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Today's "Never Forget" is courtesy of C.S. in Los Angeles, CA (and, on some level, D.L. in Los Angeles, CA, too).
You might say that Dave Lara was born under a bad sign. From a very early age, he knew he was gay, and in a time and place where gay was not OK (early 1950s southern California). His very traditionally Latino father put the pieces together, decreed "I know what you are," and nearly killed young Dave with a blow to the head when he was 10. His mother eventually left the marriage, taking Dave with her, but then died in 1965, when he was 17.
Left with few options, Lara was emancipated, and then enlisted in the U.S. Navy, just as the Vietnam War was really heating up. He was trained as a corpsman and assigned to the hospital ship U.S.S. Repose.
The good news about hospital-ship duty, broadly speaking, is that you're generally not getting shot at while doing your work. The good news for Lara, in particular, is that the work gave him not only a salary and a billet, but also a sense of purpose.
The bad news is that anyone who works in a military hospital of any sort gets to see some of the worst parts of war, and on a daily basis. For example, Lara and several of his colleagues were tasked with helping to gather and identify the bodies from the infamous 1967 Forrestal disaster, which was triggered by an accidental misfire from one on-deck plane, which struck the fuel tank of a second on-deck plane, leading to a massive fire. There were 134 sailors killed, another 161 injured (among the survivors was a young lieutenant named John McCain). Lara tells of helping to identify the charred bodies; sometimes jaws had to be pried open, other times faces had to be sliced open from ear to ear, so that teeth could be compared to dental records. "It has to be done," explained Lara's superior. "We have to get these boys home."
Further, Lara and his Navy corpsman comrades had dual-service status, which meant that sometimes they were land troops, sometimes they were shipboard troops, sometimes they were Navy and sometimes they were de facto Marines. So while he did not come under fire as often as some grunts did, that is not to say he did not come under fire at all. This was especially true when he and the other corpsmen were sent to try to retrieve the living and/or dead bodies of soldiers after an engagement.
It was, of course, a federal offense to be gay in the military at that time, and so Lara had to keep his orientation under wraps. That said, in such contexts, there is pretty much always a language of subtle verbal and non-verbal cues that develops. And so, even though Lara—as he himself observes—was extremely careful to keep his wrists firm (i.e., not limp) at all times, and to "stiffen" his walk, he eventually made the acquaintance of a number of other closeted sailors on the ship.
Lara and his comrades were right in the middle of two dangerous situations, one the result of the ongoing war, the other the result of federal law, and they were also doing difficult and important work where lives were on the line. So, restraint and discretion were both paramount. Still, Lara and a half-dozen closeted friends did form a close-knit circle that they called "The Group":
They took the name from the Mary McCarthy book The Group, which follows a group of friends and Vassar graduates from different backgrounds. The members of "The Group" (Navy version) even adopted the individual names of "The Group" (Vassar version) as a sort of alter ego. As was the fashion at the time, the Navy fellows had matching Zippo lighters made:
If any readers have ever seen any of the (ubiquitous) Vietnam-era combat-soldiers' Zippo lighters, they will know that "The Group" is definitely on the tame side.
Lara's Vietnam story ended in a lamentable, but predictable, fashion. Eventually, despite the great care he took to hide his secret, his superiors began to suspect the truth. Lara indulged in some trickery meant to muddy the waters (specifically, to create the impression that he might be mentally unstable), and through that was able to secure a discharge under lass than honorable circumstances. That's better than a dishonorable discharge, but still means forfeiting rank, medals and all military benefits.
After being ejected from the Navy, Lara struggled to overcome PTSD, and was eventually able to do so, with the help of a doctor who was also gay. He tried to create a stable life for himself, which he was also able to do, eventually. And he became an activist for LGBTQ causes, particularly LGBTQ military causes, working in particular to get his discharge decision, and those of other veterans discharged for being gay, overturned.
A few years back, Lara decided that telling his story might be useful in advancing the larger cause. And so, he published a book based on his experiences, the historical and autobiographical Zippo Boys. Filmmaker Christopher Sanders read the book, thought there might be a movie there, and wrote a screenplay. That screenplay is being "shopped around town" right now, but in the interim, Sanders and a team of creatives produced the 1-hour documentary Corps Man, which premiered in both L.A. and on PBS this week. It can be streamed here.
If you want to know what happened with Lara's discharge, you'll have to read the book or watch the documentary (Z saw it, and can recommend it).
Thanks, C.S. and D.L. It is serendipitous, in a perverse way, that the film just so happened to be released when Pete Hegseth is working hard to remake the military in his Christian nationalist image. (Z)