Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier (30 page)

I
n the weeks that followed our civil partnership, Thom and I were busy giving short interviews or comments to various people about our ceremony. Across the pond in the States our civil partnership had caused news and again I found myself being used as a key tool for the campaign against ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’. Every time the phone rang and it would turn out to be
The Sun
or the
Daily Mirror
, I considered how annoying all this press attention must have been for my ex, Ryan, who would have undoubtedly seen at least one of the many articles about our civil partnership. I still felt incredibly guilty over the way our
relationship
had ended.

Thom and I delayed our honeymoon by a few weeks, waiting for more time off work to allow it. We jetted off to Boston for three days before flying back and heading north to Edinburgh for an additional five days of honeymooning, having a perfect time throughout. I didn’t feel any different in my day-to-day relationship with Thom; the only change was the addition of a ring on both our left hands.

The Trooping of the Colour, that quaint and typically British occasion, was approaching fast. After seven years of service, I was still a virgin with regard to participating in the Queen’s Birthday Parade; 2010 would finally bring an end to that wait.

I always remember Mum telling me that the Trooping of the Colour was an event I had to take part in and that if I never did manage a seat on a horse for that grandest of occasions, I’d have to just stay put in the regiment until the day eventually came. I know her and my nan especially were a little underwhelmed when during my first tenure at the mounted regiment at the age of eighteen, I didn’t manage to take part. Much to their relief more than mine, in the summer of that year I would finally take my place in the parade.

Adding to the family pride of the occasion, the horse I was charged with riding was named Jimmy, like my grandfather, who was still always in my memory eight years after his death at the age of eighty.

Jimmy was the source of family inspiration and after his death in 2002 he left a gaping hole as the father figure of the family. He was a hero. He’d endured a long life, often with hardship, the peak of which came as a Japanese prisoner of war during the Second World War.

He served on a battlecruiser called the
Repulse
and was sunk three days after Pearl Harbor in the South Pacific. After rescue he was taken to Singapore to recover, but during the respite Singapore fell to the Japanese and Jimmy was captured as a POW, interned into the Changi jail. There followed four long years of incredible suffering, laying the Burma railway, and eventually he was transferred to Japan on the hell ships, being sunk yet again, this time by the Americans. Finally, the Japanese had him
labouring
in a salt mine in Nagasaki, where he witnessed the atomic bomb explode. After release he was sent to Australia for recovery, finally returning home to my nan. The telegram he received from the King wishing him a long and happy life after his release from captivity in 1945 is at the centre of our family pride.

He seldom talked of his suffering, but every now and then he’d
pass a comment about the Japanese; he never had any respect for either the nation or its people for the rest of his life.

Mum picked him up from his house in Liverpool one
morning
in her shiny new Nissan Micra and Jimmy outright refused to get in, spitting at the car in protest. Only five years old, I stood by, confused. Mum sold the car within two months. Another early memory of mine is playing toy soldiers with little plastic army men Mum had bought me. Granddad was sat in his usual position, in front of the TV with the remote control carefully guarded, bouncing from one news bulletin to another. I set up camp for one set of toy soldiers in front of the TV, placing the flag that had come with the soldiers in the centre of the little plastic men.

‘A German flag? Have you not got another one to put in front of your granddad?’ He didn’t want to be staring at a German flag, understandably.

I looked into the plastic bag, rummaged around and pulled out another. Swapping the two, I called for Granddad to approve.

‘Sweet suffering Jesus Christ!’ Granddad shouted at the top of his elderly voice, kicking the flag and all my little plastic soldiers over before walking off into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. The flag I’d replaced the German one with was,
unfortunately
, a Japanese one. In the end, he allowed the German one but there was no chance the red sun of Japan was going anywhere near him.

Jimmy the horse was quite a character, too. As ever, there would be lots of rehearsals and therefore lots of time for us to bond. Jimmy wasn’t a horse from my own troop, which made our companionship that little bit more peculiar. The thirty horses on offer to me in 2 Troop had somehow been handed out to
everyone
before taking me into account. The Blues and Royals
squadron
corporal major, a great Welshman called Kerry, had to loan a
horse to me from 1 Troop, so I knew very little about Jimmy and his behaviour. Most of the info on Jimmy I learned either
first-hand
, bouncing around on him in Hyde Park, or through my old friend Donna, who looked after him daily and knew him well.

Huge and towering far over me, Jimmy was quite a boy. He was incredibly playful and very cute with his mannerisms. He loved being entertained and I’d often find myself just
nattering
away to him in the run-up to the Trooping of the Colour.

By the time the second rehearsal arrived, Jimmy and I had a relationship that rivalled some of the longest riding partnerships in the world. He knew me and I knew him, and there was no doubt at all that anything would go wrong between us.

In the parade I was the centre number two, meaning I was responsible for the dressing of the entire line as the Blues and Royals trooped past Her Majesty; this was the moment her meticulous eye for detail would look upon us all and judge our professionalism. I’d mastered this important role fully in the many rehearsals leading up to the day, barking orders left and right along the line for men to either kick on or rein back in order to hold the perfect line.

The mounted troops on parade at the Trooping of the Colour ride past the Queen twice, once at the walk, and then again at the trot. It’s one of the smartest sights in British tradition,
witnessing
100 horses of the Queen’s own regiment fleeting past her in perfect dress, saluting the Sovereign as they do so. Having watched the moment on TV for most of my life, witnessing it from behind the scenes earlier in my cavalry career was
stomach-churning
enough; sat on a beautifully turned-out Jimmy,
carrying
my plume smartly and keeping the dressing of the Blues and Royals around me was a moment of sheer pride that can’t easily be described. It was the one occasion I’d waited for since
signing
up to the Household Cavalry years earlier and back home
my mum watched the events live, as did my nan, surrounded by family. James Wharton, a boy from North Wales, responsible for the smartness of the entire line of Blues and Royals on the occasion of Her Majesty’s official birthday, riding a horse called Jimmy in a final nod of remembrance to a fallen veteran of the Second World War. It was an incredible moment for our family.

