Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier (14 page)

The enclosure we’d been placed in to look after our officers was being shared with another corporate hospitality group. You’d never think it possible that another group of individuals at Royal Ascot could outdo the Household Cavalry in terms of
extravagance
, but they did. The group who were rubbing shoulders
with our lot had much fancier silver on their tables and even a premium brand of champagne, as opposed to our fairly average sparkling wine. The boss had been eyeing them up all afternoon.

It turned out he’d had his eye on the silver champagne buckets that our co-hosts had littered around their tables. He wanted one or two to take home and the task was handed to me to execute.

‘I’ll give you a day off for every bucket you get me.’

A day off! Days off were few and very far between. This offer was quite an incentive. The following day I watched the
movements
of the champagne buckets very closely, noting where they were being kept, when they were being replenished with ice and where the actual source of the ice was. By the end of the second day, I’d drawn up a plan and had managed to bag myself two buckets. I informed my boss of my progress and asked him when I’d be entitled to my two days off. He told me it was completely up to me, so I told him I intended to take the Friday and Monday flanking my weekend with Thom off, just two days away.

I very much enjoyed my extra two days off with Thom that weekend. I could achieve results if the correct incentives were placed in front of me, it appeared.

Thom and I spent the weekend acting like a pair of tourists visiting London for the first time. Incredibly, I’d visited very little of the renowned sights the city has to offer, and that weekend many an hour was passed by in a gallery or museum. It almost felt like a mini-holiday. I loved every minute of it. Thom wanted to visit Soho and the bars he’d only read about on the internet or in the gay press. I desperately wanted to keep him away from the place. All I associated with those streets and bars was depression and pain. I didn’t want to expose him to that. I wanted him the way he was.

But I gave in to his wishes and took him to a few of the bars, and I introduced him to some of my friends. I constantly
noticed other men eyeing up my pretty boyfriend. Some were like vultures circling some unsuspecting prey. He headed away from London after his stay feeling revitalised. Our relationship was going from strength to strength.

Before summer leave was finally on our doorstep, the regiment went off to Norfolk for its annual three-week jolly in the
countryside
, and the majority of the horses went along too. It was a great time of the year for everyone to unwind after the business of the harsh ceremonial season. In all my time at the ceremonial regiment I never heard anyone say a bad word about the
three-week
break in the east of England.

Later starts, earlier knock-offs, plenty of chance to have a bit of fun away from the greyness of London, and with it all, one thing: drinking. Every troop went out nightly, usually en masse, to either Norwich, Ipswich, King’s Lynn or simply the nearby small town of Watton. The local economy must rocket every July when the Household Cavalry circus turns up – as must the local crime figures.

Earlier in the year,
Loaded
magazine had ranked the Blues and Royals squadron as the No. 1 bad lads of Britain, topping a list that included the Russian mafia, the Triads in Chinatown and the elusive gangsters of the East End. Her Majesty’s personal guard was not to be fucked with, it reported.

Within three days of being at summer camp that year, the entire regiment was gated and barred from leaving the perimeter of the small camp of Bodney, our home every July. There had been two car accidents, one involving a drunk driver;
numerous
violent clashes with locals at one of the larger towns in the region; and a thief was doing the rounds of the lads’ belongings, mostly while everyone was out having a good time. It happens every year: the boys go out and cause trouble, the local police boss rocks up at camp demanding to talk to the colonel and, the
next thing you know, everyone is imprisoned on camp. You could almost set your watch by it.

Since finding Dad drunk on the side of the street, I’d been making more of an effort to check up on him. The only way I could really do that was to call him every few days and make small talk over the phone, assessing what state he was in by how conversational he was. Since leaving for summer camp and
arriving
in Norfolk, I’d tried dialling him a handful of times, but was getting nowhere. After the third or fourth time over the course of three days I conceded that he must have lost his phone in some drunken state. I was sure if something had happened to him someone would have phoned my sister or even Mum. The village of Gwersyllt is a very small place.

Today, I wish I’d made more of an effort to reach him.

While working in the mess at summer camp, cleaning my officer’s riding boots, I was distracted by my phone ringing. When I looked I saw it was Liza and, before I’d even answered the call, I knew something was wrong and that it was something to do with Dad.

He’d been found unconscious in his flat by the landlady of the local pub. Worried after not seeing him for days, she’d sent a few of his drinking buddies the short distance to where he lived and they’d broken the door down to find him face down on the living room floor. He wasn’t dead but, from what Liza was telling me, he was as good as.

