Welcome to 'Working Stiffs', The Post's series of interviews with h2g2 Researchers, finding out about what they do to earn a crust. This time, we spoke to Sho about her days defending the realm.

Q: So for starters, what was your job in the army? South Essex Light Company wasn't it?

Righty ho... well before we go right into that - you'll have to mention that back when I joined up women joined the WRAC (Womens' Royal Army Corps) and were attached to a regiment/corps to do their actual job. Not all trades in the Army were open to us. The same for officers, but for them, back then, there were very few actual jobs open; usually they were administrative types of things except for doctors, dentists, senior nurses (they were in a different corps though) and the Army Education Corps (which women could join directly).

And from that you can also surmise that I wasn't an officer. I worked for a living

So, first of all I joined the WRAC and was then attached to the Royal
Corps of Signals to be a Data Telegraphist. That meant working in a
Communications Centre sending all manner of messages. Actually it usually meant by telex, secure and unsecure. Sometimes encrypted, sometimes plain text. There were other methods such as courier and telephone.

This meant that you had to be vetted, some more than others. Due to my
military background - I think, they never tell you - I was considered
easy enough to vet, and I was pretty highly vetted almost from the get-go which meant I got interesting jobs and was helpful when I finally managed to transfer over to the Intelligence Corps (well.... attached as a WRAC) to become an Analyst.

I'd wanted to do that in the first place, but at the time I joined
there were no vacancies. As I was on the dole at the time I opted to follow (bad) advice at the selection centre and take the Signals job because it would be 'easy to transfer' - in fact it took years.

Too much information? [Yes. Ed ]

Q: OK, so you joined the WRAC, and then got attached to the Sigs. So presumably separate uniform etc?

We had the normal WRAC uniform of barrack dress (green skirt, white
shirt, bottle green v-necked pullover and green tie, white open-necked shirt in summer) and the No 2 dress (green skirt with matching green jacket with military buttons). We also had Berets and forage caps (the ones with the shiny peaks - sorry, I'm not sure how much you know about this stuff). We also had womens' PT kit: short green skirt, white airtex t-shirt and voluminous green knickers - aka chest-warmers - so we didn't frighten the guys by flashing our skimpies. For the first fortnight of basic training you could tell the junior company at Guildford because while the skirts were being tailored to fit us, and we had to do all our drill etc in green mini-skirts!

When we got to where we did our trade training - in my case Catterick - we were issued with DMS boots, puttees, green lightweight trousers,
mens' shirts and pullovers and combat gear. All through basic and trade
training PT was done in those flamin' skirts (and not forgetting the
chest-warmers, and yes, they did check even when the PTI was a guy). Unless we were doing running outside stuff, then it was in boots and
lightweight trousers.

I hated the WRAC unform but I loved my guy stuff - my boots were among
the most comfy footwear I've ever had (including my current DOCs).

Later I transferred (head-hunted no less) to a job with the Intelligence Corps - we then wore their light green beret - we loved it and it was hard-earned - and were consequently called muppets.

Data Telegraphists were considered a bit girly by all other soldier types, and since it was a job that women did on a ration of about 1:1
with the guys by then, they were called 'Handbags' - which I thought was great, but the guys hated it.

Q: How did you find army life, generally?

I loved army life because I knew what I was going into - army brat,
boarding school - when I joined up my dad was still serving. And
I got a lot of 'oh I knew your dad, we were sergeants together'
(beginning with the lady RSM at Guildford, passing through my troop
OC at Catterick and on and on in the signals...)

But towards the end, he was also at a signals unit for his last part of service. It switched and he got a lot of 'I know your daughter, blimey...'

I already knew a lot of the trivial stuff, so basic training was a doddle, and I was used to institutionalised life (from school)
so I was well used to being able to share living space, but still
retain my own personality. I wasn't too girly, wasn't too butch. I only went 'so far' into the ladette culture not to be considered too much, but didn't act too girly that the guys didn't trust me to do my job (I was in a fairly forward unit - we were very few women and had to do all the things the guys did. I spent an awful lot of time in fields, in woods, dressed like a tree...)

As long as you did your job and basically played the game, you can do
well in the army. The trick is not to let yourself be pushed around too much, but to respect the rank (if not the person) of whoever is your boss. I loved that we got to do lots of sport (even if I didn't always appreciate having to do it at 5am) and I didn't mind the odd hours (I did a lot of shift work later on) because we also had plenty of time off. And Wednesday was sports afternoon which was great fun (I fenced and later got cut-price riding lessons on Wednesdays).

The work was mostly interesting (Intelligence) and there was fun to be
had even if we were on the wagon park painting, maintaining and
generally hanging about our wagons. there was also leaf sweeping, wombling (picking up litter) and having to do guard duty at weekends - but for the most part I loved it.

Q: Did the attitude towards women piss you off? I'm sure
if you joined nowadays you'd notice a world of difference in some respects.

Oh boy, there were loads of Neanderthals around. There was also an
awful lot of sexism. And don't think that there weren't occasions when I stuck my chest out more than was strictly necessary when good jobs were being doled out, or didn't play the weak-female type when it came to the horrible ones. That was my payback for some of the sexist
treatment.

We did the same job as the guys, but were paid less - that still
rankles now, but what can you do? In my first troop there were about 30 of us, about seven or eight women and four of the guys were black. The Sergeant would call us out for weapons parade like this 'get out here now, men: SLRs presented for inspection, girls get your pistols out of your garters... F-tribe get your spears ready'.

All in all they were treated worse than we were. And I made darned sure that if I couldn't do something, that I showed 110% effort, or made sure that my inability couldn't be put down to my gender. But we weren't allowed in the SAS, or the frontline jobs. Nor were we allowed to be, for instance, Radio Telegraphists which would have been great fun.

But if the Sergeant's mess needed a waiter for a week, it was always a
girl. If the officers mess needed cocktail waiters it was always
waitresses. And of course, it was hard for us to get promotion because we had a whole lot of stuff to compete with that we weren't allowed to do.

Q: And what did you like best about it?

Sometimes I have no idea why I joined up!! What I liked was that if you wanted to be alone you could generally manage it (outside of work) but if you wanted company there was always someone around. I loved that I could use the education facilities and the sports facilities as much as I wanted. I learned to ski, abseil and drive. I learned to shoot and, as a member of the regimental shooting team, got to fire weapons that most women could only dream about - including a memorable time on the Vogelsang ranges lobbing grenades, throwing Molotov cocktails at a burned-out tank and firing shoulder-launched rockets.

Once I got into the Intelligence Corps I also loved that there was the
military side and the work side. Militarily my boss was in charge of
our section, but when it came to work, he often asked me things because my foreign language skills were better than his. Whoever made the reports briefed the generals - and took the credit (or the blame) regardless of rank.

And I really, really loved my boots.

General Features Archive

King Bomba with
Sho

27.03.08 Front Page

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