NZ Army chief Rose King on warfare, women on the frontline and ordering men around

Leading by example: Chief of Army Major General Rose King at Waiōuru Military Camp after completing her annual weapons qualification. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

Agile, adaptive and lethal. Those are the qualities New Zealand needs to become combat-ready, says Chief of Army Major General Rose King – only the third woman in the world to lead a national military force. A year into the job, she talks to Joanna Wane about being top dog.

In 1991, Rose Willemsen left home to join the Army. A farm girl from Kai Iwi, a small rural community near Whanganui, she was the youngest of nine children and had not long turned 18.

On the bus to Waiōuru with other Officer Cadet School recruits, she clocked the man she’d eventually marry, although it took a while before she managed to convince him of that.

Still, it’s what happened when they arrived at the military camp that she remembers just as vividly.

“A gentleman came on and said, ‘If you’re not prepared to kill a baby, don’t get off the bus,’” she says. “I was like, ‘I’m pretty confident the New Zealand Defence Force does not kill babies, so I’m going to get off the bus and give it a go.’”

The fact that the career soldier now known as Major General Rose King tells this story, despite hesitating for a moment before deciding to do so, reveals a lot about the straight-talking “CA”, as she’s known by the troops.

The mother of two, whose parents couldn’t afford to send her to university, has a reputation for keeping it real.

Few civilians would recognise King’s name, a year into her groundbreaking appointment as Chief of Army – only the third woman in the world to be made leader of a national military force.

Chief of Army Major General Rose King and Sergeant Major of the Army Warrant Officer Class One Dave Alder at the graduation parade for the latest batch of army recruits at Waiōuru Military Camp in July. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

First to crack that particular glass ceiling was Vice-Admiral Antonette Wemyss-Gorman, Jamaica’s Chief of Defence Staff. Technically, King was the second, stepping up as acting CA in June 2024, a month before General Jennie Carignan took command in Canada.

It’s been an extraordinary career trajectory for King, who holds two master’s degrees (in management, defence and strategic studies) and has been deployed to Croatia and Afghanistan.

Back when she enlisted, women were excluded from the combat corps; her first trade after graduating from Waiōuru was in electrical and mechanical engineering.

Today, female recruits have the same opportunities and face the same expectations as the men training alongside them. Apparently, women make particularly good snipers.

However, they remain a minority in the military, making up just 14.6% of the NZ Army, although numbers are higher in the Navy and Air Force.

It’s notoriously difficult for women to navigate any heavily male-dominated profession, let alone a hyper-masculinised “brotherhood” like the Army. And the backlash against former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Covid era showed us a proportion of the population doesn’t take kindly to a woman ordering them around.

Respected for her authentic style of leadership, Chief of Army Major General Rose King says that on the rare occasions someone has problems with a woman being in charge, 'It's their issue, not mine'. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

Inevitably, says King, the Army is a reflection of society. However, as CA, she’s rarely encountered any challenges to her authority based on gender. “And I personally don’t find I ‘give orders’ as often as you would think.”

The Defence Force has worked hard to reshape its public image in recent years and promote a more inclusive culture, coming down hard on anyone who steps out of line.

After the HMNZS Manawanui ran aground in Samoa last year, the Herald understands it was made clear to all personnel that any negative commentary on the naval ship being under the command of a female captain would not be tolerated.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing for King, either. At one of the first units she joined, the commanding officer told her she should be at home having babies. Given the choice, he told her, a male would always be promoted ahead of her.

Now the highest-ranked Army officer in the country, she says the landscape has changed considerably.

As a young kid from the wops, part of what attracted her to defence in the first place was that reputations are earned through performance.

Firing live rounds on the weapons range at Waiōuru as part of the Army's standard annual qualification requirement. 'I get better as I go along.' Photo / Sylvie Whinray

It’s a hypothetical question, but if the New Zealand Government ever reintroduced conscription, King sees no reason why women should be excluded from the draft. Not only has the concept of fighting on the “frontline” become blurred, but she sees diversity of thought as an asset.

“If you don’t open things up to females, you’ll be missing half of your best people in New Zealand,” she says. “There are different strengths amongst all of us.

“I get challenged sometimes when people put us – and I don’t just mean women, but whatever group you belong to – in a box.

“I need soldiers who are competent at doing their jobs. I don’t care what race, what gender, what ethnicity. I need to trust you to be able to do your job because when we are in combat, my life will be in your hands.”

Of course, King’s idea of serving her country was far less sophisticated when she first signed up as a teenage tomboy. The prospect of actually going into battle never consciously crossed her mind.

Today, rising geopolitical tensions make that a far more realistic possibility. After decades of underfunding, the Government has ramped up the defence budget as a sign of support for our allies, launching a $12 billion Defence Capability Plan and committing to a doubling of defence spending by 2033 to more than 2% of GDP.

Speaking at a graduation ceremony in Waiōuru last month, Minister of Defence Judith Collins challenged the latest batch of Army recruits to be prepared for the possibility of combat. She later told the Weekend Herald the world felt more unstable now than it had at any other point in her lifetime.

King acknowledges the global environment is dynamic. Technology has changed the face of modern warfare, and her vision as leader is to train and equip a combat-ready armed force that is “agile, adaptive and lethal”.

The old adage that New Zealand is safe, tucked away at the bottom of the world, is no longer true. “I get exposed to things most Kiwis are not aware of, and there are threats to all nations around the world,” she says.

“Look around and we’ve got great power competition playing out in our own backyard. Not only is the defence of New Zealand in our national interests, but as a nation, because we are so small, the international rules-based order is fundamental.”

