Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier (3 page)

Before the month was out, twenty-seven British servicemen were killed, and when their coffins returned to the UK draped in union flags, the sight deeply affected me and, even more so, my mum. I remember thinking what would happen if I, too, returned in that way. Mum was devastated that evening watching the images on the news. She felt the pain of those dead soldiers’ parents. She’d placed herself in their shoes.

In the weeks that followed, witnessing the national outcry over the invasion of Iraq was a surreal experience for me. In school, a number of pupils organised a protest in the playground instead of going to lessons. I attended my English lesson and the teacher asked me why I wasn’t outside with the rest of the school community. The answer was simple: how could a
soldier-in
-waiting possibly take part in a ‘stop the war’ protest? I was the only child in the school who abstained from the protests, which sucked because I’d have skipped lessons for any other reason!

On 1 May, President Bush made that ridiculous speech stating that major combat operations were over and that the war was at an end. The news changed the atmosphere in Phil and Mum’s house, but our jubilation would be short-lived.

I spent the summer continuing with my fitness regime before the pain would really begin in the autumn. I completed my exams and busied myself with preparation for the army. I left the army cadets, which I miss to this day. Captain Bowles threw a party for me on my last night and all the other cadets brought me leaving gifts, mostly army-related, and Mrs Bowles baked a nice cake. I left with a lot of pride and promised to repay everything I owed to the organisation one day, a promise I’m still to fulfil. It was almost time to leave my youth behind me.

On the penultimate day of my childhood, Mum and Phil also threw a party so they and their friends could say goodbye and wish me well. I knew they felt they were losing a son and I understood that. We’d all had a stressful few months witnessing the troubles in Iraq and the sight of coffins being brought off the back of planes on the evening news. There were many tears that night, but none from me. I was excited. Tomorrow I’d be meeting lots of new people and my life in the army would begin.

The following morning, waved off by the neighbours on our street who had seen me grow up over the course of the previous few months, I left Gwersyllt. It didn’t seem to take very long to get to the Army Foundation College. We stopped along the way but, for the most part, hardly a word was spoken by anybody. Upon arriving at the large entrance to the college, I was taken aback by how modern a place it was. Throughout my time in cadets, the army bases we used were always close to derelict. This was completely the opposite. It was immediately clear that I’d get the chance to do a lot of exciting stuff.

The whole base was open for our parents and loved ones to walk around and explore fully. They put on lunch for everyone and the staff put my mind – and Mum’s – at ease as to what I could expect to gain from my time at the college. I had a smile on my face until the moment came to say goodbye.

Mum broke down. It was a huge moment in her life. Her youngest son was not only leaving home, but joining an army. The British Army. An army at war. I was only sixteen, after all. I was leaving a lot sooner than my brother or sister did. I was still the baby – even today, I’m still my mum’s baby – and she couldn’t hold back her tears.

Phil was quite excited for me; I remember him saying he’d probably quite enjoy staying there himself. The only person who
could make my mum feel better was him and I was glad he’d be there for her.

It was a very difficult parting. As soon as she turned and walked away, it dawned upon me that I was now completely alone. I was no longer a child: I belonged to the army. Mum didn’t look back once. She was just too upset to draw the affair out. As she walked, Phil comforted her and hurried her along. They left me there, on the cusp of adventure, and took my childhood home with them. I was now on my own.

I
was placed in 6 Platoon, which was located on the top floor of a six-storey building, boasting views right across Harrogate and Yorkshire. There were elevators, but they were strictly for training staff use. We had to ascend and descend by foot, often running. The base itself was situated on Penny Pot Lane, a long country road leading out of the nearby town, and was surrounded by green fields dotted with the occasional block of forestry. To the north was a large reservoir, which we would run around many times in the weeks that followed. I hated that bloody reservoir.

At 6 p.m. on that first day we were all called into the corridor of our platoon lines and placed in alphabetical order right along the thin corridor. From a boy called Abraham to a boy named Williams who stood next to me at the end, there were forty-nine of us from all over the UK.

Stood the other side of me was a lad called Stephen Warren, from Tamworth originally. The two also bracketed my bed space; Warren and Williams, what a pair. We got on … sort of, although I caught Williams trying to steal the light bulb from my desk lamp that very first night because his didn’t work. It was a bad start. I never really liked him much after that. I considered him an opportunist thief.

The loud guy who seemed to be taking charge, the platoon
sergeant, a corporal of horse from the Blues and Royals, called the nominal roll and called us all cunts over and over again. He told us for the next forty-two weeks our arses belonged to him and his word was law. I wasn’t sure if I liked the guy or not. I guess we weren’t supposed to like him. But he oozed authority and from now on, he was dad.

He laid down a few ground rules: be on time; have the correct equipment; don’t bully anyone and don’t come out if you’re a fag… ‘I can’t stand faggots,’ he said. That last rule startled me. Was the army that openly homophobic? Maybe being gay just wasn’t allowed. His statement rendered me totally confused and I could feel my heart shudder.

