Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier (23 page)

The two hours that followed passed by in a bubble. With the cheers of support and well-wishing spurring us on, we marched along, our heads held high, to the sound of a sergeant shouting ‘left, right, left, right’, stopping us occasionally and then setting us back on our way. Every second of the march, people applauded us and cheered. Thousands upon thousands of photographs were taken of us all in our smart uniforms by members of the public, some just ordinary people caught up in their Saturday afternoon shopping along Oxford Street. It was quite a sight seeing the three uniformed services all smartly marching together in step, every single one of us smiling away to the crowd as we made our way along the route. The feeling of exhilaration and pride will never leave me. It was the day the British Army came out of the closet and said, ‘We’re here!’

The march concluded at Trafalgar Square, where there was a concert planned and speeches from political figures, but the armed forces contingent marched on past the rally point. It had been decided that we’d march down Whitehall and past the
Cenotaph, signifying a historic moment for gay servicemen and women to salute fallen comrades, comrades who’d never had the chance to do what we’d just done. In a personal note for me, we were also passing by Horse Guards on the way along Whitehall, the place I’d spent so many days on Queen’s Life Guard. As we marched by, the two soldiers sitting on their horses carried their swords and saluted. I felt enormously proud. For 350 years the Household Cavalry has had a guard on Whitehall in one way or another and never before had they carried swords and saluted a body of gay men and women celebrating who they really were and the service those people were giving to the country.

As we approached the Cenotaph, the national focal point of mourning every November, the adrenalin in me began to rocket once more. I thought about all those soldiers who’d fought in both wars and in conflicts since who’d never been able to talk about their sexuality. I thought of all those soldiers who’d been criminalised for being gay and discharged from service in dishonour, just for being true to themselves. More than anything, I thought about my American friend Sammy, still serving in Iraq, his sexuality a secret to everyone around him. Tears filled my eyes as we saluted the Cenotaph. I was saluting Sammy.

After the march, instead of dispersing into the busy London scene for the evening, we found ourselves drinking together in uniform. I’d become friendly with three sailors from Portsmouth, Travis, Sam and Steffan, who were all great company. It was a pleasure to be sharing the entire experience with the three of them.

While having fun with the three sailors I noticed a very
good-looking
guy sitting alone, not in uniform and looking a little detached from what was going on around him. He wore a light blue jacket and had a woolly knitted hat on his head. I thought I saw him looking at me too, but wondered if I was just misreading
the situation. By the time I got the opportunity to say hello, a guy in a navy outfit had sat down and was talking away with this mysterious chap. Soon, I realised that the two were a couple.

A senior officer in the navy circled the room and told people to get changed. We were getting a little too drunk to be dressed in uniform. It had taken years of difficult persuading to get us to Pride in uniform that day and nobody wanted to spoil things by being photographed in uniform misbehaving… We agreed to head into Soho a little later on and hit a few of the different bars, starting with G-A-Y, and then perhaps a club, such as Heaven. The thing about bringing a lot of out-of-towners into London was that they were clear about what they wanted to do and where they wanted to go. Personally, I’d moved on somewhat from my late nights and endless drinking in G-A-Y but understood how much of a focal point it was and a place of interest for so many. I was happy to go with the flow and, as the resident Londoner, I led the way to Soho.

Walking up to Leicester Square, I noticed the nice guy in the knitted hat had joined us with his fairly large boyfriend. There seemed to be a bit of tension between them so I thought it best not to talk to them. I was glad he was joining us, though.

An hour later we found ourselves in the main bar at G-A-Y, cramped together and fairly unable to move; it didn’t dampen our fun though. Everyone was so delighted to be out together. I was having fun; I was pleased to be making new friends with like-minded people. The night continued and in the
commotion
of being crammed together and pushed around, I suddenly found myself stood closely next to the guy in the hat. We smiled awkwardly at each other and both struggled for some initial conversation.

‘Hi… I’m Ryan.’ Ryan held out his hand and smiled at me with a fixed grin. He sounded really sweet and looked amazing. His
skin was perfect, quite different from mine, and his long blond hair just poked through the bottom of his knitted hat. I wanted to tell him how hot I thought he looked but thought better of it.

‘I’m James, I’m a soldier.’

‘I know, I saw you on the march.’

‘Who are you here with?’

