[1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Forces

[Icelander]

The Det, 14 Company, 14 Intelligence Company, 14 Field Security, or the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU) had a lot of names, as well as the official cover name of Northern Ireland Training and Advisory Teams (Northern Ireland) or NITAT(NI), but their most important facet for my purposes is that from 1972-2005, they were the only way that a female in the British Armed Forces could volunteer for and go through Special Forces training, not to mention perform active service in dangerous areas, with live weapons, almost tailor-made to provide useful skills for PCs in Action, Covert Ops, Special Ops and even Monster Hunter campaigns.

I have an excellent source on 14 Company, their training and duties. What I don't have is details on what women in the British Armed Forces would do before and after their temporary detail to 14 Intelligence Company. It was temporary duty, six months of training and then 18-36 months of special duties, before being returned to 'the parent unit', which was the regiment or other unit to which the soldier belonged before volunteering.

Anyone of the right rank and age in the British Armed Forces could volunteer. But what are the possible parent units and prior duties for women who might volunteer for the SRU/14 Co in the 1980s?

I know about nurses, secretaries and various clerical work. What else was available?

[johndallman]

The Ulster Defence Regiment was the first British Army regiment that had women in combat roles,

Since 14 Company spent a lot of time in Ulster, recruiting locals would have been advantageous. Learning the local accents and cultures was not trivial, and an outsider being spotted masquerading as a local on a 14 Coy mission would likely be in serious trouble.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The Ulster Defence Regiment was the first British Army regiment that had women in combat roles,

Since 14 Company spent a lot of time in Ulster, recruiting locals would have been advantageous. Learning the local accents and cultures was not trivial, and an outsider being spotted masquerading as a local on a 14 Coy mission would likely be in serious trouble.

While they would no doubt have been extremely valuable to 14 Co, the fact that I have not yet managed to turn up any Greenfinch who is mentioned in some kind of source as having served in 14 Co suggests that they might not have been allowed to, possibly because of concerns that if it ever became public that members of the Ulster Defence Regiment were performing espionage-like duties out of uniform, it could cost the regiment what little credibility it had with Catholics in Northern Ireland.

And, in later years, when the UDR had almost no true Irish Catholics in its ranks (its few Catholics were mostly transplanted British soldiers who'd grown up elsewhere than Northern Ireland, but still happened to be Catholic), the Army might have feared using anyone from the UDR in the 14 Co could inflame sectarian tensions and bolster various conspiracy theories (not all of which might have been untrue) about official British involvement in sectarian murders in Ulster.

I'll go through all sources I can find, but given that Rennie mentions the UDR operating in certain sections while he was on 14 Co duties and recounts backgrounds for many of his fellow operators (if only he'd have operated with more than two women who revealed any of their background, I'd know a lot more), the fact that none of the operators seemed to come from Northern Ireland seemed to me... suggestive. The very existence of 14 Co was classified 'Secret', in that the circular asking for volunteers just said 'dangerous duties' and only people with Secret clearance could even read the directive which explained what it was, it's possible that there just weren't many members of UDR who had clearance to know about it.

[Icelander]

While I am setting aside the excellent suggestion of a female volunteer from the Ulster Defence Regiment while I investigate whether some legal, regulatory or customary reason prohibited such a volunteer from serving with 14 Intelligence Company, I'd like anyone who has historical knowledge of British Armed Forces to suggest some other possibilities.

For example, all women who served with the British Army officially belonged to the Women´s Royal Army Corps (WRAC) for administrative purposes, all women who served with the Royal Air Force belonged to the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF) administratively and all women who served with the Royal Navy belonged to the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS), which in practice got called Wrens, for administrative purposes.

Fair enough, I've read about that, but what I'm not totally clear on what duties they could be attached to regular units to for. I know women didn't go to sea on Royal Navy ships for a long, long time, and the change came after the period which matters for the campaign I'm preparing, so I'll need ideas for Wrens who are shore-bound. For women attached to the British Army or Royal Air Force, I know they are supposed to be kept away from combat duties, so they don't get to fly Harriers or Tornados in attack formations and there are probably no attachment to infantry companies, but what about infantry battalions, regiments or larger formations?

They could be secretaries to senior officers, work in clerical pools in various headquarters and handle the often manpower-intensive work of pre-digital communications, when telegram operators and switchboard operators were necessary for military units to function.

What about security clearances? In WWII, female code breakers presumably had the highest possible security clearances, as everything they did was classified, but what I'm not totally clear on is if a woman has important, sensitive duties working with a Signals unit doing highly technical things, what is her 'parent unit'?

Did the WRAC, WRAF and WRNS have lots of individual little parallel units to the structure of the British Army, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy? Were there REME, Signals, Intelligence and other specialized units within the Womens' versions of the Armed Forces to act as their 'parent units'? And how did that work, exactly?

Were all the technical courses and careers open to women, assuming they did not take place onboard a ship or in a fighter or bomber flown over potentially hostile soil or ocean? Could they sign up to become shipfitters, military police, interrogators, electronic intercept experts, radar technicians, Russian interpreters, naval intelligence analysts or small arms repairers?

And if they did, what did their parent unit become? Men who went into such specialized careers would have parent units become units under the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Royal Corps of Signals, Intelligence Corps, Royal Military Police, etc.

Did parallel units to all of these exist under the WRAC, WRAF and WRNS just for the purpose of acting as 'parent units' for women who had attended courses to learn special skills and were attached to regular military units where they exercised those skills?

Or were they just paid and promoted through the WRAC, WRAF and WRNS while their 'parent unit' was the unit where they performed their duties and were stationed?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Did parallel units to all of these exist under the WRAC, WRAF and WRNS just for the purpose of acting as 'parent units' for women who had attended courses to learn special skills and were attached to regular military units where they exercised those skills?

