As the world’s only female head of a national armed force, Vice Admiral Antonette Wemyss-Gorman, Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) Chief of Defence Staff, is opening up about her decades-long groundbreaking military career in an upcoming memoir, pushing back against early assumptions that her account frames the JDF as a patriarchal or misogynistic institution.
Published first in digital format, with hardcover editions set to hit shelves in coming weeks, *Life, Duty and Command* traces Wemyss-Gorman’s journey from her childhood growing up in Top Alston, Clarendon, through her 1994 enlistment in the JDF Coast Guard, to her historic appointment as CDS in January 2022. The memoir does not shy away from candid accounts of the barriers women still face in military spaces — a challenge that persists across armed forces globally, where long-standing masculine-centric traditions have slowed gender integration, despite incremental progress in closing opportunity gaps.
Far from criticizing the JDF, however, Wemyss-Gorman frames the institution as a global leader in inclusive transformation. In a composed, confident interview with the Jamaica Observer, she emphasized that the JDF has made steady, meaningful progress in evolving its gender culture, noting that the force’s successful integration of women and men into all ranks stands as a model for other militaries worldwide — a milestone that extends beyond her own historic appointment to the service’s top role.
Notably, Wemyss-Gorman reveals in the book that she never actively sought the position of CDS. Her early career ambition was centered on commanding a ship and serving at sea, rather than taking on a desk-bound leadership role in headquarters. She also cites the heavy personal toll of senior military service: her young son made significant sacrifices to accommodate the demanding pace of her career, and she saw firsthand the weight of the CDS role while serving as force executive officer, working closely alongside the previous chief. Convinced other equally competent candidates aspired to the post, she had no personal ambition to take the top job herself.
The memoir also includes unflinching accounts of controversial career incidents that have drawn public scrutiny. One high-profile episode dates back more than a decade to Wemyss-Gorman’s tenure as the first female commanding officer of the JDF Coast Guard. At the time, she discovered a fellow senior officer had hidden information from her: the driver assigned to her was under active investigation for drug trafficking, but her colleague never alerted her to the probe.
In her book, Wemyss-Gorman describes the experience as one of the most devastatingly disappointing and betraying moments of her professional life. The unsuspecting admiral continued carrying out sensitive operations with the driver, who had access to classified information, putting her personal safety, her family’s security, her unit’s operations and her entire command at serious risk. To this day, she says she remains uncertain of her colleague’s motive — whether he suspected her of involvement, intended to damage her reputation, or had another reason for silence. Immediately after uncovering the hidden information, Wemyss-Gorman acted quickly to remove the driver from the JDF.
When asked why she chose to include the difficult incident in her memoir, she explained that documenting the failure was critical to preventing similar oversights from harming other service members in the future. As a personal memoir, she added, it was important to include the full reality of her experiences, both positive and negative. She stressed that the JDF has progressed significantly since the incident occurred more than 10 years ago, noting that the force now moves rapidly to investigate breaches of civil or military rules, and the core failure in the case was the deliberate concealment of information that put her and her operations at risk.
Despite the challenges and setbacks she has navigated as a trailblazer for women in the military, Wemyss-Gorman says her decades-long career with the JDF has been deeply fulfilling. When asked if enlistment was the right choice for her, she answered without hesitation: she would make the exact same decision again, noting that military service never promises an easy path, but has given her unparalleled opportunities to serve her country and make history.