How Wendy the drag queen helped beat the Argies!
Revealed in a new book, the most unlikely (and uplifting) story of the Falklands war
With his tightly permed hair, gold earrings, and a flamboyant manner reminiscent of Larry Grayson at his most outrageous, Frankie Green was unlikely to strike much fear into the hearts of the Argentinian forces who had seized control of the Falkland islands.
But as a ship’s steward aboard the Norland, a North Sea passenger ferry requisitioned to transport 900 paratroopers from Portsmouth to the conflict zone in the South Atlantic, Frankie made his own small contribution to Britain’s victory.
By 11pm on May 20, 1982, the Norland was anchored near San Carlos Water, the narrow inlet from where the men of the 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment (2 Para) would launch their amphibious landings on that moonless night.
‘the passenger lounge was full of squaddies, all with great big heavy backpacks and putting on their camouflage face paint from those thick black sticks,’ Frankie recalls.
‘Some of them were keeping up the usual macho bravado, but it was obvious that others were scared, so i waltzed in and said: “Right, who wants help with their eye-liner? Come on, i’m a dab hand at make-up, you know.” it just helped to break the tension.’
that Frankie felt able to joke with the troops and that they were cheered by his humour, even at that tensest of moments, reflected the remarkable bond which had grown up between the crew of the Norland and their unexpected guests during the long 8,000 mile voyage.
Even today, men from 2 Para, now in their 50s and 60s, still attend the reunions organised by Frankie and the other Norland ‘girls’, as the campest men aboard liked to call themselves. But, as i discovered in researching my book about the Norland’s role in the war, relations between them were far from cordial when the soldiers first came aboard.
the largest British-registered ferry of its day, the Norland was one of the many roll-on, roll-off ships catering for the growing demand for foreign holidays. it sailed regularly between its home port of hull and Rotterdam and, thanks to popular tV shows such as Fantasy island and the Love Boat, passengers expected fun and glamour from the moment they came on board.
‘We tried to make it luxurious for the tourists, with flowers and silver cutlery on the tables and all of us smartly turned out,’ recalls Roy Gibson, then a 27-year-old steward and part-time drag artiste whose bouffant hair and camp manner had earned him the nickname ‘Wendy’.
‘Back then, the ladies used to get dressed up for dinner. they might only have been cheap glad rags from C&A, but they loved the sense of occasion, and we’d make a right fuss of them so they felt special.’
those jaunts came to an abrupt end when, just two weeks after the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands at the beginning of April 1982, the crew learned that the Norland was to be converted into a troop ship for the duration of the ensuing war.
ANyoNE who remained on board would get a huge bonus, the equivalent today of around £1,200 a week. And they were told that they would be going nowhere near the fighting, taking 2 Para only as far as Ascension island, midway between Africa and Brazil. From there, the troops would fly the remaining 4,000 miles to the Falklands and the Norland would return home.
Although the trip was strictly voluntary, not one of the Norland’s crew of 96 men and three women left the ship and the extra pay was only part of the reason, according to ‘Wendy’ Gibson.
‘i didn’t think twice about going to Ascension,’ he told me. ‘We were family on the Norland, and where she went, we went.’
once the Norland had undergone a hasty £6 million refit, which included the addition of two Sea King helicopter decks, and taken on board the Royal Navy crew who would work alongside her own officers, she sailed to Portsmouth to collect 2 Para.
Whatever they were expecting when they marched aboard, it wasn’t someone like Wendy Gibson.
At a time when homosexuality was illegal in the armed forces, and when getting spat at or even beaten up in the streets for being gay was commonplace, they were astonished to see him strutting along the Norland’s corridors, still sporting the nail varnish he’d worn for a drag show the night before and shouting ‘hello, darling’ at anyone who stared too hard.
he remembers: ‘there were all these wolf whistles and jeers. it was “Mind yer backs, lads!” and other little gems like that, but i’d had to deal with worse growing up in hull in the Seventies.
‘Although they might have been homophobic squaddies, they were on our ship now and i decided to get on with my job, which was to look after them as best we could.’ the privates’ mess was in the Continental Bar on one of the lower decks. one night they were surprised to find that, although summer was fast approaching, it had been adorned with tinsel and Christmas lights — Wendy’s attempt to add a bit of ‘sparkle’ with the only decorations he could find on board.
there was an even bigger surprise when they saw Wendy himself taking his place at a piano wheeled in from the crew mess.
Resplendent in an emerald green dress, he was wearing dangly earrings and full make-up.
‘i don’t know what came over me, but i decided they needed something to keep their morale up,’ he says. ‘there were hundreds of them in there, so i had a quick gin and tonic for my nerves and started belting out Knees Up Mother Brown and it’s A Long Way to tipperary. they were wary at first because it was so different to what they were used to, but they ended up loving it. And to any hecklers i just gave as good as i got, like i did in the clubs back in hull. that seemed to do the trick.’
Wendy’s sing-alongs quickly became a nightly event and soon his presence was requested by the sergeants and the officers in their respective bars. ‘i was having the time of my life,’ he admits. ‘i feel terrible saying it, but we were transporting these boys off to war and i thought i was at Butlins.’