King with Colonel Lisa Kelliher, Commander of Army Training Group at Waiōuru (left), after passing her annual weapons qualification. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

A high attrition rate, which peaked at the height of the pandemic, has been gradually pulled back, and the number of training courses for army recruits is doubling next year.

Despite our inevitably limited scale, King believes New Zealand is valued for the cultural strength of its relationships, particularly in the Pacific.

She and Australia’s Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Simon Stuart, recently led a joint delegation to Fiji and Timor-Leste. Last month, 700 New Zealanders from across the defence force took part in Exercise Talisman Sabre, a global warfighting scenario involving personnel from 19 countries.

“When you can ring your counterpart, that makes such a difference with regard to de-escalating any possibility of miscalculations,” says King. Another positive, she notes, is that Nato has become more solidified than it has been for some time.

“People ask me, ‘Rose, what’s going to happen? Is there going to be a war?’ No one can predict the future, but historically, we can all learn that you must be prepared, not for the last war, but for the next one.”

Chief of Army Major General Rose King inspects the troops of Recruit Regular Force Course 416, Rafah Company, at their graduation parade at Waiōuru Military Camp. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

A Dutch migrant who arrived in New Zealand after World War II with a suitcase and not a word of English, King’s father had been opposed to his youngest daughter joining the military.

From him, King inherited her stubborn determination and learned the value of what can be achieved through hard work.

From her mother, who was separated at a young age from her brothers when their mother died, she learned resilience and the importance of treating people fairly.

Viewed as someone who leads by example, she’s the kind of leader who’ll muck in on firearm cleaning duty and has supported more than one of her senior team through tough times in their private life.

Within the ranks, the word most commonly used to describe King’s style is authentic, equally at ease taking afternoon tea with the Governor-General (whose egg sandwiches are legendary) or yarning in the officers’ mess.

King says committing to the Army has given purpose to her life and aligns with her personal values. After the court-martial of a soldier for attempted espionage this month, the statement she released focused on the violation of his oath.

“Courage, commitment, comradeship and integrity are not just words or lip service – they are the foundation on which we serve,“ she said. ”We don’t just say or read these words, we live and honour them.”

In 2021, King was seconded to the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment as joint head of MIQ operations during the Covid-19 pandemic – fronting up to the media when an infected man absconded from managed isolation during level-four lockdown.

MBIE chief executive Carolyn Tremain worked closely with her during that time. She told the Weekend Herald that King showed tremendous leadership under pressure, “maintaining good grace and humour, despite the extremely challenging environment”.

Colleagues talk of her ability to command a room, but King wears her authority lightly. She also has the instincts of a diplomat who’s learnt, as she puts it, that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Speaking at an International Women’s Day event in March, she shared a colourful account from her 2018 deployment to Afghanistan, where she headed a small coalition team responsible for operations planning.

Despite her team’s vital function, King held little sway with the American division in charge at HQ (a dismissive attitude she says had more to do with her not being from the US or part of a combat corps than the fact she was a woman).

On one particular occasion, she was excluded from a classified meeting and summarily escorted from the room.

Suspecting she’d need to be involved on the planning side of whatever was being discussed – and banking on the general’s habit of emptying his bladder before holding a meeting – she loitered outside the men’s loos.

When the general emerged, King asked if she could accompany him to the meeting. He agreed, enabling her to enter the room unchallenged and gather the required information to get her job done.

When Major General Rose King was officially appointed as Chief of Army in August 2024, she became only the third woman in the world to lead a national military force. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

King and her husband, Glenn – the one from the bus – made history as the first NZ Army couple to both be promoted to the rank of colonel.

As the commander of an inter-agency task force, Glenn led the response to the Kaikōura earthquake, Cyclone Winston in Fiji and Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu.

However, when King was offered the opportunity to study at War College in Australia, Glenn went with her, stepping up as the main caregiver to their two children. He’s now left the Army and teaches te reo Māori at a high school in Wellington, where the family is based.

King still visits the military camp at Waiōuru regularly. When the Weekend Herald arrived on base, she was completing her annual weapons qualification at the firing range - a standard required by any soldier to be deployable in the field.

Over the past 30 years, life in the Army hasn’t just changed for women. King’s second-in-command, Sergeant Major of the Army Warrant Officer Class One Dave Alder, is allowed to have a beard now.

The old Steyr rifle King trained on has been replaced by a lightweight MARS-L, based on the assault rifles US forces used in Vietnam. The Army’s fleet of Land Rovers has been swapped out for Bushmasters, a 4WD armoured vehicle. The uniforms fit women soldiers better now, although she thinks there’s still room for improvement.

It’s a little disheartening, jokes King, when the National Army Museum at Waiōuru has equipment on display that you once used and trained on when you joined.

One of the other words that has been used to characterise her tenure is empathy, an attribute not typically associated with military leaders or considered an asset.

Waiōuru is home to Rongomaraeroa-o-ngā-hau-e-whā, the New Zealand Army’s national marae. King has often found herself moved to tears at gatherings there, something she’s struggled with in the past. Now, she’s learned to embrace it.

“I feel so many emotions when I’m down there,” she says. “But it doesn’t make me weaker. In fact, I would argue it makes me stronger because I can feel things. I can still make the hard decisions I need to make, but it also enables us to consider how we work with people to get the best out of them.

“Fundamentally, for me, is how do I enable people to grow and be the best they can be? That’s where I get my passion, just watching people blossom.”

Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior writer who’s been with the Herald since 2020.