LIFE’S tough enough as a 16-year old army rookie without being shouted at by a woman. Didn’t you join up to get away from your mother bawling at you to tidy your room?
Times have changed at Bassingbourn training barracks in Cambridgeshire, where the rawest of the raw are inducted into square-bashing and other essentials of military life. Now they are under the eagle eye of Regimental Sergeant-Major Anthea Burdus, wife, mother and disciplinarian (above).
The Army has had women in charge of the parade ground before, mainly in specialist units such as the Intelligence Corps, but RSM Burdus, 39, is the first in its Initial Training Group, where recruits undergo a 17-week induction course.
She joined the Army at 18 and during a 21-year career has served in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Kosovo. She is married to a warrant officer and said yesterday that her son, George, is “possibly the bestdisciplined two-year-old in the country”.
Standing on a parade ground in full uniform and medals, Sergeant-Major Burdus said: “I regard myself as a professional soldier; I don’t think I do the job differently to a man.
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“You have to be a certain type and have certain qualities. But the idea that we are just here to scream and shout is not right — our job is to motivate people.” She would like to be a role model. “I would be delighted if a young girl read about me and began to think about becoming a soldier — it’s a great career.”
An army spokesman said: “RSM Burdus is the senior NCO here; obviously she keeps an eye on every detail, but she won’t take drill sessions on a day-to-day basis; her main job is to shout at the shouters.
“Anyway, you don’t achieve much just by shouting. You have to have presence, and she certainly has that.”