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

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Rupert

About the only one that really springs to mind is netball,

I had never even heard of this sport. This honestly sounds like something from an alternate reality...

Originally Posted by Rupert

maybe hockey.

I did know a girl who played ice hockey back in 2010-2012. Goalie, tough, fearless, swore like a sailor. Then again, even in those more enlightened times, that was viewed as a very masculine thing for her to do, on par with smoking cigars and drinking hard liquor from the bottle. She went to vocational school and ended up a carpenter. Takes all sorts, I suppose.

Field hockey is generally viewed as more girly than ice hockey, though I suspect the St. Trinian's girls were not meant to be aspirational. :-)

Originally Posted by Rupert

Tennis to my mind has was not a working class sport.

Agreed, that's why I put it on the list of sports the aristocratic character did.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

If you're looking for "posh + elite" public/private schools, also consider exclusive institutions in places like Switzerland. That would guarantee extensive foreign language training, both formally and informally.

Any institution offering an International Baccalaureate program is likely going to be both posh/exclusive and academically demanding. Since the program was founded in 1968, some of the first graduates of the program might have been accepted into the Royal Armed Forces by the early 1970s.

Good points.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

I know from personal experience that any academically elite institution will start kids with second language programs when they're tiny. That might be the norm outside the English-speaking world, but is a distinct rarity in the U.S., at least in the late 20th century. I believe that that was the case for the UK as well.

I unconsciously assume that education means learning several languages (English is my third, out of the six [counting the native one] students on the humanistic track learned, while the STEM branch only offered four). I just expect educated upper-class British people to mostly stick to French and German, as well as small Latin and less Greek.

Russian is a lot more unusual choice and the extremely limited emigration and travel from behind the Iron Curtain would have severely limited access to Russian teachers, so few schools would even have been able to offer it as an option. You're probably more likely to find a Russian defector or non-native scholar who has mastered it totally at a world-class university with a famous department of Russian Literature than in a public school for teenage pupils.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Today, there are women in most sports, but there used to be some resistance to girls participating in sports with lots of physical contact or with high velocity projectiles, like cricket.

Women's cricket has been playing international matches since 1934. It was a sport for the eccentric at first, but was well-established, if not -funded by the 1970s.

Field hockey is generally viewed as more girly than ice hockey, though I suspect the St. Trinian's girls were not meant to be aspirational. :-)

That's another level of the joke.

[acrosome]

I learned Russian at the Defense Language Institute from 89-90. At the time it was a 48-week immersion basic course, though one of my classmates went immediately into the advanced course. Does the UK have an equivalent?

[Donny Brook]

I'd have thought the parent Units for females in 14 Co in the British Armed Force would be a mother and father.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I'd have thought the parent Units for females in 14 Co in the British Armed Force would be a mother and father.

That's parental units and in a military organized under a regimental system, the regiment is almost always the 'parent unit' and more or less replaces (or at least supplements) regular parental units, as the Regiment becomes both mother and father to the troopies, soldiers, sappers, etc. who belong to it.
;-)

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by acrosome

I learned Russian at the Defense Language Institute from 89-90. At the time it was a 48-week immersion basic course, though one of my classmates went immediately into the advanced course. Does the UK have an equivalent?

As Phil Masters helpfully pointed out in this post in a different thread spawned by this consideration, they did, in the Joint Services School for Linguists (JSSL), from 1951-1960.

Unfortunately, the JSSL appears to have closed by 1960, but Cambridge and Oxford provided assistance when the school was active and may have continued teaching graduates of it or other intelligence, military or security personnel. The individual services, British Army, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, might also have continued via some successor program which was only for their own personnel, smaller in scale and harder to trace evidence about without real research, through archives and service historians.

I'm hoping that someone more British, and/or more learned about UK conscription and voluntary military service from 1960 to 1989 than I am, could point me in the right direction for sources accessible in some digital way for a reasonable price (I'll buy most Kindle books for campaign research willingly, but I've usually passed on very niche academic textbooks with their €100+ pricing).

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by acrosome

I learned Russian at the Defense Language Institute from 89-90. At the time it was a 48-week immersion basic course, though one of my classmates went immediately into the advanced course. Does the UK have an equivalent?

The major reason for European characters to act as recruiters is because the US/Caribbean-based real paymasters are hiring mercenaries whom they intend to keep at arm's length and never allow them to know about secret facilities, key personnel or any other information which could compromise their operations if some of the mercenaries are less than loyal or just if they are arrested/captured.

This is also why none of the characters dispatched behind the former Iron Curtain, to act as talent scouts and recruiters, are permanent cadre. They're not even tied in any way hostile analysts could trace to those who are permanently part of the inner circle. Delegating the hiring of these talent scouts and recruiters to friends or family of certain well-connected people in another part of the world, ones they haven't seen in decades and who'll never be a part of anything secret again, don't do much more than give some advice, and will never meet any of the recruited mercenaries, seemed like sensible tradecraft.

That being said, using cut-outs, and getting recommendations from friends few people can even connect to you through publicly available data, there's really no reason why an American spymaster could not hire a few Americans with similar skill sets and language fluency as the Angolan, Batswana, British, Colombian, French, Finnish, Honduran, Irish, Israeli, Moldovan, Namibian, Nicaragua, South African, Yugoslav and Zimbabwean personnel already part of the various facets of the operation.

