Episode 191: Woman in Command: Life in the Army
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
This time, working in the ultimate male environment can be exhilarating and deeply frustrating…
“In the end I had to just sit him down in my office and say, it's either you or it's me, and it's not going to be me. So you either start talking to me, we make this relationship work. You tell me what your issue is with me, or you have to leave and I will find another Sergeant Major. Because I'm not taking you to Afghanistan in the relationship we have as it is.”
Life as a woman in the armed services. Coming up on The Broad Experience.
At the end of 2020 I heard from a listener in the UK. He was recommending someone for the podcast, a former colleague of his in the army - a lieutenant colonel by the name of Kelly.
It took me a while to get in touch with her, but I’m very glad I did.
Kelly asked me not to use her last name so she could speak freely about her almost 19-year career in the army. She left a couple of years ago and now works as a cybersecurity consultant.
She says she didn’t grow up thinking much about a career…
“I was born and raised in Liverpool, good working class family, had no real ambitions as a child, you know, just to sort of go to school and enjoy being with my friends. I never was conditioned to sort of look beyond that, to be honest. And in fact, the school I was in, the secondary school I was at was all about raising young ladies.”
They were taught sewing, typing, flower arranging…it wasn’t academic at all. But then that school closed down and she spent the last two years of her education at another school. And the teachers spotted something in Kelly. She was studying languages and enjoying it…and they put her forward as a candidate for Oxford University. Something she says she nor anyone in her family would ever have thought of.
She says right-from the get-go, from her interview at Oxford, she felt like a fish out of water. She was floundering. But so was her interviewer.
“I had such a broad Scouse accent. He couldn't understand what I was saying. And I kept using mannerisms and colloquialisms from Liverpool. And I had to be very mindful of how I was talking. And so, even from that and from day one in Oxford as well, my classmates were from Eton and Harrow and I felt very, very out of my depth. And so even from the beginning of university, I was suffering quite badly from imposter syndrome.”
She almost left so out of place did she feel among the privileged, privately educated students who were there. But she stayed…studied French and Italian. And being an Oxford graduate is a great calling card. After she left Kelly moved to London with some friends and landed a job at a headhunting firm…
“And I hated it. I hated everything about it. It was all about money. It was all about status, stuck in an office.”
Then one day, a friend of one of her flatmates turned up for the weekend. He was a cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst - this is where British army officers receive their training. It’s where Prince Harry went, if you follow this stuff. Kelly got chatting to this guy about what it was like there, and he invited her and everyone else in the flat to a ball at Sandhurst.
At the ball, Kelly got talking to some of the young women who were training there. They seemed happy, fit, ready for adventure…
“And I just thought, yep, this is something I want to get involved in. I want to have some fun. I want to go traveling. I would, this looks like what I want to do. It's not sitting in an office. It's not all centered around money and status. This is purpose. And within six weeks I started in Sandhurst.”
AM-T: “What was the training like?”
“It was horrendous, horrendous. It’s a whole year and the ethos effectively, whether it's still the same, but back then it was, ‘we break you to remake you’. And they physically and mentally, they will break you and then remake you in their mold, in how they want you to be, because you have to lead men, you have to command, and there's certain situations you're gonna be put into that, you know, you have to be prepared for. So they do have to sort of put you through a whole conditioning process.”
Including sleep deprivation exercises…
“...where you will get very little sleep, but you still have to function and you're put into a command position. So you, they want to see how you react under extreme stress because you know, rightfully they're saying well in the future, there are gonna be circumstances where you will be under a lot of stress. So we, they sort of, they talk about train hard, fight easy, effectively. So they will put you under conditions, synthetic conditions whereby you feel absolutely mentally and physically broken, but you still have to keep going because there may be a situation - if you are in command of soldiers, people are gonna be looking to you. And even if everybody's feeling tired and broken, you are still the one who's in command.” FIX
The 9/11 attacks happened while Kelly was coming to the end of her training at Sandhurst. Until then she’d thought about being in the military as an opportunity to see the world…safely. Then, suddenly, everything she’d learned looked like it was going to be put into practice.
