First woman to join the infantry lasts two weeks
THE first woman to join an infantry regiment has quit after just two weeks training, it was revealed yesterday.
The recruit dropped out of an 18-week course after reportedly falling behind her male counterparts on endurance marches and failing other physical tests at a training base in Suffolk.
The woman, who is understood to have resigned, had been serving as a steward in the RAF and was seeking to transfer into the RAF Regiment.
The 2,000-strong unit is deployed to protect bases and airfields across the world and has sustained casualties in Afghanistan. It also provides troops to support Special Forces operations.
Last September the RAF became the first military service to open up all roles to men and women. Females could apply to join the RAF’s ground-fighting force after the Government lifted the ban on them serving in close combat roles.
In 2016, then prime minister David Cameron said it was essential the make-up of the Armed Forces reflected society.
The woman’s resignation is a blow to officials who are determined to integrate women into fighting units in the Army, Royal Marines and RAF.
It is understood the unnamed recruit had told officers that living in female-only accommodation made her outsider”.
She was one of just three women who applied to join the RAF Regiment and the only one considered fit enough to start the course at RAF Honington in Suffolk alongside 44 men.
Trevor Coult, a trustee of the charity Veterans in Action and a former colour sergeant who was awarded the Military Cross for service in Iraq, wrote on Twitter: “No one said it was easy!”
Former soldier Ralph Brooker said: “Credit to this woman for taking on a daunting challenge.” feel
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Women already serve as fighter pilots and senior officers in the military but until the changes were introduced, frontline infantry roles were closed to females.
During the war in Helmand, Afghanistan, female medics served with combat troops.
Three women were awarded the Military Cross for extreme bravery in the conflict.
Officially they were not there to fight but there were incidents when female soldiers became involved in combat.
Chantelle Taylor, 32, was a sergeant in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Afghanistan in 2011 when she became the first woman to kill a Taliban fighter.