Lesbian Colonel Sues to Regain Her Career : Military: After 26 years in uniform, an honored nurse and mother of 4 boys was kicked out of the service for admitting her sexual orientation.

She was a Bronze Star hero in Vietnam, and then the Veteran’s Administration Nurse of the Year. But four simple words ended Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer’s 26-year military career.

“I am a lesbian,” she said, in a 1989 top-security clearance interview.

Cammermeyer was discharged in June, one of the highest-ranking soldiers ever to be thrown out of the military because of sexual orientation.

And now, stripped of the gold-buttoned tunic and garrison cap, the former chief nurse for the Washington state Army National Guard has mounted a court battle to reclaim her life as a soldier.

Her fight is at the center of a larger battle over the status of gays in the military. Bill Clinton met Cammermeyer while campaigning in Seattle last summer; he since has said that he will overturn the military ban on gays.

To the 50-year-old Cammermeyer, it is as simple as this: She was a good soldier and deserves her job back. She points to a 15-page resume, her Ph.D in nursing, the Nurse of the Year honors (selected over 34,000 others), and a citation from National Guard Maj. Gen. Greg Barlow for superior performance.

Her four sons swore that their mother “would die with her boots on.” But when she was asked that question at the security interview, she could not lie, though she knew it would put her lifetime in the military in jeopardy.

“Coming to terms with sexual orientation is not choosing to be different, but to be one person in sync regardless of the consequences,” she said in a recent interview. “It is being able to say: This is who I am.”

Now, Cammermeyer lives with her 18-year-old son, Andy, in a quiet suburb south of Seattle. Her partner, Diane, who works as an artist and teacher, splits her time between Seattle and California.

Diane’s artwork, family photos and a crossbow from a Vietnamese village decorate the walls. An exercise bike claims a prominent spot in the living room, where the lean, six-foot Cammermeyer works out every morning.

Cammermeyer was 9 years old when she moved to the United States from Norway with her parents and three brothers in 1951.

She entered the military by way of medicine at the University of Maryland. Nursing was attractive, she said, because she could take it to a battlefront.

The intrigue of war had been a part of Cammermeyer’s life since her parents sheltered underground resistance fighters in World War II Norway.

Cammermeyer’s mother often told how she pushed her daughter through Oslo in a baby buggy, making sure nobody was following when she stopped at an apartment building where resistance fighters were hiding. Margarethe then was lifted from the carriage to reveal a cache of weapons hidden underneath the mattress.

“Having been raised in that sort of tradition, I had always wondered, when push came to shove, if I would have the stamina, the character to stand up and be counted,” Cammermeyer said.

As an Army nurse in Germany, she met a handsome young officer on a blind date and married him in 1965. They served in Vietnam together; Cammermeyer earned the Bronze Medal for treating wounded soldiers during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

That year, when she had her first child, Cammermeyer left the military. She rejoined in 1972 when the rule against mothers in the armed forces was dropped.

Still, “I think I was continually searching. I thought if I did more, if I worked harder, maybe I would feel better,” Cammermeyer said. “Nothing changed until I was separated from my husband.”

That was in 1980. She moved to San Francisco to continue her military and nursing career, and then returned to Seattle in the mid-1980s to be closer to her children and complete a doctorate at the University of Washington.

She came to terms with her sexuality. Then she applied for the position of chief nurse of the National Guard, and it was all over.

Plans for a TV movie are being negotiated while Cammermeyer writes her autobiography. And when she is not running the seizure and sleep disorder clinic at the veteran’s hospital in Tacoma, she is kept busy on the lecture circuit.

Previously afraid to be seen in public, Diane and Cammermeyer now go to social functions together.

“We are enjoying the opportunity to participate in our community in ways we never did before,” Cammermeyer said.

Cammermeyer’s sons are proud of their mother; they had grown up in a military-oriented household, with Army field jackets, fatigues, camouflage bedspreads and binoculars, and they are disappointed in the way she was treated.

“I think the policy is unfair,” said Matt, 23, her oldest son, who lives near Twin Falls, Ida. “She dedicated herself to something and then they say ‘we’re done with you.’ ”

The boys had suspected their mother was a lesbian before she told each one, individually, in a tearful confession two years ago.

“It’s just something we knew, like you know when it’s going to rain,” Matt said. “It was like, so what? She’s still mom.”

In the last 10 years, more than 15,000 soldiers have been discharged for being homosexual. If Clinton honors his pledge to end the ban, it may not be retroactive and it may not affect Cammermeyer’s case.

Her suit, filed in federal court in Seattle, claims the ban is unconstitutional and demands her reinstatement as colonel.

But even if the ban is dropped, heterosexual society has a long way to go in accepting gays and lesbians, Cammermeyer said.

“They don’t acknowledge that we sleep, we eat, we have jobs, we have health issues, we have families,” she said. “They need to get beyond the prejudice by acknowledging first that we exist.

“I am not sure society is quite ready. I think it will be when we invite more straight people home to see what our lives are like.”