When the Iraq War broke out, she shipped out to Kuwait. She was now the commander of a troop of 50 soldiers. Their role was electronic warfare - she says they were essentially trying to identify enemy radar. There's a moment from the beginning of the war she remembers well. She was lined up with her troop at the border with Iraq…they’d all just had to take medication to counteract the effects of biological or nerve agents on the body…should that be part of what they were about to face…
“And I think the enormity of what we were about to do…When we took that, it was kind of, there was no going back from then. And we were all gonna get into our vehicles and we were all gonna drive forward and join the convoy of vehicles that were about to cross into enemy territory. And I remember at the time feeling, you know, terrified but exhilarated because, you know, maybe because I was young, maybe cuz I'd just come through training. I didn't feel like I was in any imminent danger at the time. I felt immense privilege that I was leading this troop of 50 soldiers who actually were more experienced than I was, you know, I was sort of very wet behind the ears, young female.”
Kelly was just 24 years old, and 5 foot 4. I wondered about her confidence back then. Did she feel like a leader?
“I was over confident because of Sandhurst and I was very rightfully put back in my place by my staff Sergeant, who is sort of your right hand man, and your troop commander. So Sandhurst sort of builds you up to think that this is a God given right to go and lead men and command men because you've now been trained for a year, and you go in expecting that you're gonna get given everything on a plate. And I went in probably with the wrong attitude and very quickly, he was brilliant actually, Scottish staff Sergeant sort of took me to one side and said, you know, you just need to not be like this. You just need to calm down a little bit. And I sort of took it…at first, it was like a virtual slap in the face.
And I suddenly realized actually I had no idea really what I was really doing when it came to leading men. So Sandhurst gives you all the tools and the theories, but actually you have to go out there and you have to earn the right to command. It's not just given to you because you've got the crown or you've got, you know, the little pips on your, on your rank slide. It is the staff sergeants. It's the warrant officers that really know what they're doing, and they're the ones who know how to lead. And, and you may be the one that's, that's sort of giving the theory and the command and deciding what to do in battle planning. But when it comes to actually leading men, they're the ones who have the respect, ‘cause they've earned it, then know they've done their sort of 20 years and they've got that experience behind them. And you learn that quite quickly.”
AM-T: “Well, talking of leading men. I mean, was it you and 49 men or what, you know, were there some women in there?”
“Yeah, yeah, it was, it was me and it was all men in my first platoon. We were just in the middle of a desert, we were just on our own. There was no other facilities around us. We were just a group of vehicles with some tents and that was it. And so we would drive to our location in the middle of a desert, all, all of us. And some, we were sort of split up slightly, so we could triangulate and get a better fix on the enemy aircraft. But essentially you would be in a, what's called a detachment and you would set up your vehicle and your tent. And that was you. That was you, good to go. So for example, your toilet facility, our toilet was a hole in the ground and somebody had managed to find an old car tire and that was the seat and your shower was, you know, I'd managed to bring out with me a solar shower that I fixed between two of the vehicles that were parked close together and just let people know not to come close when I was getting washed or getting showered. Yeah. Most people were very respectful and they see past the whole gender thing, you know, and they are quite good. I never felt uncomfortable with them.”
She says in all her time in the army it was the soldiers she felt the most rapport with…it was those closer to her in rank who could be a problem. Senior officers. Kelly tells one story from a later deployment.
By this point she’s in her thirties and a Major. She’s in command of a squadron of 150 people. They’re about to deploy from England to Afghanistan. She’s holding a meeting with everyone, including her second in command, the sergeant major, whom she had only met recently. He’s older than she is, and has been in the army about 20 years. Kelly says it was always impressed on her that she should form a tight relationship with her second in command for the sake of everyone in the troop or squadron.
But this time, something was off…and it became clear at that meeting.
“... and everybody had gone round, introduced themselves and it was all, you know, sounding very good, very positive and what we were supposed to be doing for the rest of the week for training and then getting ready for Afghanistan. And protocol dictates, it was the Sergeant Major who was second to last. And he started his introduction of himself by dropping the F bomb and the C-bomb, and not particularly talking to anybody in particular, but you know, trying to set the scene, I suppose, of making it known that he was not a pushover.”
