The horrors of the battlefield are as fresh for Colonel Dr Kelvin Wright today as they were at the height of the Afghan conflict.
As a reservist Army medic, he vividly recalls his daily Chinook helicopter flights across enemy-held Helmand territory, having volunteered to risk his life to save critically injured soldiers and civilians. Their injuries, as he recalls today, were often gruesome.
But for all his distinguished front-line service over a 14-year military career, the intensive care consultant has now been defeated by a different sort of enemy – the extreme ideology of the trans lobby.
The 54-year-old, whose calmness and expertise were so respected that he ran the emergency department at Camp Bastion hospital during his second tour of duty, has now been forced to quit the job he loves after being dragged through a Kafkaesque disciplinary process.
His ‘crime’? To share, without comment, a Facebook post that he considered simple common sense – but which promoted an angry backlash from one of his junior officers. The message featured a quote from women’s rights campaigner Helen Joyce which read: ‘If women cannot stand in a public place and say ‘Men cannot be women’, then we do not have women’s rights at all.’
