In May 2023 I got sent from Fort Drum to Norfolk, VA to work in the control center for an exercise called Ocean Venture, in which 10th Mountain and 82d Airborne were fighting each other.
This was when President Clinton had just announced he was opening the military to gays, before DADT was made the rule. They were talking about it on CNN and this Army bird colonel was just screaming bloody murder about this. Then he made the worst mistake of his life: he turned to me and said, “Sergeant, what do you think about this?”
“Sir, I’ve been a SIGINTer for 11 years. The crew I’ve got now, they’re straight but they’re barely functional. They can’t search, they can’t figure out how to get to PT on time and the PT pad is outside their window, they can’t shoot…about all they can do is maintain those shitty 10th Mountain haircuts. In Berlin we had a transcriber who was a lesbian and our chain of command basically ignored every regulation on the books to keep her in the Army because she was so good. I think if you can send me a dozen people who can do this job and read a clock I don’t care how gay they are.” The colonel looked at me and said, “you’ve got a good point.”
Funny addition to the story: the lesbian transcriber I mentioned in the last paragraph got recruited to work at the National Security Agency before she got out of the Army. In 1990 you could be gay and work at NSA, but you had to come out to your family in front of three NSA officers because there’s a history of the KGB using your gayness to blackmail you into spying for them. So the Agency paid for her whole family to come to the DC area to conduct the ceremony. Paid for a whole week in a nice hotel, airfare…they had to buy their own food but other than that…. So, comes the day of the Big Reveal and the operator, her whole family and the three officers go into a conference room. The operator stood up and announced she was a lesbian. Her mom turned to the officer and said, “we already knew, but thanks for the free vacation.”
During the Iraq War when President Obama lifted DADT I saw a lot of stuff on message boards on the “what will the troops think if they find out one of their buddies is gay?” My response was always the same: “Probably a lot less negative than what they thought when they found out the civilian cooks in the mess hall are making more money than their battalion commanders.”
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