Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier (5 page)

A few of us 4 Section boys, Rich, Warren, Rutter and me,
travelled
to Majorca on holiday the following week. It was a typical lads’ holiday in the Med. Very messy, very late nights, lots and lots of drinking, but also our farewell to each other. A swansong, if you like.

The day we landed back at Manchester airport, the four of us knew, deep down, that we were heading to very different places and that, ultimately, it was the end. We said our goodbyes, lied to each other about meeting up at Christmas and went our separate ways. I was gutted and I think the others were too. I would miss
Rich and Rutter a lot but at least I had Warren, who was on his way to London, like me.

Unknown to me, it would be London that would offer me the chance to finally accept the truth about who I was. I’d soon find the courage to tell the world I was gay.

I
t was September 2004. After a month of leave in the Welsh countryside, I was to report for duty with the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment at Hyde Park barracks, London. The barracks, rebuilt in the 1960s, separated Hyde Park from Knightsbridge and was just about the craziest place to have an army base. Our next-door neighbour was the Mandarin Oriental hotel, with Harvey Nicks across the street and Harrods a few dozen yards away.

The night before, Dean, who was also reporting for duty the following day, stayed with me at my Aunt Audrey’s house in East Grinstead. Their house was an hour from London by train and my Uncle Ray accompanied us the following morning as we made our way to SW7. He threw us in a cab at Victoria, which was the largest station I’d ever seen, and gave the driver
£
20, which I now know is about
£
12 too much for the relatively short drive through Belgravia into Knightsbridge.

We stepped out of the cab in the new suits we’d bought
especially
for that very moment and stared up at the large institution we found before us. You’ll know, if you’ve ever walked past the barracks in Knightsbridge, that the smell of horse droppings and stable dust, which at various times of the day changes in
its potency, almost knocks you off your feet. I wasn’t overly impressed at this first notable point.

Sensing we were fresh meat, the cab driver ushered us over to the entrance gate, which you’d miss unless you were looking
carefully
, and gave us a nod of reassurance, as if he were our proud father bidding us farewell. We pushed the gate and were met by a large figure, who we assumed was angry and inconvenienced by our arrival.

‘What are your names, boys?’ he said with a Welsh accent.

‘Wharton and Perryman,’ Dean returned sharply, looking at me for encouragement.

He ticked his list and told us to drop our bags off on the sixth floor and report back to him straight away.

‘Your names will be on a door!’ he shouted at us as the lift door slammed shut.

Both my name and Dean’s were on the same door, as was our Harrogate friend Warren’s, though he was nowhere to be seen. We dumped our bags on our chosen beds and rushed back to the ground floor, which for some reason was actually the second floor in the lift; the place felt like a maze. This confusion, added to the striking smell of horses and stable life, was quite disorientating.

I remember thinking that we’d probably be told to get some uniform on to carry out some task, but on return to the guard room, the large corporal of horse who had greeted us just ten minutes earlier simply informed us to report back for duty at 9 a.m. the following morning – an incredible twenty-three hours away.

‘What do we do in the meantime?’ I squealed.

‘What?’ he asked, looking completely baffled by the question.

‘Are we to stay in our rooms?’ I wouldn’t have minded if his reply was positive; the view from our sixth-floor window was amazing, with a clear sight of Battersea Power Station. Even the
incoming Heathrow passenger jets flying overhead were exciting stuff for me.

‘Guys … it’s Sunday fucking morning! Go out, have a look around. Find some girls… Go and get fucking wasted! Just make sure you’re on time tomorrow morning!’ And with that he slammed the guard room door shut in our faces and left us to it. It was hugely different from Harrogate, where everything we did was controlled and overlooked by a member of the training team.

With our shiny suits still on, we headed out into London. To where exactly? We didn’t know.

Eventually we found ourselves in Leicester Square, which was amazing! Cinemas, theatres, bars, hundreds of people. It was a thrilling experience. To be standing in the places I’d heard of all my life was incredible. Oddly, I wanted Mum to be there. I wanted to share this adventure with my family.

