Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier (9 page)

Knightsbridge was full of little scandals like this. Soldiers paying soldiers to cover duties was nothing compared to some of the incredible deals that went on. On one occasion, someone lost their state helmet, which would have cost about
£
2,000 to sign for on loss. One of the other lads had found it, although we all knew he’d actually stolen it in the first place, and was forcing the poor guy to buy it back off him at a reduced rate of
£
300. This was quite common.

There were also corporals telling younger soldiers that their boots weren’t shiny enough and that they would be in a lot of trouble if they were to go on parade with them, but then offer to fix the problem for
£
100. Often the younger soldiers would listen to these corporals and pay up. The worrying thing is that the hierarchy in 2005 certainly knew about it. All that mattered to them was making sure the guard left the barracks every
morning
at 10.30 in good order. They didn’t care how the boys got there. Imagine if the Queen looked out of her window and didn’t see her guard passing by on time. The fallout would be awful. The colonel didn’t need phone calls from the palace like that.

In 2005, the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment was in the newspapers all the time for something or other. I remember settling into the regiment early on and reading about some of the older boys in my troop on the front page of a very popular national newspaper. It worried Mum more than it did me, and I’d have her on the phone often, double-checking that I hadn’t been involved with the drugs and the sex orgies that were being reported in the media. Of course I hadn’t, but I certainly saw first-hand the crazy things she was reading.

The biggest story of all was the group of Life Guards who were pictured on the front page of the same newspaper for having an orgy in the barracks with a hooker who had filmed the whole thing on her phone. The paper had somehow come by this
footage and had filled their pages with its images. Some of the lads were quite young but others were much older and perhaps should have known better. One was even a married senior
corporal
of horse. The colonel blew his top big time over what he was reading and gave us all a huge telling-off on the main square, but it didn’t stop the behaviour.

A week later there was another front-pager, this time about some of us Blues and Royals buying cocaine off an undercover reporter one night in a nearby bar, then going on parade with the Queen the following morning. Again, the colonel,
probably
under a lot of pressure from his superiors, gave us a huge telling-off. The offending soldiers were dealt with severely and discharged from the army after a spell in military prison. The headline was replaced the following day with another, about a horse in the Life Guards being forced to drink alcohol by some of the soldiers. Enough was enough. There followed a period of tough treatment by the chain of command within the regiment. We found ourselves working late, starting early, and on top of our horses in full kit more often. Unsurprisingly, around this time our commanding officer changed, and things eventually died down as many new soldiers filtered through and into the troops. It certainly was a tough time to start out as a new guy.

Soldiers going on parade hungover, or even still drunk, was a normal occurrence back in 2005. I was often sobering up while bouncing around in my saddle, sometimes not too far away from the Queen, but we always managed to hold a high level of professionalism. Back then, and even today, most of the mistakes on a parade rehearsal, or even an actual parade, were made by the junior officers who led us.

The officers at Hyde Park barracks lived the life of Riley. They didn’t have to do anywhere near as much work as the soldiers under their command. Firstly, every officer would have his own
trooper as an orderly. It would be this young trooper’s
responsibility
to make sure every single piece of equipment his officer needed in his daily business was ready. He would also be
responsible
for getting the officer dressed, because an officer wasn’t expected to dress himself. All of these orderlies were then
collectively
responsible for ensuring that all the officers were wined and dined to a high standard in the officers’ mess. Some troopers would also take care of the officers’ horses, ensuring they were fully groomed and tacked up so the officers could just climb on and ride away. The amount of running around the young soldiers would be made to do just so their officers were looked after accordingly was quite disgusting. There were two very different classes of people operating in that officers’ mess; it was very much a modern
Downton Abbey
.

My late nights continued and I soon had my first credit card, which was solely used in places like G-A-Y. Soon after, I took out a loan to help me fund my adventures. I held no other hobby or interest apart from hitting the gay scene and sleeping with as many men as possible. Of course, now I know that I was
suffering
from addiction and that my life depended on my endless drinking and nights of sex; still, the regiment had its soldier and, whatever state I was in, I was always on time. Hidden behind all that uniform and tradition, as long as I could reasonably point my horse in the right direction and carry my sword correctly, everything was fine. Nobody ever gave me any hassle for being hungover in work.

As time went by I started to become aware that a few soldiers were taking an interest in me for other reasons. On the first such occasion, a Life Guard who was the same age as me started
smiling
at me and winking suggestively while in the on-camp bar. After a few beers I spoke with him and he told me quickly that he wanted me to invite him back to my room. He wanted to
explore his sexuality and I guess I was his chosen playmate. I decided not to go into Soho that night and instead stayed put with my new friend. I took the guy back to my room and allowed him to satisfy fully his curiosity. I did this on and off with him for about twelve months; afterwards he would always insist he was straight. Until the next time, of course.

These little episodes with ‘straight’ soldiers didn’t always go smoothly. One night, while enjoying a sports night in the bar, I was again ‘hit on’ by a soldier, who, by the end of the night, was begging me to join him back in his room. I was a little reluctant, because I’d never really liked the lad. He was a little older and a bit of a troublemaker, but under the influence I accepted his offer and joined him.