I didn’t cry. That’s the main thing I remember. To this day I don’t know why, but right then I just knew I was needed back home to sort him out and maybe even arrange a funeral. The lack of tears didn’t mean I wasn’t upset. I was mortified. How had we failed him? Why hadn’t we forced him through treatment?

The regiment sent me back to London in a car straight away. If there’s one thing the army does well, it’s welfare. Within an
hour I was shooting down the motorway, London bound. The regiment bought me a train ticket and promised to call me every day to check I was OK. I felt very supported by my army family.

I spoke with Mum while travelling home on the train and she told me to prepare to turn Dad’s machine off. This was just too much stress for one person to deal with. I wanted to pass it all on to my sister. She was ten years older than me, a mother and far more settled in life. She was far more equipped to deal with crisis; but I couldn’t do it. I was Dad’s only legal next-of-kin. Nineteen years old, I was suddenly faced with making big decisions.

Thom, who wasn’t expecting to see me for some weeks, was very concerned, but I guess he must have seen it coming after the whole situation on the street. I know on reflection I did. To just have someone to talk to about Dad’s situation was brilliant. Of course I had Mum and Liza, but Thom and I were at a stage where we were opening up to each other. His support really helped me through such a difficult time.

I got to the hospital where Liza and some people I didn’t know were waiting. I struggled to think straight in all the commotion. There was no way I’d be able to think clearly and make
life-changing
decisions on my dad’s behalf in the state I was in.

When I saw him for the first time, the tears finally arrived. Liza and I were left alone in privacy with him. The man who was once the life and soul of the party, a pillar in the community, someone everyone knew, all of a sudden looked very old and unwell. I cried with Liza for what seemed like for ever. Liza told me that she thought Dad was going to die, and I think she was more upset for me than she was for herself.

Dad had not been conscious for four days. He was in a coma. At that point he was being kept alive by what seemed like hundreds of machines, all doing some crucial job to keep him with us. Looking at him and thinking about the journey from here on, I
considered whether or not the machines should just be turned off now to save him from a wretched existence and everybody else the pain of seeing him like this for what could be for ever.

Liza and I spent about an hour alone with him, not really
talking
, not really doing anything. Then some people came to talk to us, a doctor and two women from what turned out to be social services. I looked at Liza to see if she was going to sort out
whatever
it was they needed, but she couldn’t. He was my dad and they’d come to talk to me.

The doctor told me the prognosis was bleak. He said that Dad, if he did wake up, would have brain damage of some sort. It was too early to know to what extent exactly but his life was going to be very different from now on.

The woman from social services had some forms for me to fill in, mostly to do with Dad’s background and other personal data. The other lady asked me if I had right of attorney over my dad, to which I responded with a very blank expression. I’d never heard those words before.

The process seemed endless and after about an hour talking through what exactly had happened to Dad, the three left Liza and me in a state of shock.

When my boss rang the following morning for an update on me and Dad, they told me that I had as much time as I needed. They didn’t need me back at summer camp and again they
underlined
their support. How many jobs offer backing like that?

Not a lot happened with Dad for about a week but the doctors stressed that it was excellent news that he hadn’t deteriorated at all while in his coma. His organs were improving constantly and slowly the colour started to reappear in his face.

Thom had offered to come and sit with me in hospital with Dad, but I didn’t want him to. Dad didn’t know who Thom was; he didn’t even know I was gay. To be sat there with my boyfriend
that he’d had no clue about just seemed wrong. We had our first row that week.

I spoke with work and told them what was going on. They suggested I might want to return to work in London for a little while to try and get my life back to some sort of normality. I agreed and, after the following weekend, I left Thom and my family in North Wales and returned to the capital for a week.

Liza called me every few hours to see how I was coping and to tell me about Dad’s progress; quite simply there wasn’t any. The week dragged and I put little, if any, effort into the menial tasks I was given in camp. They’d put me on barrack guard as the regiment was still away in Norfolk. I just sat in the guard room looking at CCTV cameras for twelve hours a day, thinking of nothing other than Dad. I was still battling a huge guilt that I felt about the situation. I was sure I’d failed my own father.

Back in North Wales, out of nowhere, Dad woke up. Liza was there at the time and she called me within minutes. I was
zooming
home on a train within an hour.

In the 1990s, Dad was involved in a pretty horrific incident. While busy on his window-cleaning round in the village, he noticed a husband and his wife arguing in their bedroom while he was cleaning their windows. He interrupted them briefly to collect his fee and carried on up the street with his round. Later that evening, as we were all settled in front of the TV, there was a loud knock at the door. Dad looked out of the window and was alarmed to see two police officers waiting. They needed to talk to Dad.

