Mildred was my lover the whole time we were in the service together. She was chosen to be a spy and any activity that she observed among the women that might be of a homosexual nature, she was to report that. And, it's amazing, but she never did see anything to report. (Laughs). So she was an honorable woman, a trustworthy woman. And gay as they come.
Born in 1920, Phyllis was the model WAC and even served as a recruiter. "I was chosen for a lot of publicity work, not because I was the prettiest by any means, but because I represented the kind of woman they wanted in the service. I was a good WAC." Having kept her sexual orientation and her affair with her girlfriend a secret, Phyllis received an honorable discharge. She returned to a civilian life and found no support network to live her life as a lesbian and instead followed the pattern of many in her generation: she met a man, got married and raised four children. Phyllis died of cancer in July of 1993, just three months after her on-camera interview for Coming Out Under Fire. The film is dedicated to her memory.
I was a store keeper second class, and I sold jeans and tee-shirts in this quonset hut out of this window. And I was excellent. They told me I did absolutely good work. I was gay but no action. I was just gay as a person. There was no action involved in my discharge. It was guilty by association. There was no action involved in the behavior, conduct, none. It was because I was gay, and that someone said I was gay.
David, born in 1917, played it "straight" during his military career, only to be caught up in a homosexual purge in Noumea. Interrogations were common tactics used by military officers to coerce soldiers under pressure into naming names. David was implicated and that was how David got his two friends in trouble -- an act that David to this day feels a deep guilt about, since he complied only in exchange with a promise made by the officer in charge that nothing would happen to them. David received an undesirable discharge but was upgraded to honorable in 1981. He worked as a Merchant Marine and is now retired in San Francisco.
I went in at seventeen and came out at twenty-one and I knew I was a man. I also knew I was gay, and that I suppose is all a part of it. Although I cannot recall having a crush on any Marines I met. I never recall any problems in the showers or in the toilets or in the foxholes or anything else. It certainly taught me that I had nerve. I mean it took nerve to put a dress on and run out there in front of five hundred or a thousand of your peers that were all pretending to be so macho. I felt I could punch anybody in the face -- you want to call me "faggot" go ahead. But watch your teeth when you do it because "faggots" got a lot of teeth in it when you say it. So I got a lot out of the Marine Corps!
Tom, born in 1925, served in the military's celebrated Special Services and provided entertainment for the troops. Military officials used the shows, and drag routines in particular, to boost troop morale. Tom explains, "Why Drag? Because who wants to look at a whole bunch of Marines in Marine Corps uniforms out there singing songs?! They want to laugh!" Tom received an honorable discharge. Recently retired as a loan officer in Santa Cruz, CA, Tom and his longtime companion are now touring the nation in their trailer.
We didn't know what was going to happen. They bombed Pearl Harbor and we didn't know where they were and we had no Navy and everybody thought, "Good God they're going to come over and blow us up." And it was panic. That's the only word to describe it. And everyone knew that they were going to be involved.
Fearful of possible rejection of family and friends, "R.D. Winter" would only allow the camera crew to photograph his silhouette. "R.D. Winter" describes himself as a patriotic "red-blooded American boy" who wanted to "get in and do it" only to find himself caught in a web of persecution. During a witch hunt in Noumea (see David Barrett), he was rounded up, interrogated, put behind barbed wire, and intimidated: "I was humiliated and sick of mind and I just thought, 'Well, they're not going to break me.' One guy kept telling me, 'You're going to stay in this brig forever. And when the war ends you're going to be in the brig in the States until you sign (a confession).' So I signed. What could I do? Where was the Constitution of the United States? It wasn't around me!"
My heart sank because I thought something had happened to my parents or something-why would the commanding officer want to see me? And he said, "Are you a cocksucker?" and I thought, "I'm going to die here." Everybody knew something was happening, every eye was focused on me. And I started to perspire. It was very hot. "Are you one of those New York Jew faggots?" he said in his Texas accent.
Born in 1923, Marvin met his first group of gay friends in the Military. They wrote each other using the "camp" vernacular of Dorothy Parker, often including the salutation "darling". These letters were eventually intercepted by military censors and Marvin was committed to a psychiatric ward after being diagnosed as a "psychopathic personality," the official military description for homosexuals in World War II. Marvin received an undesirable discharge and went on to deny his homosexuality for most of his adult life while working fervently for the Republican party. In the summer of 1990, the then 67-year-old Marvin Leibman, who the Washington Post described as "one of the founders of the modern conservative movement," shocked both his political associates and his personal friends when he announced in the pages of the National Review and the Advocate that he was gay. He wrote his autobiography, Coming Out Conservative, and currently resides in Washington, D.C. where he continues to be outspoken on gay and lesbian issues.