We continued through some dirty-looking streets and found ourselves on Dean Street, which Dean thought was a perfect photo opportunity. I look back at the picture to this day with a little smug grin, knowing now that we’d stumbled upon the heart of gay land in the capital. Dean wouldn’t have been so chuffed if he’d have known that back then. I wondered how the other boys from Harrogate were getting on. What were their first days like? Where was Warren? Had he arrived at the barracks yet?

An hour later we wandered up the Mall, which prompted me to call Mum and tell her with glee that I was about to see Buckingham Palace for the first time.

‘Oh, you’ll see Batman there then!’ Had she actually gone mad? I thought. When we reached the Victoria Memorial opposite the palace, which I’d soon be referring to as the birthday cake, the strange comment Mum had made on the phone became clear.

On 12 September 2004, two members of the fairly extreme ‘Fathers 4 Justice’ climbed over the perimeter wall surrounding
Buckingham Palace, dressed as Batman and Robin, to stage a demonstration on the balcony overlooking the Mall.

Luckily for them, Her Majesty was ‘out of the office’, as she is most Sundays, and, therefore, they were still alive. I’m sure if it had been a Monday and the Queen was in residence they’d have been shot almost immediately by a very eager Irish Guard or police marksman. As it was, she wasn’t, and Batman, now
without
his trusty caped crusading partner, was sat quite happily with the world’s media and thousands of people looking on, include Dean and me.

It was a surreal introduction to Buckingham Palace and indeed London. We stayed in position for about an hour, cheering when a police officer on a large crane (they wouldn’t climb out on to the balcony to arrest him, as that would mean transporting him through the palace to a waiting police car – no demonstrator, however noble his cause, was having a behind-the-scenes look at life in the world’s most traditional institution) arrested him and removed him from the front of the palace.

After wandering around Westminster for hours, we hopped on a tube (again very exciting) and got off in Hammersmith. Our method for selecting areas of interest was simple: if it was a name we recognised and it sounded exciting, we were interested.

Though we were both still seventeen, Dean, who is younger than me by about ten months, bought me my first pint as a
grown-up
soldier, in a Wetherspoon’s near the tube station. I felt like a real adult wearing my suit, which my mum had chosen for me, sipping on a pint of lager in Britain’s capital city. It was completely surreal compared to what I’d been used to at Harrogate.

We returned to the barracks at about 6 p.m., completely forgetting that other soldiers, most of whom we’d never met before, would be on the sixth floor settling in, as Dean and I should have been all afternoon.

The corridor was a flurry of activity and someone, as is always the case in the army, had found it necessary to play extremely loud and inappropriate music. Like us, most had chosen to wear what was visibly a new suit but, alarmingly, a few had turned up to their new job in jeans and polo shirts. One or two, very worryingly, had tracksuit bottoms on. I hadn’t worn tracksuit bottoms since I was thirteen. Warren had turned up by the time we returned and was unpacking his belongings in the room Dean and I had thrown our bags down in hours before. It was nice to see him after our three weeks apart.

That evening I met lots of new people. Most had little impact on me but a few of the new guys became amazing friends to me, and one or two of them over the course of the following months would change my life.

Shane Ibbetson, one of the boys in a tracksuit, was from Leeds and had apparently turned up to Hyde Park barracks earlier in the day in a police car, having got completely lost in London and needing help. I could tell immediately he was quite a character.

Another new face was Jamie McAllen. Jamie, from Romford originally, became one of my closest friends in the four or so years I knew him. We’re still in touch but he called it a day on return from Afghanistan in 2008. The army lost one of its most mature soldiers when Jamie left. He was some years older than the rest of us and it felt unusual to be equal to somebody who was eight years my senior, having only served with recruits my own age in Harrogate.

Also settling into Hyde Park barracks that Sunday evening was a Mancunian called Josh Tate. Josh was only a few days older than me and we hit it off straight away.

The final notable additions to our initial meetings that night in 2004 were a couple of Fijians who had travelled across the planet to join the British Army. Trooper Babakobau, who held
some authority in his native village, and his close friend Trooper Torou were incredible giants of men. Both had found themselves in the Household Cavalry and were looking forward to
learning
to ride. I remember them saying that they’d never touched a horse in their lives. Amusingly, neither had I!

