There has always been this stereotype of the women’s services as a stronghold of lesbians; and there might, I say just might sometime in the distant past, have had some validity to this stereotype, depending on the times and in some places. There was a gay activist I recollect reading some years ago, who insisted that 100% of the women in the WWII services were lesbian, a dubious factoid that may come as a considerable surprise to male veterans of that era, especially those who romanced and/or married a pretty nurse, typist or vehicle driver whom they met whilst both were in uniform. I would tend to agree that during the long decades after WWII when female service members were forbidden to marry or have children, those women who decided to devote themselves to a military career may possibly have contained a slightly higher proportion of those whose amours were of the Sapphic variety… or possibly just unenthusiastically heterosexual.

In my own service, I was acquainted with a bare handful of women who I would not have been surprised to learn that they were gay… frankly, I preferred not to know, and refrained from speculating, lest I ever be hauled up before the local AFOSI and asked point-blank and asked to choose between either lying outright, or narking out a friend. And the services did embark on those lesbian hunts, vigorously, thoroughly and with every evidence of keen enjoyment. A number of my female mid-rank and senior NCO friends all thoughtfully agreed during the early days of the Clinton administration, that “don’t ask-don’t tell” banished that particular nightmare for us. Frankly, I was surprised as hell that I was never accused of being a lesbian— there certainly were people that hated my guts and took note of my conspicuously unmarried state. I can only suppose I was saved by my notorious disinterest and demonstrated incompetence at any sort of organized team sports.

It would be my personal, scientific wild-ass-guess that the lesbian proportion among women serving in the US Armed Forces these days is no more than the representation in the general population— and that would be the 3% that is the small “c” conservative estimation. It may even be less than that, actually. I’d be basing this on the admittedly anecdotal experience of basic training, and a good few years of living in the barracks, where there are no secrets. Let me reiterate: thanks to thin walls, shared rooms and gang latrines, there are damn few secrets in a military barracks, least of all about ones’ sex life.

And for Air Force basic military training, about the only thing the women in my training flight had in common aside from XX chromosomes and a taste for adventure, was some kind of interest in the male of our species, ranging from the intense to the mildly intellectually curious. (Or as my daughter would put it; “strictly dickly”.) Guys, guys and only guys; and watching the other girls put on full-date makeup, carefully arranged hairstyles, and most perfectly arranged Class-A uniforms on the occasion we were allowed to go down to the training-side BX annex… on liberty… by ourselves (or in pairs, anyway) for the period of one hour to purchase such small personal items as toothpaste and deodorant was sufficient to convince me of that. Other girls in the flight became ostentatiously and suddenly religious… because we could go to services on Sunday, and at least sit in adjacent pews. As we advanced in training, we were permitted certain periods of base liberty, to frolic chastely and pursue and be pursued in such venues as the bowling alley, the library, the BX annex and snack bar, and the Skylark Recreation Center.

Prior to being allowed such dizzying freedoms, we were given a stern lecture about the guys… well, those that we would be encountering. Not the usual common or garden American guys, though. There would be foreigners… with strange and potentially alluring ways. Or maybe not, since there were some very, very different cultural differences involved.

Lackland AFB was, and still is a major military training center for more than just Air Force basic. The AF security police tech school, and the basic officer training course were there…. And there was some kind of tech school training course for foreign military enlistees, distinctive by their somewhat colorful uniforms and occasionally very crude behavior in formation and out of it. Our TI, Sgt. Petre, kept an admirable poker face when she gave us the lecture; no, some of the strange stories we would hear about the Saudi Arabian and Iranian students were absolutely not true. They were strangers in a strange land, and we should be polite, of course, but we should keep in mind that as far as cultural mores went, as military women we would be even stranger to them. And we should be careful about giving any encouragement, because the gentlemen trainees from Saudi and Iran had a tendency to assume a great deal from it. Sgt Petre told us about a female trainee who collected such a single-minded and persistent admirer that he was camped out on the sidewalk in front of the squadron training building waiting for her every time her flight had base liberty, which so rattled the poor girl that she stopped leaving the building at all.

(to be continued)