WOMAN WHO WAS A SOLDIER

The 6ft ex-soldier who has won a personal war - by becoming a woman
By JAN HAMILTON - More by this author » Last updated at 02:19am on 16th March 2008

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A little over a year ago, Ian Hamilton was a 6ft, 16-stone captain in the Parachute Regiment – a much-decorated career soldier who had served at the sharp end of every major conflict of the past two decades, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then Ian realised he really was a woman in a man's body. He changed his name to Jan Hamilton and, thanks to female hormones and extensive plastic surgery, became an elegant size 12 who could turn heads at any cocktail party.

Jan's family disowned her, the Army summarily dismissed her. Now Jan – accompanied by a Channel 4 TV crew – has travelled to Thailand for the final, irreversible operation to change her, at last, into a woman. Here is her moving story...

Macho: Ian chose the most stereotypically 'male' job imaginable - that of a paratrooper - before finally accepting his 'accident of birth' and having a sex change

Three weeks before I was due to travel to Thailand to have the final, complex and painful operation that would change me from man to woman, I began the last stages of my preparation.

The recovery from the gruelling series of operations I had last summer to feminise my face and give me breasts had been long and difficult. I suffered three months of blinding headaches, nausea and loss of balance.

It's not easy at the age of 43, but I steadily built up my fitness as my recovery progressed. The only way I could rationalise what I was going through was to treat it as a military deployment. That, at least, was a world I knew.

I was being told to stop taking my female hormone medication. At my age, oestrogen can act as a blood-thickening agent and could put me at risk of deep vein thrombosis. I was approaching the most important event of my life – the operation – and the change in my hormones was making me confused and deeply distressed.

With my mind turning cartwheels, I mentally replayed the story of my life. I reflected on the biological fact that all foetuses are conceived as female and that gender is determined at some time in the first three months of development. I believe that in my case the gender assignment got confused. I was meant to be a girl, but somehow turned out to be a boy.

I remembered how confused I had been as a child, avidly consuming Westerns and war movies and anything "male" in an attempt to make sense of my world. I absorbed all the lessons about boys being tough and never crying and I eventually chose the most stereotypically male occupation I could possibly find. I became a paratrooper.

Looking back, I was a confused and angry young man. The rampant testosterone of adolescence and early adulthood nearly drove me mad. I can only equate it to trying to run a petrol engine on diesel. I constantly stalled and misfired.

I was reasonably successful as an officer, yet each time I was on the cusp of achievement, breakdown loomed. My anger constantly destroyed what I had built. And the withdrawal symptoms after stopping my oestrogen medication were having the same, undesirable effect all over again.

As the days to the operation drew closer, I could feel myself becoming more angry, more emotional, more withdrawn and more confused. I also knew how much the operation would hurt, at least I thought I did. My facial surgery had been excruciating – it was a major reconstruction of the bones of my face and I had been unconscious for nearly 14 hours.

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New woman: Jan says she has finally found peace, despite the physical trauma of her operation

I knew I would be out for another eight hours for this operation. I knew it would be even more painful and I was terrified. Five months on from the original surgery, I had lost much of Ian, not least his certainty and his bravery.

Since the early Fifties, when ex-GI Christine Jorgensen caused a global sensation by becoming the first man to undergo a sex-change, the accepted technique has been what is called penile inversion. This process, as practised in the UK, uses the skin of the penis to create a vagina that is little more than a tube.

The cosmetic results are not good, and sensation is a lottery but, even so, the technique has survived for 50 years. If you apply for gender reassignment on the NHS, this is what you will be offered. Actually, it's all you will be offered – the NHS does not do facial feminisation, hair transplants or laser hair removal. You will also be treated in a mental health clinic, despite the fact that you suffer from a birth condition.

The man I chose to change me from a man to a woman was the same surgeon who rebuilt my face – Dr Suporn Watanyusakul of the Aikchol Hospital in Chonburi, Thailand. After exhaustive research on the internet, I discovered that Dr Suporn is the world's leading expert in feminisation.

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Honour: Ian receiving a medal for services in Iraq from Prince Edward

But now I know he is more than that: he is an artist. More than 1,500 people have travelled from all over the world to be treated by him. In the transsexual community, he is a legend. He is also one of the kindest and most gentle men I have ever met.

He pioneered a technique of genital reassignment surgery that is light years ahead of anything available in this country, or anywhere else for that matter.

In all honesty, I think I am a little in love with him, in a paternal kind of way. He is, in so many ways, my father now: he made me and has held my life, figuratively and literally, in his hands.

Dr Suporn has his own way of doing things. His technique is complex and painful and takes six months to heal, but the results are astounding. Unless you are a gynaecologist, you cannot tell the difference between a Suporn trans-woman and a genetic one.

I flew out to Thailand at the end of January and checked into a small business hotel a few minutes from the hospital and Dr Suporn's clinic. All the clinic's patients use the hotel, as it has specially trained staff who are very understanding.

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Living a lie: Ian was a decorated soldier, but he could never find happiness

On the evening of my arrival, Dr Suporn explained the procedure to me in his office. His evident pride in his work filled his voice. We sat in the dark, his diagrams illuminated by a dim desk-lamp.

Sleep didn't come easily that night, which would be my last as a man. By the time I was wheeled down to the fourth floor of Aikchol Hospital the following day, I was shaking with fear. Ian had long since left me, I had run out of reserves of courage.

Dr Suporn's clinic has its own specialised staff and occupies an entire floor of the private hospital and his wonderful nurses hugged me and held my hand.

I prayed for God to guide Dr Suporn's hand, for my family who had abandoned me, for my ex-wife, that she would find happiness again, and for all the friends who anxiously waited to hear of my news.

Over the next eight hours, while I was under general anaesthetic, Dr Suporn removed my testes and made my new feminine form.

