Transgender soldier’s ‘honour’ to be first woman in combat role
Guardsman who is having a sex change to become female says Army has made her transition ‘easy’
ARMY chiefs have praised the courage of Britain’s first female combat soldier after a guardsman decided to change sex and become a woman.
Chloe Allen joined the forces four years ago as Ben Allen but has changed her name and is undergoing hormone therapy.
The decision means she will be the first woman since the Army was established in 1660 to be allowed to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat.
The announcement comes just two months after David Cameron said women should be allowed to fight on the frontline.
Last month, the Army ruled that Guardsman Allen, who is based in Aldershot, Hants, could remain with the Scots Guards where she is a rifleman and driver of Mastiff armoured patrol vehicles. Her role in the Scots Guards also means she conducts ceremonial duties and takes part in Trooping the Colour. She will still serve as an infantry soldier and will continue to wear the same uniform.
Guardsman Allen revealed that she began dressing in her mother’s clothes when she was eight and said she felt frustrated and unhappy, and had to “learn to control it and crack on”. She said it was a relief to finally talk openly about her decision to change sex.
She said: “It’s a great honour to be able to make history and at the same time do my job. It’s just brilliant, I’m just looked at as a normal person.
“I’d love to inspire people to just come out and be themselves.
“As much as it’s a big bad world, it’s not as bad as people think and it’s easier when you’ve got your mates and your bosses behind you.
“I didn’t set out to make history, it’s just the way it’s happened. There’s nothing that can stop me at all. This is not just a job, this is a career for me.
“My transition has been as easy as it could have got for me: the battalion has been brilliant, the Army has been brilliant, the lads have been brilliant.”
Since the British Army was founded more than 350 years ago, women have been banned from close-combat roles.
They have previously served on the frontline only in support roles, such as medics.
Mr Cameron announced in July that female soldiers would be allowed to fight on the frontline following studies into the effects of the job on women’s bodies.
Ministers carried out a consultation on lifting the ban, and the head of the Army, Gen Sir Nick Carter, recommended the move. Women are now
‘I didn’t set out to make history, it’s just the way it’s happened. This is not just a job, this is a career for me’
allowed to enter the cavalry, infantry and armoured corps.
Yesterday, Gen Sir James Everard, Commander of the Field Army, praised the 24-year-old soldier from Cumbria for her courage.
He said: “I’m delighted to have our first woman serving in a ground closecombat unit. The British Army is really proving itself as an inclusive organisation where everyone is welcome and can thrive.
“Being the first of anything takes courage. I applaud Guardsman Chloe Allen for being a trendsetter and wish her every success.”
The Army has had an employment policy for transgender servicemen and women since 1999.
Earlier this year an Army officer, Capt Hannah Winterbourne, told how she had decided to come out as transgender and praised the military for being “forward thinking”.
There have been many stirring victories these past 11 days in Rio de Janeiro. But when Nick Beighton, a former captain with the Royal Engineers who lost both legs in Afghanistan, powered to a bronze medal in the canoe sprint last week, it was enough to convert even the most hard-hearted sports agnostic to the Paralympic cause.
The win was made all the more poignant by the fact that Australia’s Curtis McGrath, a fellow Afghanistan veteran, took gold. The image of two soldiers, both maimed, both deprived of the use of their legs, embracing on the podium in mutual recognition, was one that distilled the very essence of the spirit of the Games.
“I couldn’t be happier for Curtis,” says Beighton, nicknamed Zlatan due to his resemblance to the Manchester United player Zlatan Ibrahimovic. “That is the value of the Paralympics. We have shared an experience and come back from it. It is such an incredible journey that we have been on. You cannot begrudge anyone winning that medal when you have shared all that pain to get back again.”
His celebration in Brazil is a far cry from the desolation that engulfed him seven years ago, when Stockport-born Beighton lay helpless in a canal, both legs shattered and close to death after he stepped on a Taliban landmine.
He never expected, given the 36 pints of blood he lost or the 25 operations that ensued, to become a hero of the Paralympic Games. But he has applied the same indomitable will he acquired through his hospital ordeal to fulfilling his quest for a medal – a stoicism often seen among military personnel.