Ryan gave a little laugh at my question. ‘Yeah, he’s my boyfriend. His name is Sam.’ I knew what Ryan was laughing at. I was clearly snooping around trying to find out if he had a boyfriend or not. I’m sure I looked more than a little disappointed.

Ryan was the first guy I’d really found myself drawn to since Sammy. But I couldn’t work out whether he was just overly polite or actually quite interested in me and being flirtatious. Throughout the night I saw him looking at me again and again. I was doing exactly the same thing and I wondered if he’d noticed me staring at him.

The night continued and the guys stuck true to their wishes and headed down to Heaven. I took them there but the queue was far too long and I decided not to stick around. I had thought I might have gone home with someone as the night continued but after meeting Ryan, I didn’t really want to see anybody else. I’d certainly grown up and changed since my younger days on the scene, when going home alone wouldn’t have been an option. I said my goodbyes to the navy boys I’d shared the day with, thanked them all profusely, and made my way back to my hotel.

Lying alone in my hotel bed thirty minutes later, I considered the day’s events. From feeling nervous, anxious and considering turning around on the train in the morning, to arriving and
discovering
so many fellow military personnel in the hotel lobby, the huge amount of pride I had felt while marching through the
capital’s
streets, lined with thousands upon thousands of well-wishers, and the poignant moment of remembrance at the Cenotaph.

I’ll never forget that Saturday in July 2008. It was a historic day for the military but, more than that, a historic day for me. I’d become empowered by what we’d achieved and desperately wanted the feeling to continue. But I was off to Canada.

W
hen I look back over my decade-long journey in the army, I will always consider my four months in Canada in 2008 as the happiest. There wasn’t a single second of the day that I wasn’t walking around in high spirits, feeling proud of the job I was chosen to do. We worked with a variety of different regiments and, on occasion, soldiers from the Canadian military. There was plenty of chance to travel and also the opportunity to try something completely new and courageous. By the end of my time out there I was frantically trying to find a job within the army that would allow me to stay even longer. I totally fell in love with Canada and it’s somewhere I really intend to spend much more time.

Two weeks after the adventure of London Pride, I was en route to Calgary, which I’d been told was a city in a place called Alberta. The plane journey seemed to take a lifetime and, it being an old RAF passenger carrier with no in-flight entertainment, I read a book cover to cover on the way over there.

We knew what job we were heading out to Alberta to do. A handful of the guys had been to Canada a few years before and carried out a similar role. From what I understood, Canada was generally a place to let your hair down. They spoke of tales involving very late nights and very drunken soldiers getting
up to all sorts of mischief. I was alarmed, however, by some of their recollections of a couple of soldiers dying from
excessive
boozing and troublesome carryings on. Canada certainly promised to deliver on the age-old army saying ‘work hard, play hard’.

The facility we were being based at was known as BATUS, standing for British Army Training Unit Suffield. Suffield was a tiny little place in the middle of the vast Canadian prairie, about three hours away from Calgary in the west. To the east, our nearest town was a place called Medicine Hat, which again was a long drive in an almost straight line. Med Hat, as it would be known, was the place we’d escape to in the evenings, without much regard for its distance. It was nowhere near as far away as Calgary, but it still took almost an hour of driving to get to. We were in the middle of nowhere.

The beautiful thing about BATUS was its sheer size. With the space to replicate the real thing, the army could conduct full warlike scenarios. It completely outweighed anything the Ministry of Defence had in the UK for troops to train at.

We were considered ‘staff’ while at BATUS, acting as the enemy for the troops who would be coming to Canada to train, and were put in an accommodation building that closely
resembled
a large block of flats, as opposed to the usual barrack-style set-up I was used to. I was to share my room with a lad called Joe Pank, who was one of the new boys in A SQN. Pank was from north London and his father was a guitarist in a famous band in the 1980s. He had plenty of tales to tell and was quite a normal bloke, until it turned out he had a nasty habit of urinating in the middle of our room when intoxicated, which was quite often.

The bar on camp was called the Longhorn and was solely for the use of permanent staff, allowing us a place to let our hair down away from the soldiers who we’d be up against out on the prairie.
It was astonishingly cheap and a place that was regularly smashed up when conflicting soldiers sought to resolve their issues.