In the week following the Trooping, yet again I found myself with an invite to 10 Downing Street, this time from the newly elected coalition government. I wore my mounted uniform accompanied by a smart thin whip again. On this occasion, the event was taking place in the garden.

What struck me about meeting David Cameron was the way he held conversation. I really enjoyed meeting his predecessor, Gordon Brown, but was on reflection slightly underwhelmed by the lack of conversation. With David Cameron, I had a
five-minute
chat about how brilliantly the Trooping of the Colour had gone just days before. He asked where I was on the parade and if I knew of any mistakes that had happened. Joining me at Downing Street was Thom, for the first time, who then went on to have a conversation with the Prime Minister about his job in the airline industry. The man completely won me over, even before his famous speech pledging full government support on the progression of gay equality. The picture I have of me
chatting
to the Prime Minister takes pride of place on the centre of my mantelpiece.

Summer leave was fast approaching and with it the usual three-week break from all things army. Thom and I had a quick trip to Orlando to start the holiday off before travelling up to North Wales to visit family for a week. As usual, we had a great
time together and it was really nice to catch up with family and friends back home in Wrexham.

On the Sunday morning of our week-long visit home, while Thom and I were having an extended lie-in until the
mid-morning
, I was awoken by the sound of my mobile phone springing into song every few minutes with text message after text message. At first I thought I’d leave it on charge at the other side of the room, reading the messages when I eventually got out of bed, but due to the continual incoming flow of texts, I was encouraged to get up and read the many messages, worrying something was wrong somewhere.

‘Congrats on your Pink Listing! Very proud!’

What the hell did that mean? I read it out aloud to Thom, who looked as bewildered as me.

‘Brilliant to see you ranked on the Pink List, James. Much Love! xx’

I quickly opened my Facebook account to find more messages and a link to the
Independent on Sunday
’s Pink List 2010.

Much to my astonishment, I’d been ranked on the list as someone who was influential in the gay community. More so, I hadn’t just been added to the end of the list, I’d made it into the top twenty, ranking nineteenth. The news was incredible. I’d heard of the Pink List and read it with interest in the years prior, once even joking with Kempy that I’d make it on there one day; all of a sudden, I was on it. I rang my mum and told her I’d been ranked as one of the most influential gay men in the country and told her to go and buy the newspaper to read it herself. Thom and I laughed about the news, finding it all unbelievable. What made me so special? All I’d done was enter a civil partnership with the person I loved most.

Stonewall, a charity committed to lesbian and gay equality, had become aware of me thanks to my appearance on the cover
of
Soldier
and then more so from the media surrounding my civil partnership with Thom. Shortly after the ceremony, the chief executive of the charity sent Thom and me a congratulations card, with a wonderful handwritten message of support. I, like many gay people, had been familiar with them for many years, always finding their research on homophobia and the like extremely interesting. Mostly I remembered how successfully they’d lobbied for civil partnerships in the run-up to them being introduced in 2004. Out of the blue, in September 2010, I received an email from them inviting me into their offices for a meeting.

Sir Ian McKellen, who’d been key in the founding of Stonewall in the late 1980s, had been working with the charity again, touring secondary schools and talking to youngsters about homophobia and gay equality. I’d read a piece about his visits in a newspaper, which explored the impact Sir Ian was having on the audiences he’d visited. It was fascinating stuff. Stonewall was inviting me to become involved in the same scheme, talking to school kids about my own experiences and offering them an alternative role model. I had to go away and think about it, and of course gain permission from the army, but in my own mind, I’d already decided it was crucial to accept the offer.

Alongside the school visit request from Stonewall, they also asked how I’d feel talking at their workplace conference, making a speech about my time as a soldier and the challenges I’d
overcome
during my service. Again, I was honoured to have been asked and desperately wanted to say yes immediately, but I needed the go-ahead from the army.

The officials in the PR department of the army, those chaps who’d started off this media campaign with me at its centre, were the ones who had to give their nod of approval. The conference was of immediate priority as it was fast approaching, and was the major event in the workplace equality calendar. From the start, I
could tell that the powers that be were not overjoyed at the
prospect
of me having a microphone and the opportunity to speak freely of my own experiences.

I met with them at the newly moved Army HQ in Andover to discuss my plans for the speech and listen to their thoughts. It would have been impossible for the army to prevent me from speaking, as they were a paying member of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme, and blocking me from talking would have been really bad press for them. They gave their
blessing
, but analysed my speech word by word.

I wasn’t allowed to mention that I’d been beaten up soon after coming out; I wasn’t allowed to mention the early experience of being told ‘faggots are not welcome’ on my first day in the army. I also wanted to say that Turkey was the only country left in NATO that actively banned gay people from service, apart from the US, which was completely ruled out from the speech. As frustrating as this was, I understood that it would be
inappropriate
to criticise our nation’s allies in public in that way. I did, however, know one or two people who’d be in the crowd and I planted questions with those people, which would allow me to answer them and make the points I wanted to make. For instance, I had someone ask if there was anywhere in Europe that banned gay people from service, and I was able to say that Turkey was homophobic in that regard. I had a minder from the Ministry of Defence with me throughout the occasion to ensure I didn’t say anything that would cause trouble for the army. All this aside, I made a keynote speech which was very well received and which got a standing ovation from the 300 or so delegates. To have shared such a stage, a stage that the Home Secretary herself had stood on just before me, welcoming the delegates to the conference, was hugely exciting.