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The new face of the Army

A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post


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If you were trying to get more women to join the Army, who would you use in the publicity photos?

A size 18 swamp donkey with cropped hair and a liking for the ladies? Or a blonde babe with a sexy smile? No contest when you’re trying to project a friendly face, is it?

That’s why I feel sorry for the poor old PR man who stuck Lance Bombadier Heidi Cochrane on the front page of the posh papers the other week. He wasn’t to know that the married 24-year-old had already done a runner with the well-endowed Regimental Romeo and was now living it up in Sri Lanka.

I can quite understand why the Army needs female recruits. Someone has to do the cooking and the office work, and giving women those jobs at least keeps Those Who Salute With The Other Hand at bay. But on the frontline? Fighting? You must be joking.

This policy is almost as daft as the Guardianesque scheme to enlist disabled people. That’ll put the fear of God into the Serbs, a column of tanks with orange badges on them.

Admittedly the sight of women brawling outside a pub can be quite terrifying. I know night club bouncers who’ll run a mile rather than tackle that maelstrom of hair, nails, spit and Malibu fumes. But stick them in the trenches and disaster beckons.

“Sorry, Sarge. We can’t attack at dawn because B Company has eloped with 2 Para. And what time do you call this to come back from manoeuvres? You treat this barracks like a hotel.

“War, that’s all you ever think about. You never talk to me any more.”

And they’d want hot water and hairdryers. And they’d want coloured toilet fresheners in the latrines. (Blue for upstairs, green for downstairs is Mrs Beelzebub’s mantra, and God help our butler, Whittaker, if he gets it wrong.)

And we’d best not mention mood swings and “women’s problems”. Mind you, having seen strong men turn to jelly at the onset of a PMT-inspired rant, relentless nagging could well turn out to be NATO’s latest biological weapon.

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