First out of the mouth of the platoon sergeant, those words seemed to be the party line in 2003: the army doesn’t like faggots. I was terrified. It wasn’t that long since I’d cried myself to sleep after realising that I was gay. After hearing those words, however, immediately I considered the possibility that I’d just had a phase. I was in the man’s army now. Didn’t every teenager experience confusion over their sexuality at some point? I forced it to the back of my mind. It was a teenage stage and now I was
exchanging
my youth for a life in the military. ‘Faggots’ didn’t belong in the British Army. This was a fresh start.

In command of 6 Platoon was an officer called Captain Kilpatrick, who was an Irishman serving in the Scottish regiment of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. My earliest
impression
of him was one of ultimate authority. He didn’t come out of his office to greet us on the first day and when he did
eventually
emerge three or four days into our training, he simply gave us all a bollocking for looking untidy, demanding the platoon sergeant take us outside and teach us a lesson we’d ‘never forget’. The platoon sergeant flew out of his office and thrashed us for an hour up and down the stairs of the barrack block. Of course,
everything was all planned to break us down. I know now that the platoon staff would plan weekly on how we were to be treated, often turning the heat up and sometimes giving us a little slack. Thing was, we’d make plenty of mistakes over the course of the year and find ourselves in the bad books often enough, without the need for them to make things any more difficult.

A day of new beginnings, 7 September 2003 will stick in my mind forever. I’d been thrown into the middle of forty-eight other sixteen-year-olds. Thrilling but awfully awkward. The Scottish lads really intimidated me, mostly because they spoke with such aggression and swore in between every second word. It was scary stuff.

My earliest ally was a lad called Rich. He was from Sunderland and wanted to join the Army Air Corps. He is one of the few people in 6 Platoon that stuck true to his choice over the course of the year; most changed their minds, often to stay with a friend, or perhaps to be based somewhere specific. I did myself. I chose to follow the last person in the world you’d expect me to, our apparently homophobic platoon sergeant. His wall displays of the Household Cavalry were so colourful, littered with amazing pictures of the men of the regiment accompanying the Queen on state occasions and of the same men in small tanks, advancing on enemy positions either in the Falklands or during the very recent invasion of Iraq. He’d share stories of awesome
derring-do
on exercise in the middle of the night or during his lectures, which included a number of sexual health lessons. In fact, he’d always stall whatever he was teaching us to tell a tale from Bosnia or Northern Ireland. Although we’d started on a bad foot, and his anti-gay words should have turned me off him forever, as the weeks and months passed the platoon sergeant turned into a bit of a hero.

Rich was following a long line of men from his family
into the military and was about the most normal guy in 4 Section, the team of twelve men within 6 Platoon I found myself in. We became close over the opening few weeks.

4 Section was full of interesting characters. Skivington, a lad from Wigan, was absolutely obsessed with his penis and would think nothing of pulling down his pants to show it off. It was huge and I think he’d only discovered the fact upon joining the army and having to shower with other guys. It certainly caused amazement among the lads. Heterosexual teenage boys are very odd. Skiv left the army about three months later, reaching the conclusion that it just wasn’t for him. I’ve never seen him since, which is a shame because I really liked him. I don’t even
remember
his first name but Jesus, do I remember his antics.

A Leeds lad called Turner was an absolute comedy genius. He told brilliant stories and had fabulous jokes. Sadly, Turner also didn’t stick it out and left just before Christmas. I’ve never seen him since, either.

In the corner of the room was a boy called Taylor from Warrington, who looked older than the rest of us, was bigger than the rest of us and spoke with a much deeper voice. He talked down to us and quickly became unpopular. He picked on the smallest guy, a lad called Vella, who was a bit of a geek. In true
Lord of the Flies
style, the eleven of us turned on him and he eventually handed in his ‘Discharge as of Right’. I’m still ashamed that we didn’t confront Taylor in some other way; instead we gave him a taste of his own medicine and he opted to end his career in the British Army before it had properly begun.

And then there was Junior Soldier Warren, my good friend Stephen, who, like me, was taken in by our platoon sergeant’s tales of regimental life and opted to join the Blues and Royals. Stephen had the thickest Black Country accent I’d ever heard in my life. He extended every word he said by about four
syllables, which was something he’d be ridiculed about
throughout
our friendship. During the months of basic training, Stephen and I became close, as I had with Rich and, soon, a boy called Rutter, who was moved into our room because he’d been bullying someone in another room. Strangely, we quite liked him. He was a dude.

Once I’d made my friends in 4 Section, I started to join up with lads from the other three sections that made up 6 Platoon. In 1 Section I became pally with Mike, a Liverpudlian who wanted to join the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers (REME). He was a nice guy and I’m sure we would have become best mates had we not been in different sections.

In 2 Section there was a boy called Jonesy who didn’t stay in the army past Christmas. I was sure he was gay. We found ourselves staring at each other while changing one morning and both made our excuses once we started to get aroused. It was another fleeting experience with my concealed sexuality, though this time within the walls of the British Army. With Jonesy, I was reminded of the way I’d felt about Aaron – and I certainly didn’t feel the same way about anyone else in 6 Platoon. If he’d remained in the army, I might have gathered the courage to talk about my sexuality for the first time, but when he quit training I lost my only potential ally.

