In popular culture and in real life, the Army drill sergeant is the ultimate incarnation of macho bluster. On Fort Jackson’s Warrior Training Ground in South Carolina, Command Sgt. Maj. Teresa King is about to redefine the role. The csmonitor.com is reporting that the 29-year Army veteran and sharecropper’s daughter from Newton Grove, N.C., is taking over the reins of America’s only drill sergeant school in September. She’ll become the nation’s first female yeller-in-chief.
Sgt. Maj. Teresa King took a circuitous path to lead the school. Hers is not a military family. The daughter of a disciplinarian sharecropper and father of 13, the self-described “farm girl’ faced gasps of disbelief from her siblings as she constantly questioned her father’s stern directives – a skill that, counterintuitively, came to serve her well as she rose in the Army’s officer ranks, she says…
That’s just how I am, I have to ask a question about what you’re saying, because I can’t walk away. That’s how I’m wired, and I don’t see any reason to change.
She was among the first female recruits to train alongside men when she joined the Army out of high school, in 1980. She began her career as a postal clerk in Germany, spent two years as a drill sergeant, and later joined the Pentagon, hand-picked by then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.
Her first major leadership test came on 9/11, when she served as first sergeant of the 18th Airborne Corps’ headquarters company, responsible for 500 infantrymen, 22 sergeant majors, four colonels, and a slew of other officers. She talks abut this appointment…
They didn’t care if I was a female. When I told them to move out, they did.
Despite her years of experience, Teresa says she was “amazed” when tapped to lead the school, saying she never thought it was an option. She says Fort Jackson’s commander, Brig. Gen. Bradley May, risked ruffling feathers in appointing a woman to the prestigious role.
More doors are opening in the Army. It’s like I’ve always been saying: If you hold people to standards and enforce them and know there are no impossibilities, all things are possible unto you.”