Soon after arriving in BATUS, we headed out on exercise for a three-day opportunity to refresh our skills before going head to head against our ‘enemy’. For the first four weeks of our Canadian adventure we’d be working with the Welsh Guards, a regiment we had close ties with, both being members of the Household Division, but it would play out quite differently. From the off we could see the tension between them and us. It was impossible not to notice the difference between the Welsh Guards and the Household Cavalry in terms of general behaviour and attitudes. I was very comfortable within my squadron as we had an
environment
of mutual respect. In the Welsh Guards, it was obvious that there was a divide between soldiers of rank and the rest. We didn’t interact with them much.

Driving the squadron leader went well over the initial three days of preparation. He was happy with me and I was certainly very happy with him. As a leader he was calm under pressure, rarely getting overexcited about things, and he was somebody who took the time to talk to people. Over those three days of ‘dry training’, I felt a rapport had developed between us.

Immediately following our three days of training on the prairie, us ‘enemy’ soldiers were given a week off to undertake adventurous training. Adventurous training in the army had a bit of a poor reputation as something billed as amazing but in reality often a bit of a let-down and waste of time. In Canada, however, we had the natural resources to really kick the arse out of doing something fun, exciting and somewhat challenging.

I outright refused to participate in anything that involved jumping out of a plane, which thankfully was noted. On the other hand, some of the boys did decide that parachuting was their thing and headed off to Calgary for a week’s worth of skydiving.

Some of the lads chose to do something called glacier
walking
in the Rocky Mountains, which I was tempted to join in with, but the extreme coldness turned me off. Pank and I and, much to my annoyance, a number of Welsh Guards opted to do something a little more pleasant: Western-style horse riding in the Rocky Mountains. It was essentially a four-day holiday on horseback, climbing the idyllic scenery of the Canadian Rockies. It was brilliant. I remember getting halfway up a mountain, surrounded by what looked like thousands of other mountains, and being completely swept away by the view. The view, the fresh air, the beautiful brown horse underneath me; it all moved me. By the end of the experience I felt like I’d seen one of the earth’s most elegant sights and the whole thing had cost me nothing save a sore bottom.

We headed back to BATUS and prepared for our first go at the job we’d been sent out to do. We had two days of packing, vehicle preparation and a chance to let off some final steam in the Longhorn bar before causing the visiting troops havoc.

Our first bite at the cherry involved us heading out for
fourteen
continuous days of mock war fighting. It wasn’t
insurgency-style
warfare: we’d returned to the old ‘fighting the Russians’ or ‘conventional’ warfare, which in the past had sometimes been a little boring. This, however, was not. There was a clear line of good guys – our enemy – and bad guys – us and the Welsh Guards. The organisers of the battles would give us a time and a location, radio through when to set off, and at some point we’d encounter the advancing British forces and give them a run for their money. It was bloody good training and turned out to be far more exciting than the relatively mundane tasks we’d faced twelve months earlier in a real war situation. I suppose we had the added bonus of knowing the ammunition we faced was never going to actually hurt anybody. We’d fire lasers at the enemy and,
if we hit, the sensors on their vehicle would acknowledge the fact and disable their controls, making them redundant from the war game. We had the same equipment fitted to our tanks and if they scored a direct hit on us we’d be reduced to cyber rubble and face a lengthy spell immobilised on the spot. It was clever kit, but very complex and would often break down. If a cable was unplugged or a sensor knocked out of place, the alarm would sound and we’d face the same fate as if we’d suffered a direct hit. We’d work this to our advantage, too.

Our first fortnight on the prairie participating in war games had been a success, with lots of lessons learned about how we could outmanoeuvre large bodies of men and tanks, but also about how we could pull together and push forward, even under extreme fatigue. The staff running the exercises really demanded a lot from us. We’d fight a battle for ten hours, re-form to rest and conduct administration, and then move on to a new location, often dozens of miles away, with a fresh set of orders. At the end of every battle we knew not to switch off because we would have a forty-mile move to conduct. It didn’t take long for most of us to realise that being ‘killed’ in a battle early on offered the best chance of prolonged rest. Once you’d been destroyed and taken out of a battle scenario, you were left alone until the battle was over. Some vehicle commanders were pulling off
suicide-style
missions with the specific intention of being destroyed by the enemy.

On the final day of the first exercise, word began to spread that we were getting ten days off to do whatever we pleased. Excitement shot through the ranks as hasty plans were drawn up. We’d been in Canada for over a month and, if our pay had been sorted accordingly, we’d all have a hell of a lot of extra cash in our wages conveniently heading our way on the first day of leave.

