need to ‘do a number three’ when going to the loo, then frankly, you perhaps need to accept your argument is pretty weak.

There is a wider discussion about the fact that the front line is a fairly muddy dirty and unpleasant place to live and that many people may not want to be there for a living. That’s not an exclusively female ‘girly girl’ thing to not want to do. Most men don’t particularly enjoy the idea of an infantry lifestyle either – Humphrey joined the Naval Service in part because he preferred the idea of going to war with a steward and pink gin at his side, which was ironic given he later ended up on the streets of Afghanistan…

To say that because most women may not want the infantry lifestyle is a reason not to let them join seems spectacularly self-defeating. Why turn off the recruitment taps from those who do want it, just because they’ve got breasts?

The reality is the history of the British Armed Forces is about putting women into positions of great danger on the front lines and letting them play a full and active part in it. Look at the astounding work of the women agents in the SOE during WW2, or the astonishing courage of the Medics in Afghanistan who won numerous gallantry awards. The front line does not distinguish between cap badges and genders. If you are deployed on modern operations, you are likely to be operating in a complex and ever changing environment where units and roles blend together. To act as if there is a neatly defined ‘front line’ and then beautifully mapped rear echelons working their way back to the homeland, and then defining the bit where it is appropriate for ladies to serve is utterly self-defeating.

The chances are that relatively few women will want to serve in the infantry or Special Forces, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be given every opportunity to do so. There are plenty of people, usually never served armchair generals, who are quick to comment about ‘dropping of standards’ in Selection to get women in without the slightest empirical evidence to back it up.

The Royal Marines have already made clear that the Green Beret is only won by passing the Commando Tests, and these will remain an absolute standard. There are few people who can do this (after all ’99.9% need not apply’), and the Corps has preferred to maintain its standards and take the manpower hit associated than compromise. There is zero evidence that this will change – and rightly so. As Lady Appleby put it when I discussed this issue with her ‘why would a woman want to feel she has got in by reaching a lesser standard than a man’?

Similarly UK Special Forces Selection training will remain the most exceptionally difficult course to pass. The hills don’t care what your gender is, they will take equal pleasure in inflicting suffering and misery on you. Again, the UKSF have chosen not to compromise their standards in the past even when faced with manning challenges, so it is exceptionally unlikely that this would change just to maximise the chances to ‘get a woman in’. The reality is those that attend selection, let alone pass it, are supremely fit and capable people – their gender is irrelevant.

War is a violent, horrible and awful thing. It is not something that most people would willingly wish to go through, and it requires a mentality shift that most struggle with. Humphrey recalls as a junior officer under training being told about how Sea Dart when used in an anti-ship missile role would throw a lot of spare fuel around the space it hit, causing extra damage and fatalities. A fellow officer blanched, at which point the instructor made the point ‘we are training for war and need to exploit every opportunity to kill the enemy’. Thinking into that mentality is difficult, but vital.

To assume that only men can do this in one specific part of the battlefield is ridiculous – these views bear no resemblance to modern society or the people we need to attract to make up the next generation of army recruits. It is vital that to stop the critical shortfall in manpower (for instance, as shown in this MOD FOI response, the Scots Guards are nearly 300 personnel short right now) to maximise the recruiting base.

 Throughout this debate online this week it has been telling and encouraging to see how strongly serving personnel have reacted to efforts by out of touch and irrelevant dinosaurs to make out that there is an issue here. The overwhelming reaction has been ‘this isn’t an issue, please just STFU’. Never has there been a more clear divide between those who are serving who get it, and those who are outside angrily looking in at an organisation that regards their views as alien and outdated.

On that note, Humphrey does wish that the rules were changed to prevent retired officers from clinging to their job titles as if they were still serving. It is excruciating to watch yesterdays men, now totally irrelevant to the modern military getting airtime and columns and being allowed to use their rank.

Perhaps the rules should be modernised to make it clear that you can only call yourself ‘Colonel’ if you are a serving and paid Colonel. If you retire then you must put ‘RETIRED’ in front of your rank, not Rtd as a post nominal. If you resign your commission then you cannot use it at all.

The reason this is an issue is when people see former officers, particularly those who insist on photos being used with them in uniform, and assume they represent serving personnel, not long retired dinosaurs with views that many in the modern military find irrelevant at best, and abhorrent at worst.

Frankly the only issue that really matters in all of this is one posed by a friend of Humphreys, who on learning that women will be eligible to join the Royal Marines asked ‘when they all go ashore for a beer will the women be expected to wear dresses and lingerie  like all the lads do or will they be required to dress up as men’?