Or were they just paid and promoted through the WRAC, WRAF and WRNS while their 'parent unit' was the unit where they performed their duties and were stationed?

The latter, basically.

[Pursuivant]

It's likely you've already done your online research, but if not there appear to be good sources of historical information about women in the UK military linked to the various British military museums.

Most of the information is about 21st century expansion of women's roles in the military, however.

Looking at the various articles gives me the impression that the situation for women in the RA was pretty bleak in the 1970s. Legally, the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 limited women to support roles only. The closest a woman was likely to officially get to combat was as part of the medical corps. Even then, they wouldn't be combat medics but nurses or physicians in field hospitals.

Unofficially, however, the 1970s was the peak of "The Troubles" in NI so any member of the British military would unofficially be in harms way. While macho sexism and the relative scarcity of female soldiers would have limited combat exposure, a relatively open-minded commander might have be willing to use a female member of a support unit with unique skills in a potentially dangerous situations.

If you're willing to broaden your horizons a bit, I believe that the British intelligence services like MI5 did use female operatives. If their role required it, they might well have received "combat like" training before going undercover in NI.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The Ulster Defence Regiment was the first British Army regiment that had women in combat roles,

Since 14 Company spent a lot of time in Ulster, recruiting locals would have been advantageous. Learning the local accents and cultures was not trivial, and an outsider being spotted masquerading as a local on a 14 Coy mission would likely be in serious trouble.

My Irish source, freshly back from a sojourn over the border to buy cheaper whiskey, says he cannot see any kind of UDR soldier, female or male, being allowed to serve in 14 Company during the Troubles. Too much of a security risk, even if they were to just accidentally say anything to their friends or family.

I mean, the 14 Company people were there under false names and not allowed to socialize with locals while their tours lasted, so anyone whom the local people might recognize would have been pulled out for their own safety. They sent operators home early if they were seen without a balaclava by a lot of people during an op, because it burned them for further operations.

This fits with everything else I've seen. I've not found an absolute prohibition, but it's made absolutely clear that no one who passes the psychological and security screening to get into 14 Company is allowed to have emotional attachments to any side of the Northern Ireland question.

As Rennie, the author of the definite book on the subject, says, the way you can be sure that there was never an officially condoned plan to assassinate PIRA leaders is that no one ever knew where they were at all times, except 14 Company. So no such plan could have moved past the barracks talk, because if it was adopted for real, 14 Company would have to have been a full participant and he doesn't believe they'd obey orders to assassinate unarmed people, even criminals, when they should arrest them instead. If one of 14 Company went bad, they could go very bad indeed, considering everything they knew, and their skill sets, but Rennie says he doesn't believe any of his fellow operators would take part in assassination missions in Northern Ireland.

Rennie has some philosophical theory it has to do with how their team ethos and central tenets were founded in professionalism. The personality types who made it through were those who were patient, organized, detached even under stress and that they justify all the boredom, discomfort and tension by the belief that if they are professional enough, they'll prevent terrorist attacks without creating any new martyrs or new terrorists with grudges.

The operators of 14 Company also get to spend their time on operations all the time. They don't train to the peak of absolute perfection in killing people and breaking things, like the SAS, and then get asked to wait quietly. There was an SAS troop on duty with them in Northern Ireland, at all times, except those boys didn't get called out except for massive raids, which happened... almost never.

So, Rennie says that the SAS troopers, like young and adrenaline-charged men everywhere, talked a lot about how they wanted off the leash and kill all the buggers. But they couldn't have, not without 14 Company, because all the targets continually moved around between safe houses, and 14 Company was the only one with any actionable intelligence. Which Rennie says was never used with a Home Office warrant and the RUC Special Branch there to make arrests.

On balance, I think the evidence supports his description of the unit he served in. No one has ever linked 14 Company to the activities of the Force Research Unit and the very existence of that unit, apparently duplicating the official intelligence roles of RUC Special Branch, Security Service (MI5) and 14 Company, suggests that senior Army figures felt that the existing organizations were too constrained by legalities, warrants and the like.

14 Company carried out surveillance and worked with the local police to make arrests based on that surveillance. They helped the Security Service (MI5) to set up technical surveillance equipment, bugs, video, trackers, etc. Crucially, however, they didn't run agents and they weren't in any way associated with the British Army Intelligence Corps. They were not trained by them, run by them or reporting to them.

Rennie never mentions the FRU and, technically, it would probably have been secret from him. Neither the British nor anyone else tend to give out broad, all-sources security clearances. Anyone running covert ops will usually be supposed to deconflict ops to make sure there's no friendly fire, but 14 Company wasn't supposed to fire except in dire self-defence, so there were forces they did not deconflict with (the UDR, for one), and I strongly think that FRU and their masters didn't tell others about secret units working under other parts of the UK military, intelligence or security forces, not unless they really have to.

On the subject, though, Rennie mentions that because of the frustration of the SAS troopers, waiting all the time for a chance to use their skills, and resolve the situation in the way they were trained, if the military had ever been given the green light to start stacking Irish paramilitary bodies, there would have been no problem finding SAS troopers willing to act as shooters.

As most soldiers everywhere, they have a pretty simple view of the world. Anyone who counts as 'the enemy' is someone they figure they ought to be taking out, with their weapons and their skills, and anything preventing that is just red tape that allows a problem to persist. So, if armies were democracies, most of the SAS troopers would have voted for shooting all the members of paramilitaries, on any side they claimed to be, and then going home for Christmas. Lovely chaps, Rennie says, just continually frustrated by their role in Northern Ireland, which could be summed up by, 'Wait'.