Out Standing in the Field Read online

  Sitting behind his desk and barely glancing up, the recruiter continued his rebuttal, telling me that Airborne was not a classification, but rather an elite assignment to a specialist unit. He told me I would have to be in the infantry to go Airborne, and since there were no women in the infantry, I could never be in the Airborne Regiment. I considered this obstacle. I could be posted to the Airborne Regiment if I followed Valerie’s footsteps and became a supply technician. One of the potential postings for a supply technician was to become a “packer rigger” for the Airborne — those who pack their parachutes — but then I couldn’t go to university because supply technician was an enlisted position, a non-commissioned trade. So I enquired about the other combat professions of the military.

  “What about the artillery?” I asked, but got the same response, this time with an exasperated sigh.

  “Armoured?” I persisted, determined to be in a field unit.

  He rolled his eyes and told me there were no women in combat arms, and there never would be.

  Disappointed, I asked which classification was closest to the infantry, and he replied that nothing came close to the infantry. He suggested I become a nurse, an administration officer, or perhaps a nutritionist. None of these professions called out to me, but when he described the activities of an army logistics officer, I became encouraged that at least I could have a field job. If accepted into the Canadian Forces, that’s the classification I would choose. I had no idea what being in the logistics entailed, only that I could lead a platoon of truckers in the field.

  Three months later, standing in our kitchen and staring at the Canadian Forces logo on the brown envelope I held in my hands, my heart pounded so hard I felt its reverberations in my temples. I tilted my head towards the ceiling, closed my eyes, and prayed before tearing the envelope open. The first word I saw was “congratulations.” I kissed the letter. Tears formed in my eyes. My candidacy to become an officer in the Canadian Forces had been accepted. I grabbed the phone and dialled my father’s office number.

  He answered.

  “Dad! Dad! Guess what! I got accepted into the army!” I jumped around the kitchen getting tangled in the long phone cord. “I’m leaving on June 28!” There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Dad?”

  “That’s great,” he said with the enthusiasm of someone opening bills after Christmas. I waited for more but nothing came. There was an odd silence on the line.

  “Okay, well, I’ll talk to you later then.” I untangled the long beige coil and hung up. Sitting down on one of the cushioned dining chairs, I crossed my arms and sulked. My father had just ruined my happy moment. I couldn’t bring myself to jump for joy without having him rejoice with me.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. My father was old-fashioned: he wanted his daughters to get married, have children, become good wives and mothers. I understood that. But the thought of succumbing to the model set by my parents’ example, and further drilled into my sisters and me every time one of us ventured outside the “proper boundaries for a young woman,” terrified me. I did want a husband and children, but I had so much life to live first. Pursuing a career in the army and having a family were incompatible in my mind, especially if I wanted to be all in. I’d been so gung-ho since my early teens, I figured my father would know that a different path was in the cards for me. I certainly hadn’t expected him to be so disappointed with my choice of an army career. He knew I had applied and had even encouraged me to follow my heart.

  I sat at the kitchen table for the longest time, brooding. Eventually I built myself up to an impressive level of anger. As soon as he got home, I would let him know what an unbearable, chauvinistic man he was.

  I stomped up the curved stairs to my bedroom, but halfway up the telephone rang. I ran back down to answer it. Maybe he’d had a change of heart?

  “Hello,” I said abruptly. I heard the familiar voice of my father’s brother, Uncle Marcellin, on the other end. He congratulated me on the news of my acceptance into the Canadian Forces, saying he was proud of me and that I would do well. We talked a few minutes and then I hung up, perplexed. I had not told anyone else about my letter of acceptance. Before I could head back upstairs, the phone rang again, and then the calls kept coming for the next few hours; one after another, my aunts, my parents’ friends, my grandparents, and the padre of our church all called to congratulate me. It became obvious that my father had spread the news like royalty announcing the birth of an heir. I realized that his silence on the phone with me had not been disappointment at all.

  •••

  in mid-june of 1984, my father proudly swore me into the Canadian Forces. When a journalist from the local paper interviewed him, asking what he thought of his daughter joining the army, he said, “She belongs to them now.” You could hear the relief in his voice. It wasn’t that he was happy to get rid of me. It was more that he felt his job was done, and he could now safely hand over the reins of whatever was left of my upbringing to the army. He had been relieved of his duties as if this were a change of command parade. It was a recurring theme that would be repeated when each of my three sisters married.

  Without looking back, I left behind my friends from high school, my first teenage love, and the safety of home to be enrolled in the Regular Officer Training Program (rotp) and to begin basic training in Chilliwack, British Columbia. I’d been slotted to attend Royal Roads Military College in Victoria, British Columbia, as part of the first class of female cadets. Because the cf wanted to ensure that officers who failed basic training had a backup plan, applicants to the rotp process had to prove they’d been accepted at a civilian university even if they were slotted for military college. Since my parents were posted to Winnipeg that summer, I had applied and been accepted at the University of Winnipeg. My friend Valerie was already posted to Calgary; if everything went well with my training, I was hopeful of joining her there for my first posting after graduation. I was so primed for this new adventure that I barely noticed what I was leaving behind: close bonds with friends from my cadet corps, my sisters, a boy with whom I had just begun a meaningful relationship. I knew I was spreading my wings.

