Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier by James Wharton Read Free Book Online Page A

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 theincoming 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 surroundingBuckingham 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