Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier (27 page)

Summer leave arrived in August 2009 and with it came the news that I was to be promoted. At last, after six years of working hard as a trooper, I was rewarded with a promotion, but with it came a career move. I was to head back to central London and ceremonial duties in the capital. My time at the armoured regiment was over.

I embarked on my three weeks’ leave with an elevated level of satisfaction due to my new appointment. Ryan and I made plans that involved time apart and time together. He’d completed his last year of studying and was looking for somewhere to live. I was heading to North Wales to see my folks alone for a few days, before Ryan caught a train up to meet me.

By the time he arrived in Wrexham, he’d arranged to move in
temporarily with his brother and sister-in-law in Oxfordshire. I knew he was unhappy with how life was going for him at the time and that he wanted to feel settled in his own home.

When he got to Wrexham, we both tried to put the issue out of our minds and attempted to enjoy a week in the countryside, but almost immediately cracks started to show in our relationship.

I took him to the coast, north-west of Wrexham, to the towns of Rhyl and Colwyn Bay for a day out. I wanted to show him where I’d grown up and show him the places my mum used to take me as a child, but Ryan wasn’t at all interested in any of it and really upset me when he commented on how ‘chavvy’ he thought the place was. It wasn’t very pleasant, but I knew he was having a tough time. The economy was in a bad state in the autumn of 2009 and with Ryan fresh out of university and looking for a job he was facing several unwanted changes in his life.

By the end of the week, however, I’d had enough of Ryan and our constant bickering. I was really upset that within eight months of meeting him we were in a very unhappy state. It wasn’t at all his fault and I wish I’d had the ability to wave a magic wand and make all the problems disappear, but I simply didn’t. I waved him goodbye from the train station in Wrexham knowing the end of our relationship was imminent.

There was another reason for my change in feelings towards Ryan. My ex-boyfriend Thom was turning twenty-one in the next few days and there was a party organised for him that many people were talking about going along to. To my surprise, the party was happening in Wrexham. It was the last place I’d have thought Thom would have wanted to celebrate his twenty-first birthday. I hadn’t seen him since the awful events of his nineteenth birthday, two years before in Windsor. I didn’t at all think about turning up and expressing my birthday wishes, but it certainly played on my mind that we were both in the same small town in Wales.

On the Saturday, the day of Thom’s birthday, I headed into the town centre in the evening with an old schoolmate from Gwersyllt. We had a great night out and partied hard to the very early hours. At the end of the night, instead of heading home, I said my goodbyes and headed off into the darkness.

An hour before and after a few drinks, I had texted Thom to wish him a happy birthday, thinking he’d either ignore it or maybe even reply with something quite nasty. Happily, I received a pleasant message which asked where in the world I was.

‘I’m actually in Wrexham!’ I replied, pretending I didn’t know he was only a handful of miles away from me. After a few text messages, I agreed to go and meet the guy who had broken my heart and left me during one of the most stressful periods of my life.

I met Thom at his auntie’s house an hour later and we sat outside in the darkness talking over the minutiae of our
relationship
, the good times and the bad. He admitted the mistakes he’d made and, somehow, during the hours we chatted away until the sun began to rise, I forgave him. I accepted his reasons, although not overly agreeing with them, and understood why exactly he’d deserted me.

All we did was talk, but as soon as I left him, as soon as I was away from him again, deep down I wanted to see him. I wanted to carry on talking about our past. I wanted to be with him. He’d grown up considerably, was doing pretty well for himself and, ultimately, had changed. He told me he’d been single for some time and really longed for something back in his life. Something he’d thrown away two years ago.

I knew my time with Ryan was over.

He was beautiful. He was exceptionally kind. I loved how intelligent he was and the way we’d talk away for hours. But, unfortunately, Ryan just wasn’t Thom.

M
y return to work after summer leave and the start of my new posting back in central London coincided with two major events. Firstly, the ending of my relationship with Ryan, which I knew I had to do, particularly after Thom and I had begun to put right the wrongs of our past; and secondly, a visit from American officials, representing the Pentagon, who were in the process of designing the bill that would eventually bring an end to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, the highly homophobic law banning gay people from the military.

Thom and I had been texting each other daily since our
all-night
meeting after his twenty-first birthday celebrations. Every time my phone buzzed with another message, my heart skipped a beat and I felt excited. I knew it was wrong and that the two of us were slowly rekindling our love while I was still officially involved with Ryan, but I couldn’t resist how I felt. The daily texts led to phone calls within the space of a week, during which we’d talk like we used to when we first got together three years before. Soon, and I’d known it would happen, Thom asked me out for a drink and a chance to chat further over some food.