“It’s not a case of waking up one morning and saying, ‘Hey-ho, I’ve dealt with it,’” Beighton explains. “It’s about being more comfortable with who you now are, with your physical disabilities and your place in life. That can only be gained by pushing yourself to find out where the boundaries are. There is a real sense
‘I realised it was within my power to control my destiny’
that those people who serve in our country in difficult situations have an attitude to deal with what is in front of them, come up with a solution, and crack on.
“It’s not a stereotype, it’s very evident. It creates its own issues, because you tend to ignore some of the psychological traumas that you hold on to and suppress. But it gives you the determination to push through the hard times.”
Beighton, 34, remembers the fateful events of that day in October 2009 all too acutely.
Deployed to Helmand Province as a troop commander, he had just led a patrol to stake out a transport route when he stumbled upon an IED. The explosion tore his legs apart, flinging him into a ditch. “I can never forget the pain, that instant in which my life changed forever,” he recalls. “The left leg was just gone. That was the one I trod on the device with. The right leg was very badly damaged, and I had also broken my pelvis. Initially the challenge was to stop the blood loss, because that’s what is going to kill you first.”
The swift intervention of an army doctor saved Beighton’s life. But even at the time, the stricken soldier understood with sickening clarity how desperate the situation was. “I was pumping out blood as fast as they could put it back in. But I didn’t black out. I was entirely conscious from the moment it happened to the moment I was put on the evacuation helicopter 40 minutes later.”
After being stabilised at Camp Bastion, he was returned to Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham; Beighton suffered a collapsed lung there as a result of a blood clot and for several weeks he fought for survival.
During rehabilitation at Hedley Court, Surrey, the Ministry of Defence’s centre for medical rehabilitation, he focused on the idea of recovery through sport and met others inspired to do the same who, also, have savoured triumphs here in Rio. Jon-Allan Butterworth, who lost his left arm in an insurgent rocket attack in Iraq in 2007, won gold in the cycling team sprint, while Dave Henson, another victim of an IED in Helmand, took a 200 metres sprinting bronze in the T42 category for single amputees.
Beighton, such was his upperbody strength, chose rowing. He was training within 18 months of his accident, a “ridiculous” time frame by his own admission. “Rowing offered a bit of a proxy for real life, in a way,” he says. “I was quite unforgiving to myself, a bit of a perfectionist. I ended up realising that I had a lot more control over my destiny than I had originally. It was within my power to direct it.”
This he did, admirably; the former soldier came fourth at London 2012 and was then persuaded to forsake rowing in favour of canoeing.
Now, with a bronze medal around his neck, he can look back at the horrors he has overcome in the knowledge that happiness has at last returned. After four years of exertion on the road to Rio, he is anxious to return to his home in Shropshire, where he lives with his partner, Alexis, and their son, Jonah, who was born in 2013. He is considering a tilt at his third Paralympics in Tokyo in 2020 but won’t make any impetuous decisions. “I am missing my little boy, so I will go home and spend time with him. I have had a tough couple of years away from home. I will remind myself of what I have, which is extremely precious to me.” His story, and the grace and calm with which he has coped with the circumstances thrown at him, helps illustrate why Paralympians are portrayed as true superhumans. Another abiding memory from Brazil this summer was the sight of a third Paralympic gold for Italy’s Alex Zanardi, once a Formula One driver, competing in the same field as Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, until a horrifying crash in an Indy Car race in 2001 left surgeons with no option but to amputate both legs above the knee. Zanardi reinvented himself, using his mechanical expertise to build a vehicle customised for his post-crash body, before training with such ferocity that he is now the finest exponent of hand-cycling in the world. Zanardi offered the most powerful articulation yet of the Paralympic credo. “Normally, I don’t thank God for these things,” he said. “God has far more important matters to worry about. But when I finished and I was told that I had won the race, I thought, ‘This is too much, too much by far’.” Beighton is happy to endorse that. “The Paralympics is about having things that don’t go right and taking ownership of them. I can be sure that in my life, good has come from bad.”