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This is the transcript of my official statement of 7 August 1987 detailing the homosexual misconduct of two of my Army roommates when I was stationed in Germany. The original is handwritten which accounts for the odd breaks in the text. Additionally, absent permission from named persons to use their names, I have truncated all surnames but my own to protect the guilty.
In the military, a signed official statement is considered legal testimony given under oath, and any willful misrepresentation is punishable as perjury under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I submitted this statement to my superiors fully aware of this. I was as honest and candid as I could be which is the bare minimum expected from a soldier.
Also note that I took almost three weeks to inform my superiors of my roommates' violation of Army regulations. A soldier is required to inform his superiors of all known violations of regulations in a timely manner; withholding such information is itself a violation of regulations. My submission of this statement was a de facto admission of guilt. I made this statement fully cognizant that had disciplinary action been taken against my roommates based upon it, I could have faced disciplinary action myself.
Even more ironically, had I made this statement during the Clinton era, I could have been charged with harassment under that administration's perversion of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" into "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue, Don't Harass." Only under Clinton could military regulations and federal law be so corrupted!
On Halloween 2012, acting in the spirit of Samhain, the Gaelic festival of the dead, I expanded "H[]" to "Herfendal" to acknowledge Timothy Alton Herfendal, whom we called Herf or Tim. Having changed his name after leaving the Army, Timothy Dean Morris died on 6 May 2009. Given his death, honor allows this deviation as I no longer am required to protect his reputation. Remembrance is our only duty to the dead.
Transcript of official statement of 7 August 1987
This page was last modified on 7 September 2014.
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7 August 1987
Statement
I spent the evening of 18 July 1987 drinking beer with my roommates, SP4 F[ ] and PFC Herfendal, and PFC C[ ] in room 207. We finished the beer around 2330. C[ ] returned to her room; F[ ] and Herfendal got ready for bed. I wasn't ready for bed, so I went to the dayroom to watch movies. As I was leaving the room, Herfendal asked me to lock the door, and this I did. I watched movies until about 0200, 19 July 1987 when I decided to go to bed. I unlocked the door and went into the room. The room was dark, but from the light coming in from the hall, I could see that Herfendal's bed was empty. I was certain that F[ ] and Herfendal hadn't gone anywhere or that Herfendal had gone to the latrine as he would not have locked the door behind himself. With a sinking feeling, I knew what must be up. I pushed the door to and went to my wall locker where I removed my military type flashlight. I set it on the signal mode and went over towards F[ ]'s area. I directed the beam towards the floor at the foot of F[ ]'s bunk and put off a quick flash. In that brief interval, I saw them together in F[ ]'s bunk. I returned my flashlight to my wall locker and went to the latrine. When I returned to the room, I turned on my lamp so that I could get a better look at them. I stood beside F[ ]'s stereo and looked at them for a few moments. They were face-to-face, in each other's arms, under the covers; they looked very contented. I thought to myself, "Well there it is." I no longer merely suspected F[ ] and Herfendal of having an affair; now I knew that they were having an affair. I decided that I needed a photograph, so I went to my area and got my camera
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from my three-drawer chest. I had them in my lens, but I lacked sufficient light to take the picture. Herfendal was starting to rouse, so I figured that I should put my camera away and put out my lamp as the less they knew that I knew, the better for me. I locked my camera back up without taking the time to put the cover back on and turned out the lamp. As I was getting undressed for bed, I heard Herfendal get up and scurry over to his own bed. The next morning I was given a mild grilling. Herfendal asked me when I had gotten in the night before. I feigned ignorance and said that I wasn't really sure, that the last thing I remembered was sitting in the dayroom watching a movie. F[ ] said that I had blacked out. The ruse was effective in that they had never seen me more inebriated as the night before, but I was more than adequately sobered up to realize what they were about when I caught them.
On 25 July 1987, I left my room at approxiamately 1105 with the intent of leaving the billeting area. As I was passing the dayroom, Star Trek was coming on AFN, and I stopped to watch it. When the show went off at approximately 1200, I returned to find the door locked. I attempted to unlock [the door] but could not as a key was in the lock on the opposite side. I walked about ten feet away from the door in disgust. As I was doing so, I said in a campy voice to PFC T[ ], "Slurp, slurp." She laughed knowingly. After a noticeable pause, (Probably about the time it would take to slide on a pair of jeans.) the door was unlocked from the inside. When I entered the room, I found that both F[ ] and Herfendal were wearing only jeans. (They were both fully clothed when I had left earlier.) They both seemed startled, rattled,
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as though they had been caught doing something that they shouldn't have been doing. I left the room immediately after completing my business.
On 29 July 1987, at approxiamately 2130, I returned to the billeting area after completing an evening's work on my computer course. Upon reaching the door to my room, I attempted to open it and found it locked. I placed my key in the lock; it entered without resistance. (This process made a fair amount of noise.) I unlocked the door thinking that no one was in the room as if F[ ] and Herfendal were in the room, they would have had the keys in the lock on the inside as they had always done. When I entered the room, Herfendal leaped off of F[ ]'s bunk and on to his own exclaiming in surprise, "Damn!" They were both wearing only athletic shorts. Knowing that they had been doing something and not particularly wanting to know what that something was, I immediately tossed my backpack with my class materials on my bunk and left the room; I was so repulsed by the incident that I didn't return for two hours.
There have been other incidents during the preceding months of which I am uncertain of precise dates and times. In these incidents the door was invariably locked from the inside with the keys in the lock.
On one occasion, when I entered the room, I glanced at Herfendal who was lying on his bunk. He had a nervous, guilty expression on his face; he was wearing only a pair of athletic shorts that had a conspicuous [bulge] that could have only been a waning erection. Our other
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roommate, SP4 Nunnery, has related a similar incident to me, except that it was F[ ] whom he saw with the waning erection.
On another occasion, when I entered the room, Herfendal was closing the doors of his wall locker around himself so that I couldn't see him. I assume that he was clothing himself. When he emerged, he seemed nervous, furtive. Nunnery has had a similar experience.
For months I had suspected that F[ ] and Herfendal were lovers; they were simply too close to be just good buddies, what with the hushed and whispered conversations, the inseparability of the two, Herfendal's wife-like doting over
F[ ], F[ ]'s husband-like domineering of Herfendal, the way they would disappear together for nights and entire weekends together, etc. There would be the frequent "hickies" they would both have after they went out for the evening; they would say that it was from some German girls they had met, but no one believed them. There was also the harsh, denigrating way they would talk about women; women were nasty, foul creatures to them. And of course there's the way they act; Herfendal is incredibly effeminate, and F[ ] is to a lesser degree but perceptibly so. It just all adds up.
End of Statement
/s/
James M. Wallace
SP4, USA
This document exists in support of the following pages on this website:
The Military's Ban Against Homosexuals Should Remain
An essay written 25 July 1994 arguing against lifting the ban to military service by open, practicing homosexuals based on my personal experience as an enlisted soldier; an expansion of op-ed column "Ban against homosexuals must remain" of 4 February 1993
Ban against homosexuals must remain
An op-ed column published 4 February 1993 arguing against lifting the ban to military service by open, practicing homosexuals based on my personal experience as an enlisted soldier; includes background commentary and the obligatory letters to the editor from shrieking homosexuals in response to my "homophobia"
Rooming with gays changed soldier's mind
A letter to the editor published 2 August 1993 opposing lifting the ban to military service by open, practicing homosexuals based on my personal experience as an enlisted soldier
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