I don't know that I ever saw a homosexual person that couldn't function in the service. The sergeant in my barracks at one time was such an effeminate, so sissified that everybody in the barracks kidded about him. But he had style so that they didn't mess with him. He was still in charge of that barracks-but he was a real queen! There was no question about that. But he functioned within military limits and nobody messed with him.
Born in 1919, Stuart entered the military with a sophisticated knowledge of gay life, having discovered it in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. He started as a gun crew chief and eventually was suspected of being homosexual. Stuart recalls, "A young man might be just in the process of discovering he was homosexual, and there would be a panic reaction and then he'd be in trouble. Being gay meant I had a greater understanding of what this person was going through and that way I worked to help this person in ways some other psychologist might not have been able." Stuart received an honorable discharge and settled in San Francisco where he taught psychology at San Francisco State University.
I was at the induction station and it was a very, very difficult thing for me to ever decide if somebody is a homosexual regardless of his behavior. I mainly concerned myself with people who were trying to get out of the service, and there were many more people who weren't effeminate by contrast who were trying to get out going into the service than the person who had these effeminate gestures. So I never ruled out a person who seemed effeminate to me and they would go into the service.
Born in 1915, Dr. Greenspan was what the Navy called a "90-day wonder," a member of the military's personnel who went through 90 days of "quick training" in the basics of psychiatry so to process the mass mobilization of recruits during World War II. However, Dr. Greenspan was not in wholehearted agreement with the Navy. He co-wrote a study on homosexuals in the military entitled "The Homosexual as Personality Type." Dr. Greenspan lives with his wife in Pennsylvania.
When I got down to Tuskegee Army Airfield you had better realize that it was not the fact that you were gay, but you were first of all black. I was in the colored Army. We were not allowed to serve our country as equals, and the laws of the country were against you. And if you were also identified as a gay person, that was a double-whammy. And you had better watch what you said and did. We had to juggle both at the same time -- being black and being gay. Black was obvious; gay was hidden.
Bruce enlisted as a way to receive G.I. benefits in order to pay his college tuition and wasn't about to take any risks. He purposely avoided the "spotlight" and eventually received an honorable discharge and his education. It was during his civilian employment with the Department of Defense that he encountered first-hand the government's anti-homosexual policies. With the Military's policy as a foundation, President Eisenhower issued a 1953 Executive Order banning homosexuals and other "moral subversives" from all federal jobs. Bruce remembers, "I didn't come out. I was brought out by my government. My phone was tapped, my apartment was broken into...trying to find out if I was a gay person -- and if I was, who I knew to make a daisy chain to name other people." Bruce is now retired in Oakland and volunteers for various AIDS organizations.
We weren't shunned by any of the rest of the service men, but we were our own little clique. The gays know each other and can tell. It was obvious that they were in there and being gay you know those things. I did. Mannerism -- all kinds of different ways. I was sometimes on patrol at the PX and at the base theater, and I would swish and carry on at the base theater. And they'd say, "Look, that's an M.P." And I'd say, "You girls, get in line. Watch it now; go on, girls, get in line!" (Laughs).
"Clark" was born in 1921, helped create the first known gay circulated newsletter while serving in the military. Called "The Myrtle Beach Bitch," with subsequent issues titled "The Myrtle Beach Belle," and "The Bitches' Camouflage," these publications were sent to gay service members and featured lighthearted stories about themselves and "finding" each other. Unfortunately, it was these very same newsletters that got "Clark" into trouble. "Clark" was court marshalled for "the sending of vile and obscene matter through the mail...calculated necessarily to injure public morality and to prejudice the morals of other soldiers who receive such publications." He served nine months in prison. "Clark" was one of the first gay men to protest the military's anti-homosexual policy by petitioning to change his undesirable discharge status. That was in 1945 and his most recent requests continue to be denied. He currently lives in the South.
I liked the Military life. I liked the discipline. I liked the order. I liked the propaganda, the marching, and the tunes. But I think my experience was not so positive. It threatened my love life and my very strong feelings toward another person. It was not alright to fall in love with a woman. So it made me very, very guarded for years and years. It took away what power that I thought I had. It broke my spirit, really -- a lot. And that's been hard to recover, very hard.
Sarah was born in 1923, was raised in the small town of Independence, Iowa. She joined the WAVES for "the adventure, the excitement. I was going to save the world for democracy. I didn't hear anything about being queer. Didn't even know that word existed when I went into the Navy." Nevertheless, it was in the WAVES that Sarah had her first lesbian affair, only to be caught up in the military's witch hunt for homosexuals. After being interrogated, Sarah broke up with her lover to avoid discovery -- a threat which affected her feelings towards women for decades. Sarah received an honorable discharge. As an act of coming out publicly, Sarah took her favorite sport -- swimming -- to the 1990 Gay Games and won 7 gold medals in the seniors category. She currently competes in the Masters Swimmers Program at the University of San Francisco.