Russian fluency is a survival skill for this operation, but normally irrelevant to the people hiring permanent cadre for what they do in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico. For this one, they can pick out someone who might not be perceived as 100% trustworthy, there might be doubts about character or they might not be perceived as good enough at their speciality to qualify for being let into the inner circle, but still, because of Russian language facility and having the right skill set for this particular operation, they might be hired through cut-outs for just this one time.

The job is just to be recruiters and talent scouts to pick the right former Warsaw Pact talent, before anyone else snaps them up. Granted, they'd be doing this during a period of seismic shifts in geopolitics and international security, operating in exactly the areas which might suddenly erupt in civil war or fragment between warlords with nuclear warheads, for all people know. Some female operators to form mixed groups during undercover work are a requirement, so that the group of recruiters doesn't look like a potentially hostile group of soldiers or spies. Hence the 14 Company female operators, as some of the few women in Europe with the necessary training and experience in this era.

So, these recruiters need to speak Russian or possibly another former Warsaw Pact language, but that's not the only requirement. They also need to be able to tell the difference between poseurs pretending to be highly trained experts in certain intelligence, military or security skill sets. And they need to have some training and/or experience of their own, at least be able to operate in semi-undercover fashion or at minimum, not draw too much attention while armed in civilian clothes. Plus, they need to be able to escape danger, evade pursuers, meet at a rally point and know basic SERE protocols. Defensive driving, personal security detail training with armed and unarmed self-defence are not strict requirements, but highly desireable.

Obviously; Army Special Forces, Air Force Special Tactics, Navy SEALs and Marine Force Recon personnel who have finished a DLI course in Russian or another relevant language would meet the requirements, but they'd also be much more likely to be recruited for a more permanent position.

Who else would be sent to the DLI to learn Russian? What kind of MOS go there, aside from the obvious, and what stage in their careers? What kind of graduates could take care of themselves as part of a small group working undercover in a potentially hostile country? And would any women who graduate a Russian course from DLI in the 1980s also have SERE, defensive driving, small arms and self-defence training?

To take one kind of job as an example, see this thread for further details:

What kind of Russian-speaking American intelligence, military or security personnel might be RIF-ed when the Cold War ends and have the skill set needed to travel behind the former Iron Curtain and hire a bunch of Mi-8/Mi-17 Hip and Mi-24/Mi-25/Mi-35 Hind pilots, mechanics, fuel and ordnance specialists, as well as the airborne pathfinders and Spetsnaz needed to infiltrate tropical countries, maybe in rain forests, maybe remote islands, and set up the aerial resupply drop zones as well as forward arming and refueling posts to keep Hip and Hind helicopters operating inside the borders of an unfriendly country?

They don't need to know how to do this themselves, but they would need to find prospective candidates inside former Warsaw Pact countries, using lists of names and certain career details supplied by KGB turncoats, and recruit those of the lists who seemed the most trustworthy, sane and capable. And at least some experts in infiltration, aerial resupply and helicopter FARPs would need to evaluate the recruits at some point.

[dcarson]

When a friend of mine went to work for No Such Agency in the 80s he was sent to DLI to learn Russian. He flunked out quickly as expected because his tests when hired had languages as his worst thing. But because they need lots of Russian speakers/readers they were apparently sending everyone when hired just in case they could actually learn languages. After that they put him in a job he actually tested as being good at. So at least some civilian agencies also use(ed) it.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by dcarson

When a friend of mine went to work for No Such Agency in the 80s he was sent to DLI to learn Russian. He flunked out quickly as expected because his tests when hired had languages as his worst thing. But because they need lots of Russian speakers/readers they were apparently sending everyone when hired just in case they could actually learn languages. After that they put him in a job he actually tested as being good at. So at least some civilian agencies also use(ed) it.

That's a good point.

I remember that at some point after 2001, there was reporting to the effect that the overwhelming majority of CIA, NSA or other similar agencies still did not carry firearms and almost none of their employees had been trained to use them. A deranged shooter changed that, in that CIA employees (and possibly other government employees) were authorized to carry a handgun for self-defence at work. Whether they actually ended up getting their employer to pay for training, the handgun and a holster, I don't recall.

But in the 1980s and all the way up to late 1990 and early 1991, when I expect to start play, most CIA, NSA, NRO, DIA, etc. staff do not carry firearms. Sworn Special Agents of alphabet agencies specifically tasked with law enforcement do, but generally only within the United States. Some of them may be trained to operate undercover, but that would be a tiny minority.

What would be the background of someone from a civilian alphabet agency, with Russian language credentials from the DLI, and particularly likely to be hired to recruit military helicopter pilots and technical experts, commandos and special operators in former Warsaw Pact countries?

Most of all, the people hiring these recruiters need women. They can't have all male groups travelling together, especially not fit military-age males, those draw unwanted scrutiny almost anywhere in the world. They've got a few Russian-speaking men with the right skill sets to recruit special operators and other military experts, from a variety of sources, but they're missing a few more women to round out the teams.

And they'd prefer not to put someone without the right skill set to be there in danger, so they're not hiring someone who doesn't have training or experience in being undercover, SERE or an equivalent, armed self-defence, etc. Or, at least, the more someone can take care of themselves, recognize when a situation is about to turn dangerous and get away safely from a punch-up with drunk thugs in a Kazakh bar or an extortion attempt at a police checkpoint in Moscow, the better the odds of them being hired.

What would be some Russian-speaking graduates of the DLI who'd also have the desirable skills to go into the cauldron of chaos of the former USSR in 1990-1991, and recruit Spetsnaz, Hind pilots and technical crew, airborne pathfinders, etc.?