Kicked out of the paras on Monday, then disowned by her family on Tuesday.

Announcing oneself as transgender is fraught with prejudice and rejection in 2023, but twenty years ago, it must have been twenty times worse.

Abigail Austen, who served in the paras throughout the early 2000s, is now releasing a book which re-tells how she became the first person to undergo gender reassignment whilst she served in the British Army.

If the writing is anything like her interview style, Sugar and Spice should make for a rollicking read.

Abigail Austen speaks with boldness, purpose, and an unshakeable sense of character – traits which have been the hallmark of someone who has overcome a level of trauma which many would have considered not worth living through.

Miss Austen’s roots are in Aberdeenshire in north east Scotland, but her time in Colchester as a member of the famed parachute regiment played a huge part in her forcing through change which, were it not for her, may never have been enacted in the military.

Now 58, Austen’s decision to join the army some 40 years ago was a desperate act of escapism, an elaborate attempt to cover up who she really was.

The idea of masking one’s true self is not unusual for many people before they come out as members of the LGBT community, but Miss Austen went to radical lengths to escape a family of protestant evangelicals who rejected her.

In 1982, when she was 18, she joined the military.

She said: “The army was a way out for me – it was a chance for me to go off and do something else.

“Where I grew up was a small and conservative and blinkered place – I had all this conflict going on about who I am.

“Any time I tried to realise that, I got battered for it – this is at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Scotland.

“In the 1970s, it was a different environment for women – joining the army isn’t exclusive to men, but we didn’t see it that way when I was growing up as a kid.

“If you were a women, you had to be a clerk or a nurse.”

After serving for four years, Miss Austen worked in television for a decade before going on to re-join the British Army in in the mid-90s, and served with distinction whilst commanding a company from the parachute regiment on operations in Iraq.

It was in 2007, whilst Miss Austen was in the paras, that she identified as a female – and that’s when she started a completely different kind of battle.

“I had become a very good actor – I’d always been me, but the world wanted to see me as something else.

“The para mentality is that I’m never giving in – this was a constant battle to find myself for 44 years.”

That is not how the British Army saw it.

With no precedent to draw on when it came to transgender servicemen and servicewomen, the reaction was one of incredulity and disgust.

Although gay and lesbian citizens had been allowed to serve in the UK Armed Forces for seven years – it had been permitted since 2000 – transgender rights and legislation felt centuries behind.

In an instant, Miss Austen’s accolades serving in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Afghanistan seemed to be wiped from the history books – it would have felt more convenient for the military had she never existed.

“When I informed the chain of command, they were incredulous about the whole thing.

“There were no precedents for them to turn to – it was literally brand new.

“You’ve got to think about the culture because it’s not how it is now,” she explained.

“The regiment disowned me on the Monday and my family disowned me on the Tuesday – it wasn’t a great week.

“The word ‘trans’ simply didn’t exist – it was seen as effeminate, homosexual behaviour.

“It was only a few years before that homosexuality had been removed as a court martial offence –  the culture was behind the curve and there was a huge amount of conflict.

“When they rejected me after all the service I had been through, I got pretty angry about it.

“I was very public about what the army had done – people were quite taken aback by a paratrooper as being a masculine person and me revealing the fact that I was a woman.”

If her time in the military had taught Miss Austen anything, it was that she was going to fight, and a two-and-a-half legal battle ensued.

She changed her name, started the transitioning process and, eventually, she won her case against the British Army who were forced by the courts to acknowledge Miss Austen as the first trans officer in the army, and the first woman in the parachute regiment.

“Despite everything that happened, I am very proud of serving in the paras,” she said.

“The regiment has adopted Colchester – it’s a badge of honour for the city.

“To this day, I’m incredibly proud of my service in the paras and I have leveraged that experience in a way nobody would have thought possible.”

Miss Austen lives a quieter life in Liverpool these days.

Her years of service on the frontline of battle are over, but when it comes to the debate on trans rights, Miss Austen does not shy away from the fight.

“I’ve come back into [fighting this cause] because members of the trans community have been tortured when they’ve appeared in the media.

“[The public] can’t really do that to me, because I’m a decorated veteran – I’m back fighting it again, and I’m taking the battle to the enemy.

“I’m an example of what’s possible if you have the moral courage to stand up for your true self – it’s about how you can use the principles of the army to live in society.

“When there is next a female officer in the para regiment, I will applaud that to the high heavens.

“Until that happens, I will push for change.”