Once back in his room, a few floors above my own, things started to progress. His room was quite standard for a soldier in Knightsbridge: Abi Titmuss posters, his favourite football team standing behind their silverware. The room smelt every bit like a young man’s space, which, I noticed, he didn’t share with anybody else. I could tell he was nervous, but so was I every time this happened with a so-called straight soldier. He took his top off and started to undress me. In an instant, he had a change of heart and, instead of pulling my boxer shorts down as I had expected him to, he reached for an iron pole and whacked me across the back. I fell to the floor and he started kicking me, mostly in the face. In the few moments I lay huddled on the floor, trying to protect my face, the thought of how this scene would look in a movie played out in my mind. There was
absolutely
nothing I could do to stop his relentless attack on me and I think I just gave up all hope of trying to find the strength to fight back. Somehow I managed to crawl to the door and out into the corridor, but his kicking and beating with the bar continued. I thought someone would hear the commotion and come rushing
to my aid as soon as I got myself into the corridor. The lad was screaming words like ‘queer’ at me but nobody seemed to hear or, if they did, they decided to leave me to it. By the time somebody finally came to help, the fight, even though it was never in me from the start, had completely left me, as had all energy to stop the ordeal. I think if he’d have continued on for just a few minutes more, he’d have faced a murder charge. I looked horrific. The blood was oozing out of me. The guard room was called and the guy was detained on the spot; meanwhile an ambulance was called for me. I have no memory between being rescued and waking up in Chelsea and Westminster hospital. I was in a very bad way.

Nurses treated the cuts and bruises while doctors examined me and sent me for many scans. Faulkner and another guy, Seamus, had heard the news and rushed to see me at the hospital. I was really embarrassed to see them both, but they were worried about me and wanted to know everything that had happened. They told me that the lad had been arrested.

I was released from hospital a day later, quite black and blue from the episode, and was taken into the regimental corporal major’s office. Incredibly, he wanted to double-check I definitely wanted to take the incident further. I couldn’t help feeling at that moment that the chain of command wanted the whole thing swept under the carpet. I stood my ground and told him I wanted to make a full complaint. There was absolutely no
compassion
in his voice and he felt thoroughly inconvenienced by the whole event.

The thing that hurt me most was knowing that, yet again, the whole regiment was talking about me. Although I was the victim in the incident, I felt as though I’d brought it upon myself by agreeing to go along with his advances and by joining him in his room. I had to recollect the entire story again and again for people in the regiment: the colonel, the squadron leader, the
SCM, the RCM, my troop leader. Each would want to know the full circumstances leading up to the event. When the
military
police turned up, again I found myself answering some very personal questions. This was very new ground for them, and I felt almost as guilty as my attacker was. Incredibly, if this had happened six years prior, it would have been me facing discharge from the army, regardless of the situation. It was clear the police were dealing with an incident that they had had little to no
experience
in tackling. These were, after all, the same officers who had arrested suspected gay soldiers in the past.

I was given a week off to rest and decided to stay with my auntie and uncle in East Grinstead, who looked after me
excellently
. I was very lucky to have close family nearby.

The soldier, who admitted everything, was later
court-martialled
and fined
£
1,200 for his actions that night. He remained in the army and I had to put up with him walking around the barracks for the rest of my time there. I was a little more cautious about who I went home with from the bar from then on. Three months after the event, while out clubbing in a gay venue in central London, I saw the guy who’d attacked me kissing another man in the corner of a dance floor. I realised just how messed up some people were over their sexuality. I just hope the poor guy didn’t meet the same fate at the end of the night that had befallen me.

The summer of 2005 in London started off as a hot one and I spent many an afternoon relaxing in Hyde Park enjoying the rays and the many sights that came with the hot weather, mostly topless men. The summer was shaping up to be quite fantastic when, all of a sudden, things in the capital took a sudden turn for the worse.

On 6 July, many other soldiers of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment and I crammed into the bar over lunch to watch the live announcement of the 2012 Olympic Games host city. Our main contender was Paris and we were laughing and enjoying many a classic historic put-down of France – our regiment having played a pivotal role in the Battle of Waterloo. Suddenly the Sky News cameras panned live to the key moment.

When the envelope was opened and the word ‘London’ was exclaimed, a great cheer roared throughout the bar, and indeed across the entire city. We’d given the French one final stuffing and snatched the Olympics from Paris’s grasp in the dying seconds. We were all delighted. I remember wondering where I’d be in 2012. It seemed like years and years away at the time.

Londoners raised a glass in celebration that night, and we all took it as a hell of an excuse to head out and have a few glasses, too.

Back at the barracks we were in the middle of a busy period, known fondly in the regiment as ‘silly season’, and, in particular, we were preparing for the forthcoming sixtieth anniversary of VE and VJ Day, which was fast approaching on the Sunday.

The day after the Olympic announcement, on the Thursday, I was in work bright and early, as always. After riding, I was directed by one of the troop corporals to start washing off all the horses with the other lads. We usually washed them off on the rear balcony overlooking the busy streets of Knightsbridge if the weather allowed us to and that morning, Thursday 7 July, was a very bright and sunny morning.

At 8.50 a.m., three bombs were detonated on London Underground trains in quick succession. The first at King’s Cross, the second at Edgware Road and the third at Russell Square. At about that time I hadn’t long finished breakfast and, blissfully unaware of the events unfolding, was just starting my first horse, a grey called Vixen.