Army forced to apologise for rejecting teen soldier – who’d passed selection tests – because two members of her family have had breast cancer [Video]

A teenager who sailed through fitness and cognitive tests when applying to join the Army was told she wasn’t eligible to join ‘at the last minute’ because her mother and auntie had both had breast cancer diagnoses. 

Carys Holmes, 17, from Derbyshire, told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on Friday that she was ‘crushed’ to learn that her dream of serving in the British military wouldn’t happen – despite the fact she hadn’t even been tested for the BRAC1 gene. 

Holmes has a 50/50 chance of inheriting the breast cancer gene and says she was told that she wouldn’t be able to serve her country because she might one day need time off for preventative surgery. 

Explaining to the radio show’s host Anita Rani how she ‘fell in love’ with the idea of joining up after attending a briefing, she said: ‘I was loving it, this is what I want to do’.

She said: ‘I applied in October …