Viral footage shows British Army corporal bullying female recruit to the point of tears
Just weeks after the British Army launched a recruitment campaign encouraging officers to be sensitive and emphasizing that it is okay for soldiers to cry, an Army corporal may face court-martial after a shocking new video showing him bullying a female recruit and reducing her to tears was posted on social media.
The mobile phone footage which was filmed by the instructor himself and uploaded on Facebook on May 4, has reportedly been viewed more than 300,000 times.
The video, uploaded on the Facebook page 'The Forces Bible', shows the recruit, who is named in the clip, wading through a stream before being summoned before the corporal who demands to know if she is a “killer or a mouse,” while repeatedly yelling at her that she is “f***ing weak”. She is then led to a pile of sandbags for bayonet training.
After heavily criticizing her efforts at stabbing the targets, the instructor feigns sympathy before launching into another tirade. The footage was edited to look like one of the army’s recruitment advertisements and branded with the slogan, “This is Belonging,” before being posted online. It promptly went viral and elicited widespread criticism.
Lord Dannatt, the former head of the Army, told the Daily Mail on Sunday that the corporal's behavior was “totally unacceptable.”
“I hope the identity of the corporal is discovered very quickly and that he is removed from the Army at the earliest possible moment,” he said. “Tomorrow would be a day too late.”
Bayonet training is an essential though often brutal part of the basic training given to new recruits. Conservative MP Johnny Mercer, who served as an officer in Afghanistan, condemned the corporal’s actions.
“I used to run commando training, and it was a deep privilege to go with people to their darkest places and realize what their characters were actually made of,” He said. “I would never think about filming it and putting it online, though, which is a deep breach of trust and respect for that individual.”
The video is presently under investigation by the armed forces.