The woman he’d seen arguing with her husband earlier in the day had ended up dead. Dad had been seen cleaning the windows of her home before she’d come to her end and was therefore needed by the police.

I can’t imagine how he must have felt being taken to the police station that night. We thought Dad might be a murderer.

The whole thing was cleared up in a matter of days. The husband was found and confessed to strangling the woman after rowing with her all morning. It’s the most infamous thing that’s ever happened in my home village to date.

When Dad woke up in his hospital bed after being in a coma for a week-and-a-half, ten years of his life had disappeared. His memory was wiped and he’d woken up in a panic over being accused of murdering this poor woman.

I thought he’d gone bonkers and it wasn’t until Mum reminded me about that traumatic night that everything made sense.

He had no idea who I was. He looked at me with some
familiarity
and kept calling me Graham. Maybe he did know I was gay after all. He still calls me Graham by accident sometimes.

We had a starting point. His brain had taken quite a bashing and it was obvious that we had a long way to go before the more familiar Dad of the past was back with us.

As it would turn out, the Dad of the past would never rejoin us. Dad was diagnosed with something called Korsakoff’s psychosis and has never been himself since. The improvement he has made is quite spectacular but today he lives with a very short-term memory in a care home that does incredible work keeping him busy and constantly improving his health.

The only positive to take out of it all is that I now have a dad in some context, which, if I’m honest, is more than I had before that July in 2006.

It was some time before I went back to work. The regiment had gone on three weeks’ summer leave and no one was needed back in London until the beginning of September, when
preparations
for the winter ceremonial season would begin at once.

During this break from work I had a phone call from the squadron corporal major informing me that my time on ceremonial duties was coming to an end. I was to return to
Knightsbridge after leave, but to pack up and move to the
operational
side of the regiment in Windsor. Almost two years to the day since I’d started my ceremonial training, I was to say my goodbyes to Faulkner and the boys and begin my new role as an armoured soldier.

The words Afghanistan and Iraq were mentioned often on my last day and the realism of leaving the sanctuary and relative safety of ceremonial duties sank in. What was waiting around the corner? Soon, I’d be off to war.

O
n a chilly autumn morning in September 2006, I turned up at my new posting at Combermere barracks in the Berkshire town of Windsor.

Having already served three years in the army, I considered myself a fairly well-rounded and established soldier. I thought, while making the short journey along the M4 motorway, that I’d be placed into a troop with a lot of younger, less experienced soldiers and I’d retain some sort of seniority from Knightsbridge, but I was to find quite the opposite.

I’d been dropped to the bottom of the pile. My two years of ceremonial experience in London was to count for nothing. I was what is affectionately termed the ‘crow’ and right at the bottom of the heap in the eyes of the squadron chain of command. It was a tough pill to swallow, being further down the pipeline than lads who’d barely left basic training, and I was very irritated by my new-found unimportant status. The fact was I had no ‘green’ experience.

Before I was of any use to anybody and at level pegging with my fellow soldiers in Windsor, I needed to learn how to drive the armoured vehicles the regiment used on operations in the likes of Afghanistan and Iraq. Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance
(Tracked), or CVRTs, had many variants, the most notable being a Scimitar, which I needed to know how to drive and maintain. The regiment sent me to Bovington in Dorset, the home of the Royal Armoured Corps and School of Driving. After the
six-week
course in Dorset I was a fully fledged tank driver.

Back at Windsor I fitted into 1 Troop, A Squadron, which was a large body of men totalling about 130. A Squadron had a fleet of CVRTs which we maintained when we weren’t deployed on exercise somewhere in the countryside. I’d spend many days and weeks tinkering away at a vehicle in the middle of the hangar with the boys. There was never a moment when something couldn’t be repaired or replaced; vehicles approaching forty years of age need a lot of time and care.

There were a lot of new faces to get used to and niggling away at the back of my mind throughout my first week was that it was likely we’d all find ourselves fighting a war in the very near future. It was extremely frustrating not knowing exactly where we’d end up being deployed in the year that would follow, but what we all knew was that it would be somewhere east or west of Iran, somewhere very far away and very, very hot.

I was, by then, used to friends coming and going, with the army moving its people around almost constantly. Faulkner and Dean had by then been posted to Windsor too, but were
working
in different squadrons. I rarely saw them. Josh had remained back in Knightsbridge to train to become a riding instructor like Tim, something he took to extremely well. Nobody followed me to A Squadron and I certainly felt quite alone for the opening weeks of my time there.

