creating any disturbance. The officer did inform me of the one obvious thing I was doing, however. You just don't see a woman, unescorted on a downtown street at 4:00 in the morning. THAT was my undoing!

After a few minutes they called my superior officer on the base. He eventually came and took me back to the base. From then on it was just a matter of some paperwork until I was discharged.

When I was back on the base, the first thing they did was to pull my security-pass. I had to be escorted everywhere I wnet while on the base. Only a very few people knew what had been done and most of my friends were amazed at what had happened.

Previosuly, I had been sort of a model soldier - not causing any kind of a problem for my unit. My commanding officer wanted to give me a general discharge and I had the option of accepting his decision or going for a court martial.

I elected to take my chances with the Court and this must have bothered my commanding officer. No doubt it would have been quite an embassassment to him to go before a mili- tary court with a case involving a transvestite.

My superior office, a First Sergeant, said that he had never heard of such a situation in the 20 years that he had been in the service.

After a few days the commander called me into his office to give me his decision. He had changed his mind and would recommend an honorable discharge under Air Force regulation 39-16. This states that anyone coming under that category was "unfit for military service." This does not usually carry an honorable discharge with it. Frankly, this was about the best that I could hope for, even with a court martial. They could not have given me more and there was a very good chance I could have gotten considerably less.

I agreed to this as it allowed me the full pay and other benefits afforded anyone who got out under normal circumstan-

ces.

The whole ordeal was quite a strain on my wife who stuck by me throughout the whole episode. Fortunately the children were very young and did not know of what was happening.

With my service career behind me I decided to move back to my home state and begin a new life as a civilian.

I had been back home a little over a month when the whole thing was exposed to my parents as to the exact reason for my discharge.

Earlier in this story I had mentioned that my father was from the "old school" and did not "take" to this information.

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