The woman behind the man in uniform.

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Happy Thursday everyone! The Director is on a well-earned break this week and has decided to leave the blog open for a guest post instead of scribbling between pints. So, this week, you get to hear from Mrs Director.  

I’m here to lecture you discuss the life of an army WAG. For those of you on the Western edge of the pond, WAG is the acronym our transatlantic friends use for “wives and girlfriends”. We can try to bring more accurate (if not PC) terms like “partner” or “significant other” into popular use, but let’s be honest, defence personnel and tabloid journalists love a good acronym – and they won’t be stopped by petty fripperies like not all personnel being straight men and not all partners being female.

WAGs can be found in sport, entertainment, politics and, you guessed it: the army! We comprise an amorphous blob of domestic concerns, dinner RSVPs, and unnecessary distractions that we mercilessly inflict on our [very important] partners¹. Unfortunately, the defence industry hasn’t found a way to put WAGs into suspended animation while our partners serve, so they’ll deal with us for a while yet. I’m sure they’re thrilled.    

So, here’s what I’ve observed over 14 years as an army WAG. What is seen cannot be unseen.

Before we start, let me assure you that The Director will be back at the desk next week – so please subscribe to the blog using the link below. Don’t be afraid to hit us with a comment, either. Also, you can contact me (or The Director) via webform here or email here. Finally, if you’ve enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend.

(s)He doesn’t belong to you

One of the hardest lessons you get to learn as a WAG is that you can’t be your partner’s automatic priority if push comes to shove. Of course, you’re their significant other and emergency contact – but that lauded position is tempered with the knowledge that at any moment, they could get a call and be out of contact for days at a time². You share your partner with the organisation and those within it.

Military socialisation has a lot to do with this dynamic. Armies (and navies and air corps) put a lot of resources into ensuring that personnel trauma bond with their units and the organisation as a whole. Basic training and cadetships take recruits out of their natural environment and put them through the proverbial wringer – the best way to survive it is to become part of a team. It also uses reciprocity to build trust among recruits. When your soldier emerges from this trial by fire, their strongest bonds are often with the people who underwent the same process.

This is great news when they need a mission-oriented pep talk or to combat the friendship recession. It’s less charming when one of their buddies “calls in a favour” before you go on a family trip or when the WAG is bedridden with the flu and their partner is off to the mess to “check in on things”.

The army’s “ready to go” posture also makes it complicated for partners who want to climb the career ladder or have a non-traditional set-up³. Anyone with a young family or psychotic house pet⁴ knows that having both partners able to muck in at a moment’s notice is the difference between burnout and a civilised existence. Domestic egalitarianism is hard won and isn’t the WAG’s natural state.

This means that you get used to doing things without support

This may surprise you, but the armed forces aren’t known for flexible working arrangements or maintaining a work-life balance. Sure, personnel have their mandated holidays and leave entitlements⁵, but overseas deployments and guard duties are major parts of the job. And those require the officer, NCO, cadet, private, etc to be fully present and correct until the job is done. Sometimes that job takes a weekend. Other times, it takes nine-plus months.

This translates into WAGs shouldering the logistical nightmare of family/domestic/professional/social life solo. You have to—your partner ISN’T THERE. It falls to you by default, and if you can’t find a way to get it all done or outsource it somehow, then it remains undone and festering.

So, army partners get used to overseeing the three-ring circus while ensuring that everyone’s needs are being met. To top it off, your partner’s deployment inevitably coincides with a major life breakdown – just to keep you sweet.

From my own experience, I got to send The Director to a war zone and then come home to a flooded house, a leaking roof, botched plumbing, a workplace that was in full meltdown and a family member who died unexpectedly. It was a super cute time.

Every army partner has a story like this. If you don’t learn how to self-soothe, you lose. To all of you, I raise a glass. Without you, the whole damn opera falls apart.

The bonds are damn near homoerotic

I touched on the finer elements of military socialisation a moment ago, but my time as a WAG let me observe the intricacies of male-male friendships. I can attest to the fact that even though everyone takes an outwardly “no homo” stance on things, I’ve never seen a cohort of men who were so dedicated to immaculate grooming, sharp dressing or texting one another into the wee hours of the morning.