I made an early ally in these initial stages of regimental life in Windsor, another lad of about the same age who’d not been in the army as long as me but had spent longer at the regiment and was higher up the pecking order. Matt was a London lad by birth
and we clicked well and became good pals. 1 Troop was quite a mix of men. There was Hodges, an entertaining guy originally from Zimbabwe who was never short of a tale; Kirky, a quiet lad from Nottingham who’d also been at Knightsbridge at the same time as me but was a Life Guard; and Smudge, a lance corporal a little older than us. Sometimes I found Smudge a little difficult to get along with but he was very good at his job as a gunner in one of the Scimitars. The final lad I found myself
working
alongside was Scoffy, who was Cumbrian by birth and very experienced in the regiment as a driver and gunner. Scoffy was a completely different person to me and on the first day I dreaded the prospect of getting on the wrong side of him. He was a tall, stocky guy who knew exactly what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to tell us other troopers what he needed from us. He was the senior trooper and pretty much carried the authority of a corporal of horse.

But I shouldn’t have worried about him. Scoffy was a hard worker and I really admired him. If something needed to be done, Scoffy would set the rest of us to task and, unlike many others, he’d stick around and help until the job was done. He’d been a trooper at the regiment for so long he knew more about the vehicles than some corporals of horse. I learned from working closely with him that the reason he hadn’t shot through the ranks as someone of his calibre should was because he was never afraid to tell people, particularly senior ranks, exactly what he thought – and often a little too bluntly. We became good mates and he took me under his wing. Commanding Scoffy’s Scimitar was a chap called Danny, who was just about the coolest guy I’d ever meet in the entire army. He was an expert Household Cavalryman who, in the early stages of his cavalry career, was a riding instructor in Knightsbridge before crossing over to the operational side and becoming an excellent ‘green’ soldier. I would learn a lot from
Danny, and worked closely with both him and Scoffy the
following
year on operations.

Running 1 Troop was an officer and a corporal of horse. Lieutenant Olver (not ‘Oliver’, as he’d constantly remind people) and a chap called Corporal of Horse Gibson, known as Gibbo if nobody important was around.

Mr Olver was quite a character. A graduate of Bristol, he became a junior officer in the Household Cavalry Regiment by the time he was in his early twenties. He was the polar opposite of everyone else in the troop and had a very proper middle-class accent. The lads in the troop gave him a hard time for being ‘posh’. I quite liked him, although there’d be times over the course of the following year when I’d have to take a deep breath before
carrying
out his orders. Mr Olver was to command us all throughout whatever was waiting around the corner.

Supporting Mr Olver, Gibbo was a very experienced soldier who very much acted like a father to us boys. Although Olver officially commanded us, it was really Gibbo who we’d all listen to and respect most.

Settling in to this big family of men, once again I found myself talking a lot about my sexuality. Going through the whole coming-out situation again, something I’d get used to, answering the same fairly mundane questions about who I was, I realised that the subject of sexuality was still a very taboo area of military life. Even Mr Olver was fascinated by me and my background and would spend a lot of time chatting with me, intrigued by my apparently different lifestyle.

I was struck, early on, by how different Windsor was to Knightsbridge. The obvious difference was the lack of horses constantly needing care; once we’d finished working on the
vehicles
, we could just close the hangar doors and knock off. Over the course of those first two or three weeks, I noticed that soldiers
were generally happier at the armoured regiment. There were no stories knocking around about troopers trying to hang
themselves
or throw themselves out of windows. The boys would start work at 8 a.m., as opposed to the 6 a.m. start endured in London, and finish for the weekend on a Friday lunchtime and not be needed again until the Monday morning. The entire lifestyle of a Windsor cavalryman was a million miles away from that of his London cousin.

My general happiness improved considerably, too, because I could head back to North Wales every Friday afternoon and spend time with Thom or my dad. Life would be much better away from London, even with the threat of deployment and conflict. I even got a little excited about the prospect. It’s what we all joined the army for, after all.

A few weeks after I’d arrived and settled into the troop, the squadron received three new officers fresh from their training who were to become troop leaders at the regiment. The week before they were to arrive, we were all called together by the corporal major for an announcement.

About a year before, to the great excitement of everybody in the regiment, Prince Harry had announced he’d chosen to become an officer in the Household Cavalry, choosing my very own cap badge, the Blues and Royals. The news went down with much trepidation both within the regiment and among the many families who count themselves as part of the wider
regimental
family. I remember how jubilant Mum was when she got the news.

As his training progressed, we’d read in the papers that he was almost ready to join the men of the regiment and take command of a troop somewhere, but none of us really ever considered that he’d actually turn up and do a job. A lot of us thought he’d do his time in Sandhurst then retire back to the palace, occasionally
donning a nice uniform for a state occasion. As it turned out, he was actually coming to the regiment, and not just the regiment, but to A Squadron to work with us. There was much excitement, although the boys did a good job of not showing it.