While all of this was going on, I all but shut Ryan out from my life. I can’t imagine the frustration he must have felt as I
spinelessly
ignored his calls and avoided all conversation with him.
Then one evening, while I was getting ready to meet Thom for a drink on the river, I read a text from him telling me he knew I was getting back with Thom. That caught my attention, so I called him.

On the other end of the phone was a very hurt person. Ryan and I had started off strongly and with so much potential. I’m not sure I ever loved him completely, and I think if he’s honest he might say the same, but we were extremely close. When our relationship ended, we were on the brink of true and meaningful love and would, I’m sure, be still together today had the events of those few weeks not occurred.

The bounding factor with Thom and me was that we knew each other so well. I knew all his secrets, he knew all of mine. We were each other’s first loves and we’d had a blast before things went sour. Incredibly, even when discussing Thom with Ryan, as new partners do in the early stages of a relationship, I caused friction by exclaiming that Thom was my one true love. I even remember saying to Ryan one night after some drinks that I still thought Thom was the most beautiful person in the world. It’s amazing Ryan gave me the time of day.

I told Ryan on the phone – and again, I’m not proud – that he was wrong to assume Thom and I had rekindled our love. I blamed my apparent sudden change of heart on the changes I was experiencing, or was about to experience, in work. Ryan didn’t buy it and we ended our conversation with him crying down the phone. It’s awful to think that I was able to switch off from the stresses I was causing my then boyfriend but the reason I was able to do that was that I knew I might have Thom back again.

Thom had done the same to me two years ago. When we spoke later that night about Ryan, Thom gave me great comfort, explaining he knew exactly how I felt. Thom had left me when
I was vulnerable and at a time in life when things were rough. I was doing that to Ryan; he had just finished his studies and was waiting for his university grades, and was basically homeless and living with his relatives because he had nowhere else to go. My mum would not be proud and it wouldn’t be long before she’d give me her honest opinion on how I’d treated Ryan.

Momentum in America had been steadily increasing around what was widely considered (not least by me) the discriminative policy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ (DADT).

I’d been pulled into the debate across the Atlantic due to the publicity showered on me throughout the
Soldier
episode. Bloggers and even TV talk-show hosts were using my example to lobby the US government into ending the rule, bringing gay equality into the US military.

While on summer leave I received a phone call from the same officer who’d spoken to me about doing the magazine earlier in the year. He quickly got to the point and informed me that President Obama was hurrying his government into ending DADT and that a group of officials were flying over to learn from the British Army how to lift the rules on gay servicemen and women. These people had the incredible responsibility of drafting the bill that would eventually be passed through Congress and finally signed off by the President himself, and they wanted to talk with me.

I was given a date and told not to worry about getting time off work. The meeting was of the highest priority and,
actually
, I didn’t have much of a choice. The meeting was taking place at Uphaven, the then headquarters of the British Army’s Land Force.

Driving to the meeting, a lot went through my mind. Who
were these people? Would they really care about what I had to say? Should I mention my brief relationship with Sammy in Iraq? I felt that the Americans would get as close to passing the bill as possible, then stop it going through in the last moments, leaving the whole process pointless.

Turning into the camp, it dawned on me that thousands of gay servicemen and women in America, who were hiding their true selves away, were counting on me to make the right statements. For a few hours that grey autumn morning, the
responsibility
of gaining gay equality in the US military lay fully on my shoulders; me, a 22-year-old lance corporal from a small town in North Wales.

The annoying thing about the affair was, as usual, the military were adamant I remained discreet about the entire business. I wasn’t allowed to tell people who I was meeting or what the meeting was about.

What struck me about the officials who’d flown over to Britain to conduct their initial research was just how extremely polite they were. In the ice-breaking coffee session between me and them, I was surprised by just how very pleasant they came across as. I realised later that they needed to be because they were about to sit me down and ask some pretty blunt, and hugely private, questions about my life as a gay soldier.

The chap who led the questioning was called Gary and he sat in front of me, as if I were at a job interview, with a number of sheets with his many questions clearly set out. It started off lightly, asking easy things like the age I was when I started to tell people in the military I was gay. Naturally the topic moved on to the initial reaction from colleagues and, remembering the
significance
of the meeting and the potentially life-changing outcome for the gay American service population, I decided to skip the tales of being hit on in the army bar and beaten severely. My
natural instinct told me that those stories would have a negative effect on the outcome of their visit. Soon the questions turned to the more sensitive issue of service abroad and mostly what being in a war zone while openly gay was like.