In so many ways, this is adorable. Men don’t usually hear that they’re “handsome devils” or that they scrub up well from other (outwardly) straight men. But it can become vexing when you’re at a formal function and realise that you’ve been abandoned because the army personnel are in rapt conversation about the latest training exercise or want to have a four-person slow dance to heal their wounded inner child⁶.

I got into the habit of bringing my own fun flask and gathering the other abandoned WAGs for a private drinking/bitching bonding session at army events. Our officers and gentlemen didn’t tend to clock our absence until last call. By that point, they’re usually hanging off one another and remarking on one another’s brilliance. It’s heartwarming.

To this day, you can find The Director sitting on the couch and giggling because someone is popping off in the plethora of army group chats. It makes him glow. Bless.

The “woke army” commentary is laughable

Members of the conservative commentariat have been beating the drum about the “dangers” of feminising the armed forces for as long as I can remember. The danger is insidious and comes from all sides. Movies like Mulan and the mere existence of the rainbow mafia in the ranks will “create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability”. We need armies that are made of “real men”. Well-muscled fighters who look mean and who don’t give a damn about your “rules of engagement”. Troops exist to maximise the killing. The gals, the gays, the theys (and the fatties) don’t engender fear with their pronouns and preoccupation with human rights and sufficient calories—they’d undermine the entire operation. The wokeness will be our undoing.

The boosters of this ideology will usually share recruitment videos from the Russian Army or China’s Peoples Liberation Army and compare it to recruitment materials from the US or UK forces. The point seems to be highlighting how women in olive drab is “immoral” and that their presence in combat roles will increase casualties and decrease effectiveness. The presence of same-sex couples at the annual Military Ball is a further blow to the western bulwark⁷. They compare this to the hypermasculine and tough-as-nails men featured in Russian and Chinese propaganda. These are the heroes we need – with their defined muscles, immaculate grooming, and synchronised movements. They will surely prevent the woke degenerates from inciting the demise of society.

I roll my eyes at this because I don’t know of anyone who would confuse the Officer’s Mess⁸ for a den of woke socialists. The strongest adherents of this ideology often haven’t served⁹, either. But hey, it’s easier to expound on the “common sense” of traditional gender roles instead of acknowledging how war is conducted in the current era. Lethality and effectiveness in modern warfare tends to rely more on tech expertise, pattern recognition, intel and analysis than on hauling a 50kg pack across rough terrain¹⁰.

Insisting that women and queer people can’t serve because “common sense” needlessly restricts the army’s talent pool and social reach. It also undermines the contributions of female and LGBTQ+ service members. You don’t have to do a lot of searching to find officers and enlisted members of these groups who served with distinction. The anti-woke narrative is choosing to ignore that women and queer troops have actively demonstrated their capability and suitability for careers in the army¹¹.

It also ignores that for all of Russian Army’s insistence on creating a hypermasculine force, we got to watch them collectively trip over their swinging dicks faceplant when they entered Ukraine in February 2022. It also overlooks the reputation of the gender-integrated Israeli Defence Forces, who regularly make headlines for rescuing puppies and hosting tea parties¹².

Vibes have little bearing on lethality – and they tend to get checked when you’re in the midst of live fire. I’m sure my friends in uniform would prefer to be in a foxhole with the Pink Marine instead of Rush Limbaugh.

The WAGs all know who the WORST guy in the mess is

Many WAGs can forgive low-level alcoholism, laddish behaviour, and transgressive humour – these are, after all, the hallmarks of majority-male spaces. I do not begrudge your dank memes or insistence that Call of Duty prepares you for combat. But there’s always one of you that elicits the WAG’s strained smile and tense posture. This guy isn’t just a bit messy: he’s a liability. The one who can’t put a polite veneer over his antisocial instincts. He often comes with a helpful nickname like, “The Reprobate” or “The Deviant”, yet his colleagues will insist that he is merely misunderstood by civilians.

This is the WORST guy in the mess. And yes: it’s always a man.

WAGs will often parse his existence in a way that resembles the “worst uncle” discourse we see during annual Conservative Party or CPAC conventions. Only this time, he had the resilience to withstand basic training and is familiar with weapons systems. What could possibly go wrong?

A lot, actually.

Apart from the middle class finger-wagging that comes from vocalised misogyny, philandering and “chasing skirts”, rates of domestic violence in the military are embarrassingly high. The Director previously mentioned the spate of “wife murders” that accompanied the actions of the Fort Bragg Cartel, but you don’t have to do a lot of searching to find examples of personnel abusing vulnerable people in the line of duty and leaving a trail of misery and destruction in their wake.