On the following Monday morning at first parade the
squadron
formed up as normal, with the officers lining up behind us while the roll was called; a fairly shy-looking 22-year-old prince attempted to blend into the crowd. It was very surreal. He was to assume command of 2 Troop and was, as far as we were concerned, to be treated like any other troop leader in the
regiment
. I hoped the boys would give him a little bit more respect than that.

I’d had a straightforward couple of years on ceremonial duties, always knowing what was on the horizon and when I was on duty. I’d always had the comfort of knowing that I wouldn’t be out in the middle of Salisbury Plain in the pouring rain, running around with a rifle practising manoeuvres or the like. In Windsor, that would certainly change.

The entire regiment was to carry out generic training at
locations
around the UK for three weeks in the late autumn of 2006. The exercise, called Wessex Warrior, would see A Squadron deployed to the south-eastern corner of Scotland to conduct training before moving to a training area known as Otterburn in Northumbria and then finally moving en masse to Salisbury Plain for the last week of the three-week operation. It would be a very difficult routine to get used to, as I’d only been on exercise for a maximum of five days at the end of basic training.

I was the driver of call sign 1.3, commanded by a chap called Shagger and gunned by Smudge. We were known as the junior call sign, simply because of how junior we were in our relevant roles. I was by far the junior driver of the troop: Smudge hadn’t long qualified as a gunner and Shagger was a junior commander.
He had a hell of a lot of operational experience and had even started out on ceremonial duties like me some years before, but this was a fairly new role to him as a vehicle commander. The pressure was piled quite high on his shoulders and I tried to make myself as useful to him as possible, but I’d find soon that I could, on occasion, be quite a hindrance, too.

Apprehensive about the three weeks that lay in front of me, I boarded the coach to Scotland very early that late October morning, hoping that I wouldn’t be an utter failure at being a real soldier; the Brasso tins and Kiwi polish were long gone now.

As exercises go, Wessex Warrior was bloody good fun. In later exercises, I’d find myself mind-bogglingly bored, but this one was pretty full-on from the start. The learning curve was severe and I found myself really concentrating to keep up with the other lads. One thing was clear, though: my time in Knightsbridge had made me more disciplined. If it started raining, I’d put my
waterproofs
on without a second’s thought; if my vehicle needed more oil, I’d fill it at the earliest chance; and if my rifle needed cleaning or oiling, I’d sort it out. It was the subtle differences between us ‘dual-trained’ Household Cavalrymen and the lads who’d found themselves straight at the armoured regiment after basic training.

During the final week of exercise, known as the ‘test phase’, increasingly we found ourselves operating on our feet in a more infantry-based role, rather than in our vehicles driving to
locations
and causing havoc with the larger weaponry. We threw flash-bangs, which are imitation grenades, into buildings then cleared them with machine guns; we put in ‘observation posts’ and spied on enemy movement; and, finally, we conducted
full-on
infantry-style squadron assaults, all on foot! This involved a lot of running and a lot of crawling through swamps and the like.

On the final night we had to conduct an insertion move, a quick walk carrying all our fighting equipment, of about ten
miles, carrying everything we needed to then go on and assault a village in a dawn attack. It was pretty gruelling for me but not so much for the others, who’d done similar moves time and time again. This was the most physically demanding thing I’d ever been tasked to do since joining.

In basic training, when you stop and look around during exercise, you see other young trainees all trying hard to become soldiers; when you join the regiment and then go on exercise, you see an array of ages, all with different experiences, going about their business in a professional way. In contrast to basic
training
, when everyone’s trying to impress the instructors, nobody’s trying to show off. This was a different world. It was the
professional
field army and it was my first insight to it.

After the assault, and once the two words every soldier dreamed about, ‘end-ex’, were called over the radio, we unloaded our rifles and made our way slowly and tiredly to the muster point to discuss how the attack had gone.

Our troop and Prince Harry’s troop had worked together throughout the night and indeed throughout the three weeks leading up to the final attack. He’d been slumming it in the dirt with the rest of us, tabbing the endless miles to fight through battles in the pouring rain and commanding his men throughout everything just like the other officers. I respected him anyway, but I had a new-found admiration for him after the exercise.

Gibbo, our corporal of horse, was delighted with how we’d all worked, not only during the final assault but for the entire three weeks. He kept saying how he was sure we’d be good enough ‘next year on ops’, signifying his satisfaction in our progress before our departure to war, which was being talked about almost hourly.