The torrent of expletives kept up. After his rant, a silence descended on the room. Kelly had to make a decision.
“Everybody sort of very wordlessly looked at me so to say, okay, how are you going to deal with this now? Because it was my meeting, and the thought process went through my head: Okay, well, I can either just embarrass him in front of everybody and dress him down and say ‘ that is not acceptable,’ but that would then next not set the right tone for me and him as our relationship together. So I need to have his back. I need to not embarrass him in front of everybody. I'm gonna do this privately. So I sort of stayed quiet for a while, and said, with a sort of slight smirk, ‘Okay. Um, thanks everybody. Sergeant Major, can we just have a quick chat about this?’ as if to say, we're gonna talk about this. This is not gonna happen again.”
The meeting broke up, and Kelly followed the Sergeant Major to his office.
“...and I tried to be friendly. And I walked in and I said, Sergeant Major, we just need to have a little chat about, you know, what just happened then. And he looked at me and he didn't say anything. He just sort of looked at me very aggressively. And I said, you do understand what I'm trying to say? You can't be going into a squadron meeting like this, swearing like you were, that's completely disrespectful and it's not the right tone to set for the first squadron meeting. And we let the silence sit there for a while. And he said, ‘well, my other commander was a female and she was all right with me swearing.’”
Kelly had to make clear it wasn't the swearing per se - it was the context. A meeting of professionals. A meeting where you’re meant to start building relationships so you can work together effectively in a war zone.
“He didn't even answer. He just sort of looked at me and I thought, okay, we're gonna have massive issues. And that was kind of the first run-in we had. And then after that, it was sort of minor insubordination or you know, he would be talking about me in front of others and it was just getting untenable. So in the end I had to just sit him down in my office and say, okay, it's either you or it's me and it's not going to be me. So you either start talking to me, we make this relationship work. You tell me what your issue is with me, or you have to leave. And I will find another Sergeant Major because I'm not taking you to Afghanistan in the relationship we have as it is.”
It didn’t come to that. Kelly soon realized the sergeant major was having problems at home, he did have an issue with women in authority, and he was probably feeling threatened by the people around him, many of whom were university educated and had come up through the ranks differently than he had. She says in the end they were able to establish a relationship of trust and work together in Afghanistan.
Later though, she did have to send him home because soldiers accused him of bullying.
While she was on that tour of Afghanistan she had another run-in with some senior male colleagues. Each week there was a meeting where she and others would give intelligence briefings. One week the commander who normally ran the meeting was away. Someone else was standing in. There were about 30 people there including her, herself a Major at this point - and three males of the same rank…
“And as I was giving my brief, they started giggling. And so I kind of ignored it at first, but then they kept on giggling. And so I stopped and waited for them to finish. And I was, you know when you can sort of feel the blood coming up through your ears, and I was getting really quite embarrassed. I'm thinking, are they laughing at me? Is there something I'm saying, because it was maybe one other female in the room, the others were all warrant officers and sort of other subordinate officers as well.
And they said, oh no, no, no, carry on. So I said, I carried on and then the giggling started again. And so I waited and waited and then I sort of let the silence sit for a bit and I said, ‘um, sorry, I'm just waiting for you to share the joke with everybody. It's obviously incredibly funny.’ And they, they sort of eventually, they sort of calmed down and stopped laughing and, and they said, no, no, no, please carry on. And at this time, you know, I was getting really embarrassed. I was feeling quite humiliated to be honest. So I sort of gathered myself and carried on giving my brief at which point they suddenly started laughing again. And I just thought, I can't take this…everybody's looking at me to see how I'm going to react.
And so I tried to stay as calm as I possibly could. And I sort of stood up from my seat and I said, I'm not gonna be coming back to these briefs until there’s a grown up in charge again. And I just left the room. I just couldn’t stay. Two of them came over to apologize afterwards, but it took a while.”
Kelly says these kinds of incidents weren’t that common over the course of her career - even if they were memorable. And she had a varied career in the army. She did a lot of different jobs. Just to name a few…After her first tour of Iraq, the army was looking for people with a language background. That was her, so Kelly did a 15-month intensive course in Arabic. Subsequently she worked as an interpreter, including back in Iraq. She also worked with the CIA, and was a defense advisor to the UK cabinet office during the Libya crisis in the early 2010s.
