G.I. Jenkins: How the Welsh opera diva Katherine swapped designer dresses for desert camouflage
"Missile alert at rear! Missile alert at rear!" are not words I ever expected to hear when I became a singer, but when they were urgently shouted as I flew between bases on my first 12-hour, whistle-stop tour to entertain the troops in Iraq, it was for real.
As I was hit by the G-force of the helicopter plunging 1,500ft in seconds, I glanced at the soldiers sitting opposite me: they looked every bit as petrified as I was. I started screaming. While the helicopter was still plummeting, the pilot tilted its nose forward to try to see where the missile was coming from. We were rocking and rolling about all over the place.
"Oh, God!' I thought. "This is it. I'm going to die."
My first contact with the military came just before my 15th birthday when I decided to do something that was totally out of character: I went on a school trip to the Army base in Crickhowell for a training course. All the boys in my class were dead keen to do it and, as I was seen as the ultimate girlie girl, they kept joking that I would never put my name down. But I did.
The Army gave me a hard time on the commando assault course, where I'd never seen so much mud in my life. There I was, trying to protect my hairdo and make-up and not break any fingernails, which drove the instructor doolally.
"You wanna be in the Army?" he kept bellowing at me, his face an inch from mine. "You're too pretty to be in the Army." At one stage, his foot on my back, he pushed me face down into the mud. I thought it was fab-lous, as we say in Wales.
Ten years later, in May 2005, I was asked to perform in London's Trafalgar Square at a massive concert attended by 15,000 people to mark the 60th anniversary of VE Day.
I was singing the final song of the show, Dame Vera Lynn's wartime classic We'll Meet Again, when I noticed her standing at the back of the stage, singing along. "Oh, gosh, this is so wrong," I thought. "She should be out here, centre stage."
I went over to Dame Vera and drew her out to the middle of the stage. The two of us then stood there together, holding hands, as I sang the rest of the song. The people in the square went crazy.
It couldn't have been more emotional and afterwards both Dame Vera and I were in tears. "You must go out and entertain the troops, you know," she said. "I will," I promised.
Photographs of Dame Vera and I holding hands appeared in the newspapers and they began to call me "the new Forces' Sweetheart", so I guess it wasn't surprising that I received an invitation from the British Forces Foundation (BFF) to go out to entertain the troops in Basra.
The BFF was launched in 1999 by the comedian Jim Davidson. Entertainers work on a voluntary basis, with only their travel and equipment costs met. Emma Bunton, Martine McCutcheon, Atomic Kitten and Status Quo have all done work for BFF but none of them had been to Basra. I jumped at the chance.
In December 2005, we flew to Kuwait where we boarded an enormous helicopter; the type that has a ramp at the end for loading Land Rovers and such. I was so "go-go-go" that when asked if I would like to sit on the edge of the ramp and look out of the open back, for some reason I said: "OK."
The next thing I knew, I had a harness strapped around my waist and I was sitting right on the edge of the ramp. Flying 2,000ft above the desert, the view is amazing, but when the helicopter is open at the back and there are machine-guns on board it is a trifle unsettling, to say the least.
The base where we did our first show, for 1,500 troops, was right next to the Shatt al-Arab waterway. The stage was two flat-bed lorries parked back-to-back. Jim Davidson was absolutely brilliant and created a great atmosphere.
While he was performing, I was waiting in the wings, wearing a Marc Jacobs dress which I had deliberately chosen for its patriotic red, white and dark blue stripes. When it came to my turn, I sang my heart out and tried to keep the tears at bay. It seemed to go down well.
For the show, this time for about 4,000 troops, I had tried to choose songs that my audience would be at least a little familiar with, such as operatic aria-turned footie anthem Nessun Dorma, Over The Rainbow, and my version of Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You.
I ended with You'll Never Walk Alone because the words are so appropriate to express what I wanted to convey to the soldiers: that we were all there for them and proud of what they were trying to achieve. When I was singing Over The Rainbow, all the troops sang along with me. It was such an emotional moment: I could see some of them gazing up at me through tear-filled eyes.
At the end, some of the soldiers presented me with my own set of desert combats. I was so touched I burst into tears. I'd been admiring their combats all day because they're such lovely colours. Jim had nicknamed me GI Jenkins, so the soldiers had even embroidered "Jenkins" on the shirt pocket.