  In late June, 1984, the thirty or so officer cadets who were to be my platoon colleagues for the next eleven weeks flew in to Vancouver from all over Canada, then were bussed to Canadian Forces Base Chilliwack to start basic training. For most of them, aged seventeen to twenty, basic training was their first taste of military culture. I arrived on base dressed as a civilian, but given my prior cadet training for the past four years, I’d already been somewhat indoctrinated. While most of my teammates learned to polish boots, stand at attention, and salute, I was already perfecting the hospital corners of my bed and shaping my new beret so that it would look like it belonged to a seasoned soldier, despite the cookie cutter cap badge (la badge de pouf) that identified all of us as new recruits.

  On the second day of this new life, our course commander, an infantry captain with a long handlebar moustache, greeted his platoon with a poker face as we stood in three very crooked ranks on the parade square. Nearly a third of us were women. Behind him, snow-capped Mount Cheam and its three sister peaks formed the Skagit Range of the Canadian Cascades creating the Fraser Valley, with Chilliwack, “the Green Heart of the Province,” nestled in its centre. Mount Cheam was the first mountain I ever climbed. My family had been posted here for one year when I was thirteen, and my father had taken my sister Line and me to climb the southwest face to the 2,100 metre summit. The panoramic view of Mount Baker to the south had been breathtaking. I immediately fell in love with mountain climbing.

  The course commander’s second-in-command, a tall warrant officer who sported the engineering cap badge, inched his way towards me for inspection. He had just spent an hour yelling at each officer cadet. I braced for the onslaught of insults. My uniform was impeccable. My boots had a mirror shine, sharp creases lined my dark green dress pants, and
my mint-green short-sleeved shirt didn’t have a wrinkle on it. Parachutist wings were proudly pinned above the top of my left breast pocket and my name tag, straight and level, adorned the other. Not one flyaway hair escaped from under my beret. The warrant officer stared at me, not noticing my perfect uniform. His eyes focused on my wings.

  In such a calm voice that I thought he was going to be my new best friend, the warrant officer asked me why I was wearing paratrooper wings.

  Innocently, I mirrored his calm demeanour and told him that I was a parachutist, flashing him a smile. His tone changed dramatically and through gritted teeth, he told me to take them “the fuck off,” or that he would do it for me. Stupidly, I asked the question that is forbidden from new, wet-behind-the-ears recruits: Why? He answered that I had three seconds and started counting. With a sense of urgency, I removed the three pins holding my wings in place, took off the offending decoration, and slipped it in my pocket. He shook his head, turned around, and reported to the course commandant that his platoon was ready.

  The captain looked from one end of the platoon to the other but, given that we had not learned any drill yet, he did not instruct us to stand at ease. We stood at attention, waiting anxiously for the captain to utter the first inspirational words we would hear from an officer.

  He told us that every single one of us Bloggins, Aardvarks, and Hoseheads smelled like diaper rash ointment. I made a mental note to ask some of my colleagues what that meant.

  He paced in front of the platoon, stopping every few seconds to stare at one of us, all the while explaining that those of us still standing here in eleven weeks would grow up to become young officers capable of leading troops into battle, commanding platoons and squadrons. A few might eventually progress into unit commanding officers, ship captains, flight squadron commanders. But until the very last day of the course, we were to have no illusions: we belonged to him. For the next eleven weeks, he said, our lives would be miserable.

  She belongs to them now, I heard my father concur.

  •••

  within a few short days of the start of the course, I was called into the commandant’s office without being told why. That morning during inspection, I had received a red chit for accidentally ironing railroad tracks, a double crease, in my CF dress pants, but I didn’t think it warranted a special meeting with the course officer. Terrified, I entered his office, saluted, and stood at attention. He was reading a report. I stole a glance down at his desk where a miniature flag of his regiment, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI), was perched beside a plastic desk cover. Underneath the clear sheet was a picture of what was probably his wife, in a nurse’s uniform. He had a gold band on his left hand. He wore parachutist wings, but instead of the red maple leaf in the centre of his, it was a white one, indicating that he’d served in the Airborne Regiment. I felt intimidated and lifted my head to stare at the wall.

  He told me to stand at ease, and then asked a series of questions about the incident concerning the parachutist wings without giving me a chance to answer. Was it true that I had para wings? What was my course number? How many jumps had I completed? Had I done a night jump? Who had been my course commander? And then he waited.