‘How was it?’ Gary sat back as I began to answer, sensing that I might have a lot to say.

‘Well, to put it simply, I performed better because I was able to be myself.’

The three Americans looked at each other with wide eyes. Gary stirred in his seat, turning to make eye contact with the lady sat behind his right shoulder.

‘Do you mean being gay made you a better soldier?’

‘No, that’s not what I mean at all. I mean, being able to be gay and being able to say without any fear that I was gay, helped me serve better. It made me more operationally effective. If I’d had the constant worry that I could be outed at any point or that some suspicious police officer could read through my letters to find I was secretly hiding away a boyfriend, other people’s lives would have been in danger. I’d have spent more time worrying about my fate and being found out than worrying about being shot at or blown up. That could have cost lives.’

I thought my opinion was a generally accepted fact, but the American officials looked at each other in revelation. The woman beamed. Had my remarks really not occurred to them before? Of course they hadn’t. I was speaking to three
heterosexual
Americans who’d never known personally what it meant to be different from the crowd or what it meant to hide away something that was of such ultimate importance. The words I’d just muttered to them were of massive significance and the only person in the world I could think about was Sammy. Where was Sammy now?

The meeting continued, but nothing else I said that day was as
significant as my remarks about being a better soldier and saving lives. I was asked a slightly awkward question about showering with other soldiers and sleeping under the same roof, which I was able to answer honestly, telling them that a bunch of straight, highly strung soldiers would misbehave regardless of a gay person being present in a shower room. Boys would always be boys. It was a bit of light relief after the charged-up conversation beforehand.

At the end of our meeting, which had lasted several hours and even included lunch, at which I still faced the American inquisition, I was given a small medallion by way of thanks from Gary and the rest of his team. They were deeply grateful that I’d answered their questions as honestly as I had, and told me that the words I’d spoken that day would be repeated at the White House in the weeks and months that would follow. I’m still
waiting
for my call from the President today, though.

Out of all my campaigning moments to date, nearly all of which have been in the UK, I’m not sure anything I’ve done, not ever, will be as crucial and defining as that day at Uphaven. The Americans left the meeting, boarded a plane and flew back to the US to begin writing their recommendations. It’s a highly emotive issue for me. When the President finally delivered on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ in late 2011, I opened a bottle of champagne and toasted the bill. I also poured a second glass for my dear friend Sammy, imagining he’d be doing the same somewhere, wherever he was serving. I just hope to God he made it to the end and that he didn’t become one of the thousands of military personnel to have his life unfairly ruined at the hands of legislative homophobia.

Back in London, life was rather more complicated. Everything would have been much easier, and quicker in fact, if I’d just met
with Ryan, face to face, and told him I was leaving him. Due to my cowardice and inability to confront the situation, I was stringing Ryan along in the hope he’d make it easier and finish with me first. As a result of my diabolical behaviour, Ryan thinks that the only reason I left him was because of Thom. It’s a huge factor in the running of events, but it wasn’t the only one. But it’s also fair to say that if Thom hadn’t turned up when he did, all the other problems between Ryan and me could possibly have been worked through. We’ll never know.

I met with Thom once again for drinks at a nice pub on the river Thames. I had absolutely no intention of misbehaving and felt I owed it to Ryan to at least not go down the avenue of sleeping with somebody else while still in a relationship, but that night I took the decision to accompany Thom back to his house in Chiswick. When I woke up the following morning, I knew I had to end it with Ryan. How could I continue to mess the poor lad around?

The conversation was dreadful. Ryan didn’t cry and I realised that he’d lost all hope for our relationship over the course of the previous two weeks when I’d practically ignored him. He’d also seen a few comments by Thom on social media, with Thom inappropriately saying that he was going on a date with me and that we might be getting back together. The whole thing was a nightmare and completely unfair on Ryan. Ryan might not have cried, but when I came off the phone, I did. I cried a lot.

How could I have put someone through the same
heart-stopping
pain that I’d been put through by Thom? How could I turn my back on the guy who’d been so nice to me and been genuinely interested in me as a person? I felt low, but I was lucky to have one very significant source of support. I had Thom.

Thom had truly changed. He’d needed to do what I and a lot of other young gay people do when they first move to the big city.
He needed to get everything out of his system and see what was around. Like me, he’d found that, actually, there wasn’t anything overly amazing about hitting the scene hard and making lots of new friends. As a result of our two-year break, Thom and I are stronger today than ever. I’m certain we’ll be together for the rest of our lives.