When I think back to that autumn night all those years ago, I remember fondly how it felt meeting the guys I’d inevitably be spending my career with. I realise now that we were blinded. I thought we’d all stay together and ride horses, possibly going to somewhere like Iraq in the many years that would follow. What came to pass was something quite different. Some of us would certainly see war; some of us wouldn’t. Some would find the army not for them and, very sadly, one of us would be killed in action. If someone had told me that on that Sunday evening, an evening of new introductions, I’d have probably reconsidered my future on the spot.

The course was due to last about seven months, finishing the following spring. By then we’d be capable Horse Guards, riding to a high standard on state occasions for Her Majesty and
immaculately
turned out for visiting heads of state and dignitaries.

It all sounded wonderful, but I had no idea what exactly lay ahead of me throughout those cold and dark winter months. It would prove to be the most testing stage of my young life.

The first part of our training was based in Knightsbridge and was all about wearing state uniform correctly and learning how to clean it for parades. It was all quite straightforward stuff, but I was amazed by just how much of the uniform there actually was. Everything needed cleaning and shining, even bits that couldn’t be seen. There was utter confusion on all our faces when the corporal told us that the inside of the state helmet needed to be just as shiny as the outside. Why on earth? The point became known to us as the ‘backs of brasses’, and would basically earn
you brownie points on inspections if you’d bothered yourself to make the hidden brass as shiny as the visible brass.

By the end of the initial four weeks, known as ‘drill ride’, we had to present ourselves in state kit, march around the square in front of the colonel and show that we knew how to carry our swords correctly. I took pretty much everything on board quite quickly, but already there were weak links in our team, causing us all extra work which, as in Harrogate, affected everyone and made those individuals quite unpopular.

There were a lot of opportunities to get out and explore more of London as the four weeks of drill ride progressed. It was very usual to head out of an evening or on a Sunday, when we’d
generally
have downtime. If I caught sight of two men walking hand in hand or two lovers embracing, long-suppressed feelings would re-emerge and I’d struggle not to stare at whoever the two people were. I still wasn’t ready to accept my sexuality, let alone talk to anyone in the army about it.

Soon it was time to move to the Household Cavalry
training
wing in Windsor, home of the famous riding school. It was another very pretty place I’d never seen before, but somewhere I’d be seeing an awful lot more of in the future. This was home for the next five months, taking us through Christmas, my
eighteenth
birthday and into the spring months.

The first horse I ever sat on was called Sebastian, who was huge at seventeen hands, big, black and beautiful. I was one of the lucky boys who had a friendly horse; some weren’t so
fortunate
and were introduced to all things equine by an unfriendly beast who kicked and bit. The experience was scary enough as it was; a horse that was vile and nasty made the entire situation a million times worse.

On the first day we sat on our mounts in the riding school and Tim, our riding instructor (who would become a very close
friend later), told us that if we just ‘squeezed’ our legs, our horses would walk forward. And they did. Within three days, Tim had us trotting, turning left and right as well as backwards, and even taught us how to stop. By the end of week one, I was one of the few clever guys who hadn’t fallen off.

A few weeks later, by which time we were cantering around the indoor school at a lightning pace, I still hadn’t ‘come off’. I was the only soldier in the entire ride who hadn’t bitten the dirt by crashing to the ground. Tim would soon change that.

It turned out the boys had had quite enough of me gloating about my bottom seemingly being glued to the saddle so, en masse, they approached Tim to see if he could change things. Of course, he easily could.

The following day Tim had us doing individual riding exercises which were designed to make us all competent riders on our own. My turn came and I began to kick on into a nice trot. At the corner, I slipped into canter and began to circle, picking up pace doing so. Abruptly, Tim, with a grin half-fixed on his face, threw his schooling whip at Sebastian and me, causing the horse to bolt upright on his hind legs and obviously causing me, at that very junior level, to crash to the ground with an almighty thud.

The wind was taken out of me and I ached all over. Sebastian was having a fit at the other end of the school while the boys were all laughing and cheering with joy at my downfall. Tim casually walked over to me in his sharp riding staff blue attire, picked me up and asked if I was OK. I gave him a nod and smiled.

‘Told you I’d get the fucker,’ he said to the rest of the class, to which they applauded excitedly. I made my walk of shame to Sebastian and jumped back on.