Sarah Pedder: Love among the ranks

It was a classic Army sex scandal: the married captain and her sergeant, tent-hopping out on manoeuvres. But the woman at its centre just won't resign quietly. Julia Atuart reports

She was the blonde newly wed Army captain said to have "romped" with a married sergeant during desert training in Oman, as British troops prepared for action after the atrocities of September 11 . According to some tabloids, Sarah Pedder and Allan Dummer were sneaking into each other's tents at night and roaring off together on motorbikes under the pretext of "checking transport arrangements". A cartoon in The Sun depicted Sarah lying on her back in a tent, no doubt thinking of England, surrounded by a crowd of smirking soldiers about to hoist up the canvas.

Today, Pedder, 27, is distinctly chestnut, her hair no longer worn in a regulation bun. After six years in the Army, a job she had coveted since gaining a scholarship at 16, Pedder is now under investigation for misconduct and is preparing for civilian life. But the captain believes she has been unfairly treated in this lurid desert tale, denying that she had any kind of sexual relationship with Dummer while in Oman.

"I don't think I've done anything wrong. I've fallen in love," she says. "I can understand that the Army has to discourage promiscuous and damaging relationships – ours is neither.

"I expect them to tell me to resign. I'm ready to leave the Army and do something different, but I don't want to be forced to resign. I have put my papers in asking to be retired as normal. I certainly wouldn't be considering leaving now if this hadn't happened."

Pedder is about to move into a rented flat in the Midlands with Dummer, a father of two, who also faces being discharged. For Pedder, it is an abrupt end to a promising career that began when she left Sandhurst in August 1997 and joined the Royal Signals as a Second Lieutenant. "I'd always wanted to be in the Army," she says. "I love being outdoors, there was the responsibility at a very young age, the travel, and the idea of helping people really appealed to me."

She was posted to Cyprus for 14 months, and later, in May 2000, became second-in-command of 261 Signal Squadron in Aldershot. It was there that she met Dummer, now 38, a staff sergeant who worked in transport management. Initially, she didn't think much of him. "He's got a very strange sense of humour," she says. "When I first met him he was skiving a PT lesson, and of course I was in charge of the PT.

"I then had to work with him on several occasions through the rest of the year, in particular through battle camp, and he was incredibly competent. When I worked with him I began to like him, but no more or less than anyone else."

She left for the six-month exercise in the Middle East in May last year, returning for two weeks the following month to marry Henry Morshead, now 33, a design engineer. The pair had courted on and off for six years since meeting at university. "I was very much in love with Henry," she says. "We had a history together, and had been through some ups and downs together. I didn't have any worries on my wedding day at all."

In September she returned home again for two weeks' leave, expecting her husband to take time off, but he didn't. Back in Oman, as the exercise continued, she and Dummer spent more and more time together. "Just before we came home, on 29 November, we basically got to the point where there was only Allan and I left and a couple of other people, so we spent an increasing amount of time working together. Sometimes we would go for a run or eat dinner, but no more than any troop officer and their staff sergeant would do. It was a normal working relationship.

"And, of course, while we were watching videos in the evening, while we were sat drinking coffee, while we were working, you talk about things. I began to find out that Allan really wasn't very happy [at home] and we were talking about our personal lives. It's only when you really start talking to somebody outside of it that you possibly realise how silly your situation is, and that's when I began to have my doubts about Henry. I was confused and upset. I began to realise that maybe I hadn't done the right thing in marrying him and I was panicking a great deal. The first time I really thought about Allan in an emotional sense was about 24 November, about five days before we came home."

According to Pedder, the pair met by a river the day after they returned and kissed for the first time. Over the following days they decided to leave their partners. They were aware that, according to Army regulations, relationships were not allowed in a chain of command, and decided to do the honourable thing by informing their superiors that they wanted to start a relationship. They hoped that one of them would be posted to another unit so they could continue to see each other romantically, which, Pedder says, has happened to other couples in similar circumstances.

On 5 December, Pedder left a note for her husband saying she was leaving him, and presented her commanding officer with a letter outlining her plans. "I made two mistakes. I wrote that I offered to resign and I used the word 'affair', which I shouldn't have, because people use the word 'affair' when it's sexual."

The pair were immediately suspended. In January, Dummer was given a new posting in Bulford, and in February, Pedder was sent to Bath as a staff officer. Then the story broke. "Allan didn't come into my tent once," she insists. "Our sexual relationship didn't start until we were suspended from the unit, by which time there was no reason not to."

Suffering from stress and depression, Pedder continued to work intermittently until July, when she felt too unwell to continue. The couple, both in the process of divorcing, hope to marry. Pedder, whose Army salary is £33,000, plans to study law. If Dummer is discharged, he will lose his pension, which is worth £236,000.

A MoD spokeswoman said the investigation into the pair was still continuing. "It is not permitted to have a relationship between an officer and another rank in a chain of command in accordance with the code of conduct," she said. The outcome is expected soon.

John Mackenzie, the couple's solicitor, says: "The fundamental problem is that the Army does not accept that if you have got men and women, or men and men, or women and women, in an organisation you are always likely to have a sexual or emotional dimension to it. The Army is still operating in the 1920s, if not earlier. And it comes down to this difference between officers and non-officers. The Army has gone berserk because Sarah is an officer and Allan is a staff sergeant. They haven't said that, but that is the reason. If Allan Dummer had been an officer nothing would have happened."

Pedder says she has no regrets: "Sixty per cent of people in this country meet their future partners at work. Lots of people in the Army have extramartial affairs. Lots of people in the Army are incredibly promiscuous. In any unit at any one time there are several affairs going on. People are going to fall in love."