WAGs get to see these dynamics in their infancy and know that armies don’t have a lot of tools at their disposal to nip this behaviour in the bud. Sure, there are reporting mechanisms, but these about as effective as the policies in your own workplace. And we all know that groups of men in their early 20s are hugely receptive to gender training. When the Reprobate brings a date to an army function, it can feel like you’re watching a slow-moving trainwreck.

Now, I don’t want you all to think that I’m a misandrist. I quite like men. I keep one in my house. I’ve been known to feed him and let him up on the bed—I’ve grown quite fond of him over the years, really.

But The Reprobate demonstrates the active need for oversight and supervision of the armed forces—from the bottom to the top. The existing policies aren’t protecting personnel or their families. Until these are overhauled, we will see more shameful headlines.

And this sharpens your spidey senses

As a corollary to the “worst guy” in the mess, WAG-dom gives one plenty of exposure to men who—get this: like women. Not just that they are attracted to women or enjoy dating them, but men who welcome female company and take the bold feminist stance of George RR Martin and declare that “[they’ve] always considered women to be people”. 

Spending time in a barracks means you can see who has an issue with taking orders from a female officer¹⁴ and who views them as members of the same team. It also shows you the discrete differences between benevolent sexism and the type that’s two steps away from a true crime podcast. WAGs (and let’s be honest, other female personnel) will often develop a sixth sense about these dynamics and look out for one another. Our whisper networks are unbreakable. We apologise for nothing. You have been warned.

But on a lighter and more earnest note, I’ll be the first to say that for all of our handwringing about “toxic masculinity”, many of today’s men in uniform are the best example of positive masculinity I’ve encountered. There’s a real ethic of service and resourcefulness that shines through the bravado. They’re also a dab hand at the ironing and polishing (don’t let them pretend otherwise).  

Even when they’re “out”, they’re still “in”

The Director left the army in 2023. There are two closets in the house that are devoted to army kit despite the fact that he has “retired”. The Director’s closet contains more olive drab and khaki than denim. A central pillar of our social group still revolves around serving or retired personnel. When I’m feeling cynical¹⁵, I compare it to organised crime groups or the Hotel California: you can check out, but you can never leave. 

Retired personnel still identify strongly with the organisation. I regularly hear ex-members use the royal “we” when discussing the machinations of the organisation or national defence strategies. I’ve also heard retired personnel say that their various deployments were the most interesting parts of their career, even if they did a long stretch on civvy street. Many Ex-ers go through a mourning period when they leave, and I understand why.

When you’re in the army, you become the job. It forms a core component of who you are as a person and you can’t just “turn it off”. Nor should you, in my honest opinion.

So, that’s all for this week – thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article, please share it on your social media feeds using the links below. If you didn’t like it, read me for filth in the comments, because I won’t read them (and the engagement is great, regardless). If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so and never miss a post. The Director will be back at the coalface next week, so we’ll see you then!

Cover picture: The Wounded Poacher, Henry Jones Thaddeus (1881), National Gallery of Ireland

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1. According to the CO. ↩︎
2. RIP Easter dinner 2021. We hardly ate ye. ↩︎
3. I mean traditional in the one partner is the breadwinner and the other handling the domestic admin, sort of way.   ↩︎
4. We have both, it’s lit. ↩︎
5. Well, allegedly. We all know someone who wasn’t able to take leave because they had to start a course, needed to be present for a bit of “must do now” admin, etc. ↩︎
6. But they “don’t need therapy.” ↩︎
7. At least someone is getting blown. ↩︎
8. Or NCOs’, Privates’, etc. ↩︎
9. Rush Limbaugh, Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Nigel Farage and a solid cohort of the talking heads at The Daily Wire all seem to fit the bill. ↩︎
10. The Director will insist that this is wonderful for morale. ↩︎
11. I should also mention that disgraceful moment the DOGE-bros tried to autodelete archival information on the Tuskegee Airmen and the Enola Gay as part of the Trump Administration’s anti-DEI push. ↩︎
12. Allegedly. ↩︎
13. 29th Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Official Portrait (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley). ↩︎
14. Y’all are not subtle. ↩︎
15. Those of you who know me personally can attest that this is hugely out of character. ↩︎