The Riddle of Gender - Deborah Rudacille [159]
The colonel said, “I didn’t know about it.” And I said, “Well, the commanding general of the Sixth Army knows about it.” “How could he?” I said, “Because I had lunch with him three weeks ago! Because everyone wanted to meet me. The general asked me, Are you happier?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am.’” Nobody cared, because I was doing a great job. But when Washington found out about it, when the paperwork went through and they began to put two and two together and realized what had happened, then they started asking questions coming down the line, or in the proverbial military terms, it became CYA time: “cover your ass.” They wouldn’t admit to the fact that they knew. So all of a sudden my commander calls me in and says, “Someone is out to get you.” I said, “What do you mean?” and he says, “Well, the Inspector General is coming down, and you’re being charged with subversive activities, prohibited access to classified documents, immoral sexual activity, and fraudulent enlistment.” They had about fourteen charges, and that was the saving grace because they had gone so overboard…. They wanted to discredit me so badly that if it got into the press, the press would simply write me off as a bad apple. But when the press started looking at the record, they said, “Something’s wrong here. No person could be this bad and get this far in their career without being discovered and discharged years ago.”
I met Christine Jorgensen around this time. Long story, but my friend Jude Patton invited me to come with him, and I was in uniform at the time, and when we got into her living room she turned around and looked at me and said, “Do they know?” And I said, “Yeah, the ones that count locally know. I was open with them.” She said, “Your day will come.” So when the colonel announced that I was being charged with all these things, I called Christine and … it was ten o’clock in the morning… and she said, “Do you know what time it is?” I said, “Yeah, it’s ten o’clock,” and she says, “I don’t get up till two in the afternoon. I’m a night person.” Click. So I called back about three and apologized for waking her up and said, “This is Sergeant Clark. Do you remember me?” and she said, “Oh yeah.” I said, “Do you remember what you said to me? ‘Your day will come.’ Well, it has.” She says, “Come on down.” So I drove down and brought all my paperwork. And she looked it over and said, “This is great stuff. Do you mind if I call a friend of mine at the Times}” and I said, “Not at all.” The reporter for the Times came down and looked at everything and she looked over at me and said, “This is what we call a ‘gee whiz’ story.” So she interviewed people all the way up the line. Basically, they had me walking on water without getting my feet wet, is what she told me. So I took her article and a TV interview and I mailed it all to President Carter and said, “I need help.” Well, Christmas Eve of ’77 I get a letter from the White House, three pages long, clearing me of all allegations but saying, “Don’t call us, we won’t call you. Transgendered are deemed to be psychologically unstable, therefore unfit for military service.” I only had nine months left to go before retirement, but they wouldn’t let me finish my service. Nine and a half months and I would have retired with a pension that included my service in Vietnam.
Q: When were you in Vietnam?
Sixty-eight during the Tet Offensive. I wasn’t on the