SAN DIEGO - Nearly 70 years after expelling Melvin Dwork for being gay, the Navy is changing his discharge from "undesirable" to "honorable" - marking what is believed to be the first time the Pentagon has taken such a step on behalf of a World War II veteran since the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell."
The Navy notified the 89-year-old former corpsman last month that he will now be eligible for the benefits he had long been denied, including medical care and a military burial.

Dwork spent decades fighting to remove the blot on his record.

"I resented that word `undesirable,'" said Dwork, who was expelled in 1944, at the height of the war, and is now a successful interior designer in New York. "That word really stuck in my craw. To me it was a terrible insult. It had to be righted. It's really worse than `dishonorable.' I think it was the worst word they could have used."

For Dwork, victory came with a heartbreaking truth: Last year, when the Navy finally released his records, he learned that his name had been given up by his own boyfriend at the time.

The decision to amend his discharge papers was made by the Board for Corrections of Naval Records in Washington.

In its Aug. 17 proceedings, obtained by The Associated Press, the board noted that the Navy has undergone a "radical departure" from the outright ban on gays that was in place in 1944. The board pointed out Dwork's "exemplary period of active duty" and said that changing the terms of his discharge was done "in the interest of justice."

Navy officials declined to discuss Dwork's case, citing privacy reasons.
"I think that with the end of `don't ask, don't tell,' there is a growing realization within the military that not only gays be allowed to serve openly now but this was probably the wrong policy all along," said Aaron Belkin, an expert on gays in the U.S. military at the University of California, Los Angeles.
He added: "This illustrates, at least in the case of one person, that the military is trying to set things right."

About 100,000 troops were discharged between World War II and 1993 for being gay and lost their benefits as a result, Belkin said. Under the more relaxed "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which allowed gays to serve as long as they kept their sexual orientation to themselves, about 14,000 troops were forced out, but most were given honorable discharges that allowed them to draw benefits. The repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" officially takes effect Tuesday.

NEW YORK — After 19 years hiding her relationship with an active-duty Army captain, Cathy Cooper is getting ready to exhale.

On Tuesday, the policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell” will expire. And Cooper will dare speak her love’s name in public.

“This is life-changing,” said Cooper, choking up. “I just want to be able to breathe — knowing I can call my partner at work and have a conversation without it having to be in code.”

Much has been reported about the burdens that “don’t ask” placed on gay and lesbian service members who risked discharge under the 1993 policy if their sexual orientation became known in the ranks. There’s been less attention focused on their civilian partners, who faced distinctive, often relentless stresses of their own.

In interviews with The Associated Press, five partners recalled past challenges trying to conceal their love affairs, spoke of the joy and relief accompanying repeal, and wondered about the extent that they would be welcomed into the broader military family in the future.

Even with repeal imminent, the partners — long accustomed to secrecy — did not want to reveal the full identity of their active-duty loved ones before Tuesday.

Cooper, who works for a large private company, moved from the Midwest to northern Virginia to be near her partner’s current Army post, yet couldn’t fully explain to friends and colleagues why she moved. “It’s been really difficult — it’s really isolated us,” she said. “I became much more introverted, more evasive.”

Cooper said her partner’s Army career is thriving, though she’s had to hide a major component of her personal life.

“I don’t know any of her co-workers,” Cooper said. “She says, ‘You’re the best part of me and I have to pretend you don’t exist.’“

Looking ahead, Cooper is unsure how same-sex partners will be welcomed by the military establishment.

“Will it be, ‘Hey, come join all the family support programs’?” she wondered. “I’m not going to be so naive as to think that ... I’m just hoping the door is open.”

WASHINGTON — New research to be released Monday shows that veterans with Gulf War illness faced different toxins depending on where they were served: anti-nerve-agent pills and Scud missiles for forward-deployed troops and pesticides for support personnel in the rear.

There’s also no correlation between anthrax shots, depleted uranium and psychological issues and Gulf War illness, said the study by the Midwest Research Institute to appear in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal. That supports earlier research on those topics.

“Already, the evidence was mounting for these two exposures,” said Lea Steele, lead author and director of Baylor University’s Research Initiative on Complex Illness. “When you pull all the research together, you start to see patterns that are very consistent.”

About one-fourth of the 700,000 veterans who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War developed symptoms that include chronic headaches, widespread pain, memory and concentration problems, persistent fatigue, gastrointestinal problems, skin abnormalities and mood disturbances.”

Steele and her co-authors surveyed 144 veterans with Gulf War illness and 160 Gulf War veterans with no symptoms. But rather than ask them if they were exposed to depleted uranium or anthrax shots, which many troops did not know, they asked about their experiences: Did you receive an injection in the buttocks in theater? Did you have contact with destroyed enemy vehicles? Were you directly involved in ground combat?

Nerve agents, anti-nerve agents and insecticides come from the same chemical family and, therefore, affect the body in similar ways, Steele said. That’s why people may have the same symptoms for different exposures, Steele said. But she said the research also does not discount other possible toxins, such as oil fires or fine particulate matter from dust storms.

“We could have solved this a long time ago if there were a smoking gun for a single issue,” she said.