AM-T: “Outsiders hear quite a few crappy stories, frankly, about women in the army. I mean everything from bullying and sexual harassment to sexual violence and even death sometimes. So I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about whether you've had some negative experiences in that regard.”
“Yes I did - definitely more also in the earliest stages of my career…whether that's generally true for all females in the army, that the, the more junior you are, the more sort of naive, new you are, the more you are likely to come up against, um, sexual harassment and unwanted sexual advances and yes, when I was at Sandhurst, I was subject to sexual harassment by one of the directing staff there, uh, as were some of the other girls in my platoon as well. And it was just the situation that you did not feel that you could raise it. You know, they talk about it. Now we raise it and we'll take it seriously. But at the time we just did not feel safe raising it because the directing staff, the platoon commanders at the time were kind of godlike status to us. And we had the fear that if we raised it or rocked the boat a) we'd be known as a troublemaker, but b) you know, we might lose our place at Sandhurst or get kicked out or back termed, or, you'd by sort of raising that issue you would be tarred with the brush, as a troublemaker. So we just kept quiet about it.”
Later on, as a fully fledged member of the military, the harassment stopped. But at that point she had a different kind of problem.
“All of a sudden, because I was a young, single female, I was now, um, apparently unbeknownst to me, having affairs with all of them, there was all these rumors going around about me and the wives wouldn't talk to me because they'd heard I was a husband steal-. You know, it, I was subject to lots of gossip and it got to the point where my squadron commander brought me in and said, you know, you need to be aware of what's being said about you. You know, apparently you are sleeping around and you're having affairs with such - this person, this person and this person. And it was totally news to me.
AM-T: “Did he believe it?”
“I don't think he did because there were so many of them. I hope he didn't believe it. He didn't sort of say either way, cuz I was obviously going to deny it, but I said, well, what, what have I, what can I do to change that? And he said, you have to stop being so friendly. And even then I knew that was totally unfair of him to say that. So the, the male troop commanders had great relationships with their soldiers and they went out drinking with them and they were one of the lads and I was not being allowed to do that because there were all these rumors going around and there was the fear that, you know, I wouldn't be taken as seriously or they needed to stop, quash these room was about me, you know, having an affair with people.
And there was one time when I went into the pub and all the troop commanders were there. And there were some of the soldiers on the other side of the bar, and the troop commander for these soldiers went over to say hello to them. And they were all patting him on the back, and he came back and we were like, what were they doing there? And he said, oh, they all think I've slept with you. That's why they were patting him on the back. And I said, well, you're not gonna put them straight? And he said, why would I, they all think I'm a legend. It's like, you couldn't win. I think you just become inured to it. You just get used to it. But then the higher up you get in the ranks the less that seems to be an issue.”
Talking of rising up the ranks…Kelly says these kinds of situations she faced as a woman weren’t a big part of why she ultimately left the army. That was more to do with a lack of flexibility - more on that later - and the fact that she didn’t see enough women at the top. She says at least when she left, the army still placed a lot of emphasis on physical ability when it came to reaching the highest ranks…and she’d always be at a disadvantage there.
“And a lot of the females who are successful, are doing well...some of them have found success because they're almost more male in their attributes than the men in that, you know, they've got great physical prowess, but also they’ve got great hard skills, they've able to sort of put their femininity aside essentially.”
She says they’re brilliant at their jobs. But in Kelly’s ideal world the army would give more credence to the so-called soft skills. I asked her to talk about a time when she felt having those skills helped her in her job.
“I mean the soft skills I felt came into prominence when we were in Afghanistan and one of our soldiers was killed out there. And it was very, very difficult not to react as a female in that circumstance where you just want to break down and all your emotions want to come out as well. But the simple fact is you, you simply can't do that because you have these other 150 people who are looking at you and they're grieving just as much. And so you have, have to be the one that is the, is the strong one for them. So in that respect, that was very difficult, but showing the softer skills in being able to sort of talk to some of the soldiers who were suffering and show my softer side did help in that regard, but equally you kind of learn very quickly how to turn them on and turn them off. And in many situations I had to think, how would I deal with this If I were a man? How, you know, with the sart-major, how would a man deal with this? You know, rather than how should I deal with this as a female, you have to put a completely different head on, in how you deal with things and how you talk to people. So the language that you use as well, your mannerisms, how you hold yourself, you have to sort of hold yourself, without gender, I suppose. So you are, you're not completely losing your femininity, and you're not sort of trying to pretend to be a man, but you are…you're less female, I suppose. You are more genderless, and that's the best way to be taken more seriously, I suppose.”
