REDDITCH-born Army Officer Major Louise Bates was, in her own words ‘speechless’ when she was summoned before her boss only to be told she had been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
Louise currently works in Aldershot at the headquarters of Regional Command where she heads up the female engagement section tasked with attracting more women and girls into careers in the Army.
Born in Small Heath, Birmingham, Louise’s family moved to Redditch where she attended what was then the Abbey High School, now Trinity High School, along with her sisters Joanne and Wendy and brother Tom.
With her eyes set on becoming a linguistics teacher, she studied French, German and Russian at Essex University but whilst there had something of an epiphany.
Realising that the Army could offer a wider variety of opportunities she enrolled on and completed the Potential Officers’ Course at a training centre.
“From there on there was no looking back,” she said.
Having graduated with her languages degree, Louise went on to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, receiving her commission in 1988 into what was then the Women’s’ Royal Army Corps.
Being a linguist, Louise often found herself working as an interpreter playing a pivotal role in some of the most demanding of situations, the civil war in Bosnia in 1993 and the unfolding Rwandan humanitarian crisis of 1994 were among many postings.
“Maj Gen David Eastman, my boss, called me into his office the day before the list was published,” she said.
“I wondered what on earth I had done wrong.
“I was soon reassured as he read out that I had been recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
“He told me it was for all the work I had done championing Army opportunities for young women and girls and getting the Army better connected with and within female society.
“I was absolutely speechless yet excited and desperate to tell my family.”
Now living in Hampshire, Louise has two children, daughter, Pascale, aged 19, who is studying at the University of the West of England and son Yannick, aged 16, who is doing his A-Levels at sixth form college.
