Coming out of WWII: researchers are rushing to record the stories of gay and lesbian World War II veterans before it's too late.

Harry Harkness is turning 79 in June, but the memories of his days as a ball turret gunner on a B-17 "Flying Fortress" during World War II are as fresh as yesterday. "I flew 32 credited bombing missions over northern Italy, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Germany," says the openly gay AT&T retiree from his San Francisco home. "We saw lots of flak [antiaircraft fire] on every mission, some more intense than others." Harkness's primary job was to ward off enemy fighters and count parachutes from downed Allied planes. "Not a pretty picture, especially when the crew lived in a tent next door to your crew," he says.

There aren't many men like Harkness left these days: gay veterans of WWII who fought in a conflict that left nearly 50 million dead. There aren't many of WWII's veterans left at all; as many as 1,100 die every day, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It is why researchers from the Library of Congress are in a desperate rush to record the stories of soldiers, straight and gay, male and female, before they forever slip into history. The war's veterans will also be honored Memorial Day weekend with the opening of the long-awaited National World War II Memorial on the National Mall.

"To be honest, I haven't the slightest idea how [gay soldiers] coped with it all," says Lara Ballard, who serves as American Veterans for Equal Rights' national coordinator for the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. "It continually astounds me what these average Americans were asked to do, and what they did, without batting an eye. Added to the stress of combat was the stress of concealing your sexual identity, and I don't know how anyone could have coped. But the fact is, they did, and they performed heroically"

Ballard, a lesbian and former Army officer who served in Kuwait as part of Operation Southern Watch during the 199l Gulf War, is working overtime to get as many GLBT veterans as possible to submit videotaped oral histories of their military experiences. She's interviewed dozens of veterans from World War II through Ore present so that their stories won't be lost. Top priority is given to those now ill their 70s and 80s, whose tales call forch a time that's almost unimaginable to today's young gay men and lesbians. It is a time before domestic-partner benefits, before antidis-crimination laws, before Stonewall, before the word gay meant anything other than "happy" to most Americans.

Harkness's experiences as a young solder in the 1940s aren't much different from his straight contemporaries, more Band of Brothers than The Boys in the Band. He assumed his sexual orientation was just a bothersome phase and that he'd grow out of it. He and other gay soldiers of the time dismissed their youthful encounters largely as a sort of recreation, which was never spoken of afterward. In his two years of active duty Harkness can remember only a single sexual episode with another man--one night aboard a troopship making its way across the North Atlantic, bound for Europe. "I was getting queasy five decks below and went topside to get some air," he recalls. "I saw an infantryman over by a lifeboat ... he was jerking off, so I joined him. Never saw him again, or even said a single word at that time." After the war Harkness married and had three children before his divorce mid move to San Francisco. He has long since come to terms with being gay, but he still says he "wouldn't like any living members of my crew to know about his sexuality.

Ballard says that's not at all an uncommon attitude: "We've interviewed a number of proud, openly gay WWII vets, but for every vet we've interviewed, I know of at least four or five who still feel they can't come out. I know of at least one Pearl Harbor survivor who will probably never do it, because he's so terrified that his fellow survivors--and there are only a couple hundred of them left--will disapprove. It's a generational thing, I'm afraid, and there's not much we can do about it but try to be supportive."

One gay veteran of World War II who is not afraid to be open about his sexuality is Washington, D.C., resident Frank Kameny; he enlisted in the Army three days before his 18th birthday in May 1943 and trained as a mortar crewman. He served with the 58th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 8th Armored Division as it moved through central Germany in the waning days of the Third Reich. He planned to celebrate his 79th birthday at this year's convention of the American Veterans for Equal Rights, which seeks to overturn the military's ban on openly gay and lesbian members, May 21-23 in D.C.

"We were under frequent artillery fire, and I quickly learned that as long as the whistle of the incoming shell was audible, I would remain alive," he says. "If the whistle stopped, it meant that the shell was coming in very close and I might have only a few moments of life left.... I wrote home frequently, trying not to worry [my family], but I was not at all sure that I'd ever see them again.

"Obviously, life in combat was unpleasant," Kameny continues, "digging our way across Germany, slit trench by slit trench, sleeping in them at night, using our helmets as pillows. We never knew whether we would survive beyond the next few moments."

A gay rights pioneer, Kameny planned to lay a wreath in honor of