It seemed I’d done a good job driving the leader throughout
our first exercise and I was already looking forward to
returning
to the job after leave and driving for him again, but that wasn’t to be. Driving back into Suffield, the leader spoke with me about my aspirations. He told me I ought to be thinking about the future and that I really needed to be heading towards a gunner’s seat. I wanted to tell him that I was more than ready and, more to the point, actually desperate to move out of the driving seat and into the turret, but I didn’t need to.

‘So I’ve decided that I will find a new driver for the remaining three months of BATUS. I’m moving you into a gunner’s seat.’ It felt like all my Christmases had come at once. I was delighted!

‘Am I to be your gunner, sir?’

‘Ha! No chance. I need an experienced gunner. You’re going to gun for the new 2IC [second-in-command]. You two will work nicely together.’

‘Who’s the new 2IC then, sir?’

It wasn’t known at that point that we were getting a new second-in-command. The squadron leader had been doing a fine job on his own. Of all the names the leader was to tell me, I least expected the one that he muttered down his microphone and into my headset as we drove our tank home in the darkness.

‘Somebody you know actually… Lieutenant Wales.’

It took me a few seconds to consider exactly who Lieutenant Wales was. Surely it wasn’t…? ‘Fucking hell. Which one?’

‘Harry. He’s arriving next week. Don’t tell the guys… most of them have never met him.’

I finished my drive back into Suffield with the leader, thinking about my future role as Prince Harry’s gunner. I couldn’t believe events had taken such an incredible, and quite unbelievable, turn for the better. I’d desperately wanted to be a gunner from the off and now the job was heading my way – but I’d be the gunner to the third in line to the throne. I couldn’t believe it.

I hated that the leader had asked me not to tell the boys. I was one of the boys and keeping something as major as that quiet was a difficult task, but I knew I had to. The leader would know for sure it had come from me if the boys found out.

I parked my vehicle and closed it down accordingly. We were done. Ten days off would follow, with the whole squadron going on their various travels. The leader was off to visit a friend in New York. Three of the lads and I were off to Cancun. Canada was about to pay off!

Happily, when booking our holiday we’d seen a poster on a billboard advertising something that caught all our attentions. Oasis! One of my favourite bands of all time was throwing a concert in Calgary. In a stroke of good fortune, the concert was the night before our flight to Mexico from Calgary. We boarded a Greyhound bus, carrying our luggage and passports, and made our way to the big city in the hope of seeing the Gallagher
brothers
before jetting off to Mexico.

Four hours later, we rocked up at the ice hockey stadium where the concert was taking place. Purchasing tickets, we made our way into the venue and patiently awaited the arrival of the Gallaghers. When they walked onto the stage the place erupted and as soon as they finished their opening song they told the crowd that there were a lot of British soldiers among them,
dedicating
the gig to us all. It was amazing. The perfect start to our Mexican adventure, albeit still firmly in Canada.

After the concert, and more than a little drunk, we caught a cab to the airport and slept off our hangovers on a group of seats in the departure hall before waking up and checking in for our four-hour flight to Cancun. We were off!

We spent the week unwinding and letting off steam. Away from camp we could get up to all sorts, and we generally did. One of the boys lost his passport, however, which caused him
a world of misery as he wasn’t allowed to board the plane back to Canada; we had to leave him there. The squadron leader was less than impressed about this and blamed the whole debacle on the rest of us. The guy ended up flying back to the UK and remaining there.

I couldn’t stop thinking about my role as Prince Harry’s gunner throughout my week on holiday. I was paranoid throughout that the plans would, for whatever reason, change and I’d miss out on an opportunity of a lifetime. Somehow I’d managed not to let out the news to the other boys but it was rarely out of my mind. I did tell my mum on the phone, though; she considered it to be the biggest news the family had ever received. Everyone in the family was informed of my role in the space of about two hours. Nan, as the royal family’s number one fan, was more than proud. I would tell her hundreds of stories about my time with Harry in the years that followed and they helped our relationship become closer than ever.

The squadron leader arranged for an A SQN night out in Med Hat at a bowling alley, during which Harry would be introduced to the boys. I was one of the few who’d worked with him in the past and knew a little of what he was like as a person, but for the likes of Pank, my roommate, and a number of other new faces within the squadron, it would be their first look at just who and what Harry was. There was no prior announcement, Harry just showed up with his protection officer mid-evening and said hello to the boys.

Pank’s face dropped as he spotted him over my shoulder.