An Officer and a Gentlewoman: The Making of a Female British Army Officer by Heloise Goodley
An Officer and a Gentlewoman is the account a glamorous city girl’s journey through Sandhurst to a lifechanging career in the Army, and it’s difficult to tell whether my overriding response is admiration and awe, or despair at my own piddling little life, knowing that even these fabricated battlegrounds would leave me broken and battered before I’d shined my boots.
A self-confessed posh girl, Heloise admits she had life fairly easy; private school and award after award, a coveted place at Cambridge, and entry straight into the glitzy world of banking.
Frustration at the hollowness of chrome buildings of Canary Wharf, disdain at the leering advances of ageing City bankers with egos to match their pay cheques, and general feeling that something else existed plagued Heloise for years before a chance encounter with an Army Officer who told her she was exactly what the army was looking for.
Sandhurst is tough, and the book doesn’t shy away from this. This is no easy journey from epiphany moment to perfect life, and Heloise charts the highs, lows, bunions, blisters, broken bones, chilblains, mud, sleep deprivation, ‘elbow-ripping, kneecap-grinding, lung-bursting crawling’ of the training in grim detail.
Although she has moments of cracking and being concerned that she will never make it, she also acknowledges her own path to officer demands only a fraction of the physical and mental strength that being in the infantry and on the ground involves.
Draconian and dispiriting, some of the practices at Sandhurst seem downright futile – displaying the contents of one’s drawers every evening, absolute silence at the whim of an officer, 5.15am hospital corners, and painful stresses and punishments for the most minor misdemeanour.
Written with the perspective of a trainee experiencing each task, rather than from the stance of a self-satisfied narrator who has learned their lessons, but forgotten how, the ‘as is’ emotion is impressive.
Although at times the reader will be willing Heloise to come to her senses, it makes the book a much more compelling read than one where the ‘all’s well that ends well’ outcome is too overt.
This honest and emotionl account of a hard, at times hateful slog, ends in the realities of war, and fundamental character change. In 2007 Heloise Goodley was commissioned into the Army Air Corps and is now a Captain, as Adjutant of an Apache helicopter regiment.
Two tours of duty in Afghanistan have seen her rewarded with an operational medal from Prince Charles, and witness to the deaths of people she trained with.
And what has she learned? That those pointless, arduous and sometimes soul-destroying practices taught her ‘…the personal pride and stubborn resolve to keep going, to hold my head high and carry on because I can do it…’
More than how to shine boots, this is surely a sign of success. Published earlier this month by Constable, you can buy it in hardback for £9.99, or get the Kindle edition for £8.91.
Rating: 4/5
Recommended for: Great for motivation and reinforcement of the moral that life is for living.
Other recommended reading: Try The Junior Officers’ Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars by Patrick Hennessey, or Six Months Without Sundays: The Scots Guards in Afghanistan by Max Benitz. But make sure you don’t end up with An Officer and a Gentle Woman by Doreen Owens Malek.
Francesca Baker
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