Eleven days after leaving Portsmouth, the Norland arrived in Ascension island, where the crew were told about a change of plan. the ship would now be taking the troops all the way to the Falklands, along with the warships hMS Fearless and hMS intrepid.
None of the crew took up the offer to let them disembark and fly back to England, but the reality of what they were about to face hit home when they were issued with prisoner-of-war iD cards, instructing them on what to do in the event of capture and interrogation. they were also ordered to write a will. their mood grew more sombre still when they heard of the sinking of the British warship hMS Sheffield on May 4, with the loss of 20 crew members.
‘there was no more fun then,’ remembers Frankie Green. ‘All i saw as i pushed my trolley full of cigarettes and booze through the corridors lined with soldiers was a load of frightened little boys. Me included.’
on the night of the landings, the crew were supposed to remain in their cabins, lying on their bunks with their life jackets on in case the Norland hit a mine.
But by this point they had come to regard the paras very much as ‘their’ boys and assistant purser Keith thompson, a married man with two children of his own, fretted about them going into battle on nothing more than the cold sandwich and cup of tea they’d had earlier that night.
in the early hours of the morning, he and ship’s cook Malcolm Gelder opened up the galley and were serving the soldiers hot egg and bacon rolls when 2 Para’s Regimental Sergeant Major ordered him to get back to his cabin.
‘i said: “i’m sorry, but i can’t let
those men go off to war without something hot inside them. The quicker we can get food down them and say goodbye, the sooner we can get to our defence positions, all right?”
‘By now all the crew were standing behind me facing him down and he did a swift about turn and marched off. He was fuming, but perhaps he understood the bond that had formed between us and 2 Para.’
Elsewhere on the Norland, Wendy Gibson had also left his cabin, joining the human chain passing equipment down into the landing craft bobbing on the sea below.
Frustrated at the slow progress, he too was heard taking on the RSM. ‘Hurry up, darling,’ he called. ‘The boys need their ammo!’ For all his good work, Wendy almost scuppered the operation when it was finally time for the troops to climb into the landing craft.
‘He starts flapping this white handkerchief about and crying: “Bye, boys, bye,” ’ says Keith Thompson. ‘Someone had to grab the hanky before the Argies saw it and thought we were surrendering.’
The Norland remained undetected until the next morning when the Argentines began a relentless series of air-raids on her and the other ships anchored in San Carlos Water, or ‘Bomb Alley’ as it became known.
‘You had the jets roaring above you and the anchor chains would rattle with the vibration of the bombs hitting the water,’ says Wendy.
THESE assaults persisted for the next few days, lasting up to six hours at a time. The crew would later learn that the men of 2 Para saw the onslaught from their vantage point in the mountains overlooking San Carlos Bay and were silently praying the Norland would not get hit.
‘They told us that the air raids on the ships made them glad to be in their trenches,’ says Wendy. ‘They might have been cold and wet, but they could hide in their holes. For us, there was nowhere to run.’
Miraculously, the Norland was never hit and respite came when she began shuttling around the South Atlantic on a series of missions which, as the British forces regained control of the Falklands, included taking 500 Argentine prisoners-of-war to neutral Uruguay. It was on their return to the Falklands on June 14 that they learned of the Argentine surrender.
‘When we sailed back into San Carlos everything had changed,’ says Keith Thompson. ‘No more bombs, no more fear. The Harrier jets were doing a fly-by. Land Of Hope And Glory was blasting out of the ship’s Tannoy and there wasn’t a dry eye on the ship.’
The war was over, but the Norland’s work was not and almost immediately she was sent to Argentina to repatriate yet more prisonersof-war. While she was away, the men of 2 Para were offered a chance to return to Ascension Island on the Canberra, the luxury liner that had also been requisitioned for the war.
Far bigger than the Norland, the Canberra would give them a far more comfortable start to their journey. But it was the Norland which had brought them down to the South Atlantic and it was on the Norland that they were determined to return.
When she finally made it back to the Falklands on June 24, the battle-weary troops of 2 Para made it clear just how glad they were to be back on board. One night, as his final song in the Continental Bar was greeted with cheers of ‘Wendy! Wendy! Wendy!’, 2 Para’s RSM stepped forward and presented Roy Gibson with a very special gift: a red beret.
The highest honour that the paras could bestow on any civilian, it was a declaration that he and the rest of the crew had been made honorary paratroopers. It was an honour well deserved. By now, the Norland had taken a severe battering from the weather and was streaked with rust, but she offered something the Canberra could not.
During the fighting, 2 Para had lost 18 men. They needed to forget the horrors of the war and where better than on the Norland, that floating haven which offered them familiar faces, a warm welcome and, best of all, a drag queen on a piano.
All in the SAme BoAt, by Warren FitzGerald, is published by John Blake Publishing at £16.99. © Warren FitzGerald. to buy a copy for £13.59, visit www. mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. offer until may 14 2016. P&P free on orders over £12 for a limited time only.