How a 5ft 5in Royal Artillery officer become the first woman Paratrooper

Eyes ablaze, the Gurkha glared menacingly at Captain Rosie Wild. She had never been in a fist fight before. 

Now the 5ft 5in Royal Artillery officer was going toe-to-toe with a male opponent in one of the British Army’s most brutal challenges – a minute-long, no-holds-barred boxing match known as ‘milling’.

Within seconds, a barrage of blows to the face sent Rosie to the floor. 

But determined not to let months of arduous training go to waste, she leapt to her feet, furiously fighting back and – to her amazement – was declared the winner when the 60 second bout was over.

But why had Captain Wild subjected herself to such a gruesome ordeal? The answer is: to prove to herself and to legions of doubters that women like her are tough enough to join the Army’s elite airborne forces. 

And last month, fitness fanatic Rosie, 28, did just that, becoming the first woman to pass the All Arms Pre-Parachute selection, more commonly known as ‘P Company’.

She was handed her coveted maroon beret at a parade in Catterick, North Yorkshire, and is expected to earn her ‘wings’ when she takes a military parachuting course at RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, next month.

Here, in a remarkable interview given to the Brick Session triathlon podcast and reproduced by The Mail on Sunday, trailblazing Rosie has spoken for the first time about the enormous physical and emotional obstacles she overcame to make history.

These included fighting back from four serious knee operations and silencing the persistent voice in her head that told her passing P Company, which includes endurance marches carrying heavy backpacks, a terrifying aerial assault course and a five-mile race carrying a 175lb metal stretcher, was simply beyond her.

As the only woman on the course, Rosie was also billeted away from her male comrades. 

The Army’s segregation policy for female soldiers left her feeling isolated and in a ‘dark place’ emotionally.

‘I was in a room on my own. I didn’t have six other people to talk about it with,’ she says. 

‘Alone in my room and while I was in bed, I let it all get on top of me. The gravitas of what I might achieve became a negative. I shut off. I stopped communicating on my phone, I stopped talking to family and friends. I went into a dark place.’

Throughout the course, Rosie – in spite of her small stature – carried the same 35 lb backpack as much stronger and heavier male candidates. 

Like the other officers attempting P Company, she was also expected not only to complete the gruelling events but to inspire the junior soldiers around her when the going got tough.

Her achievement is all the more remarkable when held against these harsh statistics: of the 160 candidates who started, only 44 successfully completed the course – a pass rate of just 27.5 per cent. Only 18 of 30 officers passed.

The opportunity opened up for Rosie in 2016, when the then-Prime Minister David Cameron lifted a centuries-old ban on women serving in close-combat regiments, such as infantry and armoured units.

For decades, women had served on the frontline as medics, engineers and pilots but had never been expected to ‘close in and kill’ the enemy. 

At the time critics condemned the move, warning the Army could face legal action if women suffered injuries, or difficulties giving birth, from infantry training.

That year Rosie graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. She was awarded the Sword of Honour as the best officer cadet among 200 predominantly male recruits, but admits she thought joining an airborne unit, such as 7 Royal Horse Artillery (7 Para RHA) was a bridge too far.

‘If you had asked me three years ago, ‘Do you want to go to 7 Para?’ I would definitely have laughed and said, ‘That’s silly, it is never going to happen.’ 

It wasn’t that I never wanted to go there. Rather, I could never see it happening for a female to pass [P Company].

‘And by no stretch of the imagination am I built for that course.

‘Leg length is a huge issue. The shorter among us have to over-stride to keep up [on endurance marches]. And the officers always have to be at the back, so I was always there with the shorter legs.

‘I had also had four knee operations, so I feel like I am always on a clock thinking when is my next injury?

‘But once, after a couple of drinks, I told my commander that I wanted to do something that I might fail at. It sounds silly, but P Company was about challenging myself beyond where I thought my limitations were.’

Rosie was among the shortest and the lightest candidates on the course. And unlike many of her male counterparts, she had not watched any of the gruesome television documentaries about P Company, thinking the sight of instructors screaming at recruits would put her off.

From the start she wanted to be treated like every other soldier on the course – as an officer, not a female officer – and to be a number, in her case candidate number 58.

So when it came to the notorious ‘milling’ – a practice so violent even a senior Para officer recently called for it to be banned – she was reassured to learn the Army had decided she would fight a male candidate rather than drafting in a woman.

A soldier from the Royal Gurkha Rifles who was roughly her height and weight was chosen as her opponent. Entering the gym, Rosie saw four benches placed to form a square in which the vicious and bloody bouts would take place, watched by the other adrenaline-pumped candidates.

She was ordered to sit facing her opponent, a Gurkha who she had previously made friends with.

‘We didn’t speak once we had been paired up. Yes, potentially in his mind I was a girl, but I had spent so much time ensuring I wasn’t treated like that. I think for him it was his job too,’ she recalls.

‘To me it was just a phys [physical training] session and I just wanted to get it done quickly. I smiled at him as if to say, ‘Well we are actually on the same team here,’ but I did not get the same response.

‘I don’t really remember, but from speaking to people watching for the first five or ten seconds I just got pummelled and I went straight down on to the ground. I had no idea what being punched in the face was going to feel like. It hurts!

‘But I got back up again and thought to focus on throwing direct punches to the guy’s face. I literally just did that. Yes, it is odd, oddly satisfying. But I wasn’t seeing red. It was very controlled.’

Rosie hugged the Gurkha after their bout and insists he wasn’t ribbed for losing to a woman. 

‘He didn’t get any mockery. Everyone saw it as two numbers fighting. That was one of the best parts of P Company for me, that my bout was treated just like any other mill.’

On the final day, surviving candidates took on the stretcher race – a five-mile dash over rough terrain while carrying a 175 lb metal stretcher. By common consent it is the toughest event on the course.

‘I was carrying the stretcher alongside taller people so it was bouncing on my shoulder. We were also running through knee-deep water and up hills you could barely get up without the weight,’ she says.

‘It was pure teamwork, with everyone at their absolute limit. But being fit and being able to lead is what being an airborne officer is all about. It was everything I want from a job.’

By this stage it was clear that the men competing alongside Rosie for a maroon beret were rooting for her. At the end of the task she heard a male soldier cry: ‘Did Rosie finish?’ 

Now the instructors would decide who had passed and who had failed. Even when a sergeant on the P Company staff secretly whispered: ‘Welcome to the Paras,’ she still did not believe she had succeeded. 

The candidates lined up in alphabetical order on the parade square – meaning Captain Wild had to wait until near the end to learn her fate.

‘Everyone was coming up to me and people were so excited for me. It was a fantastic feeling as we were so committed to each other’s success. But even standing there I still thought I’d failed,’ she says.

Rosie heard some recruits being told they had failed.

‘If you’ve passed you stand at ease, if you’ve failed you march off the square. It was gut-wrenching seeing them leave.’

‘Number 58,’ shouted an instructor. Rosie stood to attention.

Her heart, she recalls, was ‘out of her chest’.

‘Pass,’ he shouted.

‘That was the first time I allowed myself to process that I had passed,’ she says. ‘Then the [maroon] berets were handed out and the Officer Commanding asked me how I felt.

‘I told him I thought the hard work starts now because, while the course was a huge hurdle, I’ve got to do my new job in 7 Para to the best of my ability. I’ve got to prove I’m worth the beret.’

Captain Rosie Wild was speaking to Mark Livesey, the presenter of The Brick Session triathlon podcast.