Of course, an operation of this delicacy and complexity involves a lot of detailed surgery. I needed more than 500 stitches. The recovery is long and painful. For seven days, I lay in hospital – with two catheters and about 30ft of bandages inside me – in a morphine-induced haze.

I screamed when Dr Suporn performed his magician's trick of pulling yards and yards of the dressings from inside me. The operation was apparently successful, but my new groin looked like an inflated football. Trying to walk was utter agony.

I know I will never be able to have children, but to all intents and purposes, I was now identical to any post-hysterectomy female. I was now a woman.

A few days later, I was discharged back to the hotel. I think I went mad in that hotel room. I couldn't walk, so I locked myself away, living on room service. I was in too much agony even to watch TV or read.

I spent my time lying on my back and waiting for the pain to subside. I think I became addicted to my morphine and taking about 25 other pills every day – anti-depressants, anti-inflammatories, sleeping pills, oral painkillers, antibiotics – Elvis couldn't have taken more!

I had the most acute physical pain imaginable, like a knife driving into my gut, and the most intense migraine I thought would never go away. I was told that was a hormone withdrawal symptom. By day ten, I started shaking and vomiting and my skin came out in a rash as a reaction to the cocktail of strong drugs with vicious side-effects. I lost all sense of reason.

My only link to the outside world was the internet connection, downstairs in reception. I knew every painful step to get there - ten from my room to the lift, seven floors down, fifty across reception, then squirming on my rubber ring – a hollow cushion given to women recovering from difficult childbirth – as I tried to sit in some form of comfort. My emails home became more desperate. My sanity left me, every little piece of small tragedy became amplified to massive proportions. Why had my mother disowned me? Why had The Parachute Regiment disowned me? What would I do for the rest of my life? Why had God made me such a freak?

Eventually it got too much. I wrote a very sober and simple email and said "goodbye". I went up to my room and took every pill I could find.

Luckily, I was more loved than I realised. A small group of girl-friends read the email and called the hotel – who in turn got me into an ambulance.

It is strange to think now that two weeks after my surgery I would be back in hospital – this time by my own hand.

I had completely underestimated the power of hormones on my body. The removal of my testes took away the driving force of testosterone, while I was forbidden from restarting my oestrogen treatment for another two weeks. My body and mind struggled to adjust. I was alone, halfway round the world and surrounded by people who didn't speak much English.

Even as I took handfuls of pills, I knew it was irrational, but at that moment, I had given up the fight.

After the overdose, I was unconscious for about four hours. They told me afterwards if I had gone 12 hours, I would be dead. I was forced to go cold turkey for a couple of days as part of the detoxification process – and, my God, how I shook. But when I was allowed back on my hormones, I felt genuinely sorry for the pain I had caused and grateful that I was so valued and loved.

I was discharged from hospital back to the hotel within 24 hours and was on a flight back to London ten days later. The flight was long and painful, and in many ways my arrival back at my home near Blackpool was an anticlimax.

For so long, I'd been using all my mental strength to get this far. Now I was back, I realised the world still turned whatever I did. Life goes on, bills still have to be paid. But I am gradually realising that my life has changed.

I know I will always be tall and always have quite a broad skeleton, but now I can look people, men in particular, in the eye.

Before my operation I was a man, now I know I am a woman and that means everything to me.

More importantly, I am adjusting to being a woman in what is still, in so many ways, a man's world. It doesn't mean that women cannot compete, it is just that we have been given different ways of achieving our goals.

In the old days, I would have marched into a meeting, been instantly regarded as an alpha male and said: "I want this to happen and I want it to happen now". As a woman, I can't do that. I bite my tongue and find myself saying, particularly to men: "Do you think we could look at this another way?" or "Can I put this to the group?"

I think some men are intimidated when I challenge them and they feel undermined by my intellect and experience – I am well travelled, speak a number of languages and am used to making decisions.

In a social setting, I am coming to terms with being judged on my physical appearance. Some men are clearly attracted to me, but become confused when they find out about my past. Some are fascinated by what I have been through, while others blanch at the very mention of it.

A male friend gave me a lecture about not showing weakness now I'm a woman, but I've come to realise that women have different strengths, such as emotional intuition, dexterity of language and perception of feeling. I've had to check myself in meetings so as not to appear over-assertive for a woman amid competitive men.

My world has changed completely. Exactly a year ago, The Parachute Regiment offered me the job of Air Operations Officer which meant I would, had I had stayed a man, have been running the helicopter operations in Afghanistan. Now I have no job and am currently embroiled in a legal battle with the Army.

The only contact I have had with my regiment was to be told by my colonel that I had "gone from hero to zero in one day" and I received 400 hate-mails on an Army gossip website, many from people I had served with.

But would I go back? Never. My body may be broken, but it's healing. This story has a happy ending. When I wake in the mornings, I am truly content. I never thought I could be happy like this. My male friends cannot understand what I have done and, indeed, I wouldn't wish it on them. What happened to me is an accident of birth. I didn't choose it.

A friend I had known before the operation told me he didn't know how to treat me now. The answer is easy: treat me as any other woman, with respect and civility. It's remarkably easy.

My Army career is now over, so I am going to have to build a new career in the media as a writer and presenter. At the same time, I would like my story to help transsexuals gain acceptance in our society, particularly in the military, and I would like to find a man who loves me.

I would like a little cottage, with a line of lavender to the front door. I would love to adopt a child that needs a warm and tender mother. Most of all, I would like to stop fighting.

All my life has been a battle - against the Queen's enemies, against society, but also, more importantly, against myself. Now, the war is over.

It comes at a price but, for me, it has been worth paying. I am a woman.

• Cutting Edge: Sex Change Soldier, Channel 4, Thursday, 9pm.