KALI­FA SARAH CLYNE

Sher­ry-Ann Ed­wards, one of the first women draft­ed in­to the T&T Coast Guard in 1994, is once again mak­ing his­to­ry in the De­fence Force by be­com­ing this coun­try's first and on­ly fe­male fleet chief pet­ty of­fi­cer. "Not many peo­ple make it to fleet chief pet­ty of­fi­cer," said Lt Kirk Jean Bap­tiste, com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist of the T&T Coast Guard. "It is not a rank that every rat­ing achieves and it re­quires lots of hard work." He said Ed­wards' pro­mo­tion to that rank was a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in the his­to­ry of the T&T?Coast Guard. Ed­wards' mil­i­tary ca­reer be­gan in 1989 when she joined the T&T reg­i­ment. She spent five years as a pri­vate, work­ing in the med­ical de­part­ment. "When the call came for fe­males to join the Coast Guard, I jumped at the op­por­tu­ni­ty," she said.

"I love the sea as my dad would al­ways take me fish­ing and I had ini­tial­ly want­ed to join the Coast Guard. But they weren't tak­ing women at the time so for me it was an ho­n­our." Ed­wards said women who were al­ready in the army were in­vit­ed to trans­fer to the Coast Guard be­cause they al­ready had mil­i­tary train­ing. She and two oth­er women sol­diers, Chief Pet­ty Of­fi­cer Iris Cum­ber­batch and Chief Pet­ty Of­fi­cer Char­maine Jack, were the first to be trans­ferred to the T&T Coast Guard. Ad­just­ments had to be made, in­clud­ing new uni­forms for the women, ac­com­mo­da­tion, a pol­i­cy for fe­male re­cruits and for­mu­lat­ing rights for fe­males. "In the Coast Guard, women and men are trained the same, we do the same work and are treat­ed the same. The on­ly dif­fer­ence is that I wore skirts and they wore pants." Four years af­ter join­ing the Coast Guard, Ed­wards be­came the first fe­male lead­ing rate and was re­spon­si­ble for train­ing the first fe­male re­cruit in­take, a batch of 24 women.

Fol­low­ing that achieve­ment, she steadi­ly climbed the ranks, be­com­ing the first fe­male pet­ty of­fi­cer, the first fe­male chief pet­ty of­fi­cer. With her lat­est pro­mo­tion, Ed­wards has be­come the most se­nior of non-com­mis­sioned of­fi­cers. She was al­so the first woman to com­mand a Coast Guard ves­sel and the first to cross the At­lantic ocean, when she went to Eng­land to com­plete ac­qui­si­tion of the TTS Nel­son, then sail it to T&T. Ed­wards, who trained in med­ical care when she was in the army, now works with doc­tors en­sur­ing they are screened and that a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al is at­tached to all of the ves­sels. She has now tak­en on an ad­vi­so­ry role that al­lows her to of­fer rec­om­men­da­tions for of­fi­cers and pro­vide men­tor­ship. Ed­wards' achieve­ments didn't start when she en­tered the Coast Guard, though. As a mem­ber of T&T's Cadet Force, she be­came the first fe­male sergeant. She was the first fe­male "best re­cruit" in her batch and jok­ing­ly ad­mit­ted that she was al­so the first child to her par­ents. "I have al­ways want­ed to join the mil­i­tary. As a young woman I would watch mil­i­tary ac­tion movies on tele­vi­sion and get ex­cit­ed and want to do those things. So I joined the cadets and I got the pur­pose to serve my coun­try. It was a nat­ur­al tran­si­tion to go to the army." Since Ed­wards joined the Coast Guard, the num­ber of women has in­creased. To­day, there are 181 women among the Coast Guard's 1,400 mem­bers.