  “My course number was 8312, sir. Six jumps from a cc-130, one from a Chinook helicopter and one night jump, sir. Captain Moo Sang, Warrant Officer Hubert Martineau. Wings pinned by General Pitts, sir.” And now that I had given him the information, I relaxed, knowing that I would be allowed to wear the wings. “I even named my cat after him.” When he stared at me, I continued, “You know, the colonel-in-chief of the Airborne Regiment, Pitts. It was a gift from my best friend for my sixteenth birthday.” I laughed, forgetting protocol, assuming we could connect on a deeper level as we were both paratroopers. I blush as I write this, remembering how innocent I was.

  My course commander told me to zip it. Then he admitted having never heard of a woman with para wings. I looked at him and saw the crease in his brow, his scowl showing me he was still skeptical. He asked me for proof: a jump record logbook or a graduation certificate.

  I had these at home, not considering the possibility I would need them, certain that others had shown up with parachutist wings in the past. Many cadets went on to have military careers, but I realized very few of them were women with para wings. I didn’t recognize this first taste of gender discrimination. At the cadet corps I’d been treated as an equal, given the same opportunities as my peers. I’d been lauded by my officers. I was oblivious to discrimination.

  I shook my head. He advised me that he never wanted to see me wear the wings until I had proof. He told me to leave his office.

  “Yes, sir.” I saluted and returned to the barracks.

  The course progressed well over the summer. We started each day with a run at six a.m. and ended it with cleaning, ironing, and studying late at night. The schedule was packed tightly with a mixture of classroom lessons, drills on the parade square, field exercises, and spit-polishing boots. The morning inspections always revealed a new spot we’d forgotten to dust, sweep, or wash. Instructors yelled at us relentlessly for dull creases in our dress pants, invisible drops of water on the bathroom floor, the impossible-to-see-with-the-naked-eye lint on our tunics. We were never good enough. That was the point. This was meant to strengthen our characters, hone our survival skills, and force us to work as a team. It also made us proficient at doing push-ups.

  A few weeks into the course, I was in the base library doing some homework with some of my classmates; we were researching administrative policies in the Queen’s Regulations and Orders (qr&os). Three big binders were spread out on the table and two colleagues were flipping pages back and forth to find the necessary information. Another teammate joined us; in his hand he held a copy of The Sealandair, the local Edmonton military newspaper. He pointed to the large headline that covered the top right half of the front page. LIKE DAUGHTER — LIKE FATHER.

  I stared at the publication. Framed in the centre was a photo of my father proudly having his parachutist wings pinned on him by his daughter. The caption below read:

  Top jumper on last year’s basic parachutist course pins wings on her father

  How serendipitous! I laughed and asked if I could have the paper. That night, I removed the front page, folded it before placing it in an envelope, and walked over to the course officer’s office. I slipped it underneath the door.

  I didn’t hear back from the captain or the staff for the rest of the course.

  The Fraser Valley graced us with beautiful sunny days on the firing range and on the parade square, while typical British Columbia downpours during field exercises enabled us to learn, albeit the hard way, the importance of digging trenches around our lean-tos to evacuate water. That summer we were taught to navigate with a compass, fire the gas-operated, air-cooled, magazine-fed fnc1a1 rifle, and march in slow formation or run as a platoon. Informally, we learned much more valuable lessons: how to sleep anywhere (sometimes even standing up), how to eat faster than Kobayashi at a hot dog–eating competition, and how to faint without letting your rifle fall to the ground. You could never let your rifle fall to the ground.

  I hated and loved every moment. I hated getting up before the break of dawn, but felt exhilarated during the morning runs. I hated cleaning my rifle, but loved the feel of it nestled into my shoulder when I fired on the range. Some of my peers were not suited for military life and left voluntarily or were shown the way out. The women on my course generally did quite well with only a few of them failing within the very first couple of weeks, mostly for physical fitness reasons. One of my favourite male colleagues, a young cadet named Hakim, showed so much promise I was sure he would graduate top of the course, despite the disproportionate badgering from the instructors who relentlessly laughed at his name. I often asked him how he could tolerate such abuse from the instructors and he responded that it was all a game. He would exercise pa
tience and strength. Three quarters into the course, we lined up in three ranks for pt early one morning and he didn’t show up. We never saw him again.

  During the last week of the course, I was advised by my course captain that for some reason I would be attending civilian university as an officer cadet instead of military college. My disappointment was profound, as I wanted to shed all vestiges of my civilian life. I didn’t care that much about my studies; I wanted to be in uniform full-time, start my career, and dive right into training. I harboured little enthusiasm towards the education part of becoming an officer, yet as fate would have it, education would now be front and centre as I would have to attend a civilian university.

  The day before graduation, we were doing a dress rehearsal for our final parade when the warrant officer yelled at me that I was improperly dressed. I looked myself up and down. Rifle, bayonet, and scabbard, boots highly polished, ugly bowler hat sitting on top of my head. I looked at my flanking comrades, thinking I’d missed some directive, but nothing seemed to be amiss. I looked at the warrant officer questioningly as his glance moved to the blank space above my left breast pocket where my wings should have been and he smiled. I smiled back.