Also in 2 Section was a guy called Dean Perryman, who became one of my closest friends throughout my decade-long stay in the army. Dean followed me into the Blues and Royals and we would share many adventures together.

It became apparent early on that Dean was a bit of a fighter. Often he’d fall out with one of the other lads and just simply go in tough and start a fight. One night later on in the year, Dean and Williams, the boy who tried to steal my bulb, had a fallout and decided to settle the score by meeting in the shower room
late in the evening and fighting it out. As young men do,
everyone
went to watch the fight, which began right on cue at 9 p.m. As the two were fighting, somebody turned on the showers and they both slipped and slid in the water as they battered each other over and over. The fight ended when Dean punched Williams in the back of the head, forcing his face to smash against the tiles of the shower room floor, covering the place with blood. Finally, it was over. I’d never witnessed violence like it, but in the army aggression and combat came hand in hand, and such events soon had little effect on me.

In 3 Section, a great footballer called Robertshaw was a mate during the year though he became a little distant towards the end. I heard a few years later that Robertshaw didn’t remain in the military for very long after Harrogate. Ollie Reucker was another chap in 3 Section I quite liked, an American who was later awarded the Military Cross for his heroic actions in Afghanistan. I think Ollie returned to America and is now serving in the US Army. I was casually reading a newspaper some years later when I saw a full-page picture of him. His story wowed me. He turned into quite the action man.

It’s fair to say that we were quite a mix. Some of us shared common ground – most were from broken families, for a start. There was the odd character who had had a very privileged upbringing and some who had barely made it through childhood, moving from one youth hostel to another. We can’t always get on with everyone but, for my twelve months at the college, I couldn’t imagine experiencing the changes we each went through with a different bunch of lads.

Someone very cleverly took a photograph of us all on the first day and showed it to us at the very end. The change was
unbelievable
. I took many pictures over the course of the year, which I look at sometimes and consider where the boys are now, and
one of the clearest messages from those pictures is that we all, every one of us, started to look more and more like soldiers as the year progressed.

In my head, we’re all still sixteen.

As we were all still very young, the army invested a lot of money in our training, giving us a lot more than older recruits who were joining the army in 2003. Every recruit had to choose two activities to take part in weekly, which it was hoped we’d master and possibly even take on to higher levels. I chose skiing initially, which I would do on a Tuesday night in Sunderland, and go-kart racing, which I’d find myself doing for three hours on a Thursday. These activities were great fun and, more than anything, a chance to put the stresses of basic training out of mind for a few hours every week. The skiing activity culminated in a week-long jolly to southern France in the February, which turned out to be a great week away getting drunk, underage, in the Alps.

Mid-term we had the opportunity to swap our activities if we wished; I opted to drop go-karting and took up squash, with Perryman. The change brought Dean and me closer as friends, which was ideal as we’d both be joining the same regiment in the near future. We thrashed each other in the squash courts for six months. I considered myself a much better player but I know he’d disagree.

A highlight of our time in Harrogate was the three-day trip to Normandy visiting D-Day battle sites along the coast of northern France. The battlefield tour was billed as educational, but it was also a clever chance to get out of Harrogate and spend some time abroad. Alcohol was involved, although not officially, and we got into a lot of trouble, which we paid for once back in Yorkshire and on the moors.

I was awestruck by the enormity of the task the Allied
soldiers had faced on that June morning in 1944. Standing in the machine-gun nests that the Nazis had used to gun down thousands of invading soldiers over the beaches of Normandy was chilling. I kept thinking how it would have felt running off a boat and into such ferocity. Would I ever do similar? The stories we heard and the sights we witnessed were designed to inspire us as young soldiers. It certainly did that. I picked up a pebble from Sword beach and still have it today. I took it to Basra with me in 2007 and placed it next to my living space. It reminds me what a group of motivated young people can do and how the world was changed for ever by their heroic actions.

As my army training progressed, I remember feeling extremely close to the other boys by the time we’d reached halfway. The harshness of the experience had bonded us together and I
naturally
forgot and lost touch with most of the people I’d known prior to joining the army. I spoke often with the platoon sergeant as he became more forthcoming, especially to those of us who were joining his regiment, and he offered me some very frank but very honest advice as the months ticked by: ‘Don’t get too close to the boys, Wharton. You’ll never see or hear of them again once this is all over.’

I didn’t really believe him. I thought that the bond most of us had was pretty solid. We’d grown protective of each other and knew each other’s weaknesses; but his words resounded and I kept them in mind as our training period drew to a close.

One night at the college sticks out in my mind. We were doing our mandatory two hours of military studies when all of a sudden a loud repetitive scream was heard coming from down the
corridor
. Everyone filed out into the hallway and moved through the double doors towards 3 Section’s room, where the commotion seemed to be coming from.