‘I didn’t see a future’: Trans veteran forced to hide true self for decades under armed forces ‘gay ban’

Caroline Paige knew from a young age she was transgender but kept it hidden from her traditional military family. She continued to conceal her true self for two decades while serving in the air force, fearing she would lose everything.

“I knew going into that environment I had to be really careful about speaking about my identity,” Paige recalls. “I didn’t see a future at that point. This was the early 1980s and I didn’t see a future where I could live as myself openly. So I just carried on doing the job.”

But in 1999, Paige took the brave decision to transition gender, becoming the first openly transgender officer allowed to continue serving in the British Armed Forces. She did so for a further 16 years.

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Paige’s story features in a new comic book which explores the lives of veterans impacted by the ban on homosexuality in the military. Transgender people were not explicitly barred, but Paige explains that was a “perception that anything that wasn’t heteronormative was gay, and so what happened was trans people were caught up in the gay ban”. 

Coming Home’s publication marks 25 years since the ban was lifted, and veterans continue to fight for justice for the people who were dismissed, imprisoned, made homeless and suffered mental health crises because of the ban.

“The comic demonstrates that you’ve got these amazing people who were doing amazing jobs, and then purely because of an unwarranted prejudice, their lives came crashing down. It’s not just their own lives, it’s the lives of their families, it’s the lives of their friends, it’s the lives of the people they work with,” Paige says.

It is the second issue of Coming Home, which is published by arts in health charity Re-Live. The first focused on the mental health of veterans and it had a “big impact not only on the armed forces community but on the wider community of comic readers”.

They received funding from the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust and the Veterans Foundation to create the second issue, and they chose to focus on the lives of LGBTQ+ veterans.

Coming Home explores a range of experiences faced by people impacted by the ‘gay ban’. These include transgender fighter pilot Paige, flight lieutenant Steve Purves who was sentenced to six months in prison for a consensual relationship with another man, as well as Ruth Birch and Julia Curry who had a secret relationship while in the army in the 1980s.

It also features Craig Jones, who has previously shared his story with the Big Issue about how he felt terrified of being imprisoned for being gay while serving in the navy. Coming Home was created in partnership with charity Fighting with Pride, which is run by Jones and Paige.

“I didn’t know these stories existed and their struggle existed. I had no idea about the impact. Their courage to share was the inspiration,” says artistic director of Re-Live Karin Diamond. 

“I hope people are inspired by the stories. I hope people are moved by the stories. I hope people are enraged by some of the things that happened, and realise that we can do that to each other and not recognise our common humanity. It’s about building compassion and understanding.”

Although Paige has told her story many times, including in an autobiography, she found it “hard telling it in the comic” because so much visual detail is needed. She had to relive some of her trauma. There is a striking moment where, as a five-year-old, she gets caught by her father wearing her sister’s pink dress and runs away from him.

“Dad believed boys were boys and girls were girls. The scalding I received left me feeling confused and alone,” she recalls in the comic. So she hid her identity. Paige dreamt of being a pilot and earnt her license as a teenager, but she could not afford to go through commercial routes, so she joined the airforce in 1980, aged 20.

Nearly two decades later, she told the RAF that she had a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. “That was a scary moment, because once you’ve told somebody something, you can’t take it back. And because the ban was still in place, and there was still no perception of what it meant to be trans, I fully expected to lose my job, but also I expected to lose my family, my friends, everything,” Paige says.

“But fortunately, the medical officer who I made an appointment with to go and see was the most amazing ally that anybody could ever hope for, and she was absolutely brilliant.”

The air force agreed that Paige could stay in the armed forces – which was “amazing” – but she had not anticipated the “prejudice” she faced after transitioning.

“For quite some time I was only hearing negative opinions of people telling me that I should be thrown out. There was no place for someone like me. Then people started standing up for me. And once people do that, it gives you the strength to carry on,” Paige says.

Diamond, alongside her co-editor Steve Sullivan, worked alongside the veterans for months to write scripted stories, which were then sent to leading British LGBTQ+ and allied comic artists. The veterans had control over which artist created the illustrations of their lives.

The artists shared their work at each stage of the creative process, from rough sketches to finished inked and coloured pages, and the veterans were allowed input at every stage.

“It is an incredible experience to be with the person while they’re looking at panels from their life. It is quite extraordinary and touching and emotional, because suddenly the story is outside you for the first time,” Diamond says.

“It is a true story. It’s not a superhero comic. These are living, breathing, everyday people who are doing really courageous acts and pushing the boundaries to be their true selves. I think the comic medium is a great way of accessing these stories and a beautiful way of experiencing these stories.”

Fighting with Pride has made momentous progress in the last few years, supporting veterans to give evidence to the armed forces select committee which led to an independent review into the impact of the ban. In December, the government announced LGBTQ+ veterans will receive up to £70,000 each to acknowledge the historic wrongs they experienced in the armed forces.

“There’s an awful lot of LGBTQ+ veterans who suffered the impact and the consequences of them who aren’t aware this is available to them,” Paige says. “Having the comic is another opportunity to raise awareness. 

“It also raises awareness of what happens to people when you treat them so badly for no logical reason whatsoever, and all of the damage that does and all of the work that you then have to do. We cannot undo that damage.”

Although Paige was eventually welcomed as a transgender woman in the armed forces, transgender people continue to face prejudice in society. “The inclusion of trans people had been really positive in the last 10 years or so, but recently it’s in danger of going backwards. In fact, it is going backwards. 

“There are truly negative opinions out there which are doing a lot of harm. All you see or hear is negative news stories, and you think that everybody out there feels the same way, but they don’t. It’s only a minority of people that hold these opinions, but they’re given the room to express them. 

“It causes damage because anyone who hasn’t got an understanding will look at those opinions as truth. And that’s why it’s so important to get our stories out there and show the truth – to show people that at the end of the day, we’re all just people wanting to get on with our lives.”

Get the comic book here.

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