Lynda Cash

Lynda Cash (born 1950) is the first transsexual to have served in the Royal Navy. She has served in the Falklands War as a man and was rejected from royal navy service.

Pre-operation
Brian Waling from Bolton, Lancashire worked as an operating theatre technician and joined the Royal Navy in 1971. He married and had one child.

During the Falklands War, 1982, he served on HMS Invincible treating seriously injured servicemen.

In 1986 he started to transition and was discharged from the Navy. As Lynda, she had surgery in 1988. She then worked for North Manchester Healthcare NHS Trust. She met her boyfriend on a trip to Chester, but waited five years before telling him about her past. He stayed with her.

She has war flashbacks and post traumatic stress disorder. In 1999, she appealed to a tribunal claiming unfair dismissal and medical negligence. This claim was dismissed. She then appealed on grounds of sex discrimination, but was dismissed on the grounds that the time limit had expired in 1995. She then applied for a sickness pension in that it was post-traumatic stress rather than her gender change that had made her unsuitable to stay in the Navy. A letter from the Naval Personnel Secretariat said: “Because her post-traumatic stress disorder remained undiagnosed or acknowledged, her gender dysphoria and its apparent effects became the primary reason for dealing with her case administratively”. She was awarded £68,000 in back pension payments.