AM-T: “I wanted to ask you about, I mean, obviously doctors are another profession that they, their job, they lose people on the job, but with you, I'm sure sometimes you knew the people that were lost on the job and that's really different. And I wonder how difficult that was.”
“It was horrendous. I don't think I've ever felt more alone or more responsible. The logical part of me knew that there was, that was not my fault, but there was the other part of me that felt responsible because this was my soldier that I'd, I mean I'd only been talking to the day before, and I'd sort of made this assumption that we were all gonna come back safe. It was all gonna be fine. You know, we'd be a job well done. It never crossed my mind that anything like this could happen. And I, yeah, I felt tremendously responsible and very, very alone…there was nobody to talk to out there to sort of discuss how you felt. I mean, they say there is, and they do this thing called trimming whereby they're talking… sort of it meant counseling with somebody, but it's not the same as talking to somebody who's gone through the same sort of thing, who understands where you're coming from.”
She says if there had been another woman there of the same rank, it would have been so helpful. But there wasn’t. And she couldn’t discuss her feelings with those who were serving under her. I told Kelly I was quite surprised to hear her say it hadn’t occurred to her that something like this could happen.
“Because you kind of… you go out there with the feeling that we are going to be fine. Everybody's going to be fine. You cannot go out there thinking something might happen. We joke about it. And we sort of, there's a black humor about it all. But nobody goes out there with the fear that something's gonna happen to them, or something bad is gonna happen. It just doesn't, we've been trained so well, you know, we've got this great equipment, we've got great procedures. And we're also sort of starting to wind down in the operations out there. And so I just had never - Yeah, of course it crossed my mind that it could happen, but until it actually does happen, you don't, you don't really appreciate the enormity of this, of the situation, and who it affects and how it affects people. Not just you, ‘cause all of his friends were in the same squadron and they'd all gone through training together. And then all of a sudden they were faced with this news, and then it was also having to go back and sort of tell his family and yeah… all of it was just, it was just really hard.”
AM-T: “Did you have to tell his family?”
“No, I didn't have to tell his family, but I met his family as soon as I got back, and you can't help thinking that you were the one who was looking after their little boy, you know, you were the one who should have brought him back for them. And so it's a terrible feeling of guilt.”
AM-T: “What has the army given you?”
“Reality. When I joined the army, I was really naive. So I didn't lack confidence. I lacked a sense of reality, I think. You do start to realize what you are capable of, and that you are stronger than you think you are, physically and mentally.
But I mean that doesn't stop the imposter syndrome voice shouting at you all the time, but it does help to quieten it down or ignore it. I think. You kind of think, well, I've been through harder situations than this. I've faced up to more difficult people than this. And you start to become more comfortable with failure and you start to become more comfortable with uncertainty. And the idea that you just sort of throw yourself in and find your way through it, rather than say no and regret it. I think that's one of the best things I've been given through the army is the ability to just do it despite the imposter syndrome and just work it out as I go along and not worry so much about what people are thinking about me, ‘cause that sort of crippled me at the beginning. You know, wondering what people were thinking about me or had I done anything to warrant it, and now not really caring.”
As we came to the end of our conversation, I couldn’t resist asking Kelly about the situation in Ukraine. I wondered how she felt about it, having been in war zones herself…
“It's hard to know how I feel, if I feel differently to other people - but I do feel differently to how I think I would've felt had I never served. So having physically experienced what I did with the people in Iraq and the people in Afghanistan. And then although I wasn't on the ground, I was getting a lot of firsthand reports of what was happening to the people in Libya, and then getting the intelligence reports of what's happening in Syria and what's happening in Yemen. And it's not to say that what's happening in Ukraine is not absolutely devastating and terrible, but what is quite worrying is that we don't hear about all of these other terrible things that are going on. We hear about Ukraine because we feel more of an affinity with Ukraine because it's on our doorstep. And yet there are absolutely horrendous things going on all around in other countries that we either don't want to hear about because they're too far away or we don't feel a particular affinity with that race or with that country.
And so, I think it’s more of I want to try and raise awareness of what's happening in other places in the world that yes, what's happening in Ukraine is terrible because it's on our doorstep. And there's the potential for escalation to other situations, which are far worse than we could possibly comprehend. I'm optimistic, however, that it won't come to that - that the situation in Ukraine will eventually come to an end without, without having to spread across to other countries. But at the same time, I just think that especially having studied international relations as well… my worry is not so much with Russia. It's more what's happening on the other side of the world. I think that's gonna be a very interesting space to watch. And Russia is just a precursor.
AM-T: “Do you mean China?”
“Yeah. The political situation between China and India is gonna be an interesting one in the next 15 years, I would think.”
AM-T: “Looking back, what did you value most or enjoy most about your time in the army?”
“I loved the people in the army. I just don't think you will find the same sort of people anywhere else, the camaraderie and the sort of sisterhood, brotherhood that you find in there of ‘everyone's in this together.’ You know, we had that during COVID, but it just doesn't even go anywhere near what it was like in the army when you really are out on operations and you are all in this together and you are all facing the same challenges and difficulties and there's this sort of black humor that bonds everybody in similar experiences. And because you are not competing with anybody else, you're all there for each other that actually, the bond that you have, even with people that you've never met in the army, you’ve immediately got a bond. And I miss that. I miss the being able to talk freely with people and chat and laugh and you are all on the same sort of page, you kind of know where the other person's coming from. I do miss that camaraderie in the army.”
AM-T “And what do you not miss?”
“It was the bureaucracy. It was the being messed around unnecessarily a lot of the time in the army. It was your needs not necessarily coming first, cuz you were always told the army, the needs of the army come first. And so you will be posted where they need you rather than where you need to be in terms of family. It was your career needs not necessarily being met if they didn't match with what the army needed of you. And so I didn't feel like I was going to be able to fulfill my potential in the army, which is one of the reasons I left. And it's just a shame that the army is still too bureaucratic I feel about how they promote people. It's not very meritocratic, it's still got a lot to learn in that regard.”
AM-T: “Interesting. And what would you, like where did you sort of want to be career-wise that you felt couldn't be fulfilled within the army?”
“I had hoped to sort of move into a more diplomatic role. So defense diplomacy, moving into a political type role, but you have to jump through a lot of command hoops to get there. And it's a really quite competitive environment and you have to have done the right jobs and know the right people to move into that space. So even though I'd done my Cambridge masters in international relations, and that was what I was trying to move towards, I was told quite unequivocally, no, until you've done all these jobs from a technical perspective, you have to do these technical roles and then you have to do another command role and you have to go back to do staff college… It was never gonna happen and so I thought, yeah, I'm gonna jump now.”
When Kelly left the army her rank was Lieutenant Colonel.
Today she is back in her hometown of Liverpool with her husband - also a former army officer - and two young children. And dog, who some of you may have heard in the background a bit earlier.
She enjoys her current role of cybersecurity consultant for a lot of reasons.
“I like the fact that I'm working from home. I like the work, the fact that I'm using my brain and I'm being listened to because I - we were chatting to some of the other soldiers, not necessarily just females, but some of them are females, that now, because we're being paid as a consultant, we're being listened to, they don't just see our rank slide or our gender and stop listening. ‘Cause within the army ability correlates with rank. And so whatever rank you have basically is how much weight you carry.”
That is another thing she does not miss.
Thanks so much to Kelly for sharing her stories and being my guest on this show. And I also want to thank Richard, who told me about Kelly in the first place. He wrote, “She is an inspiration to me and I feel like she can inspire many others with her experience and advice.”
Richard - sorry it took me so long to take you up on your suggestion but you were spot on about Kelly, so thank you.
That’s The Broad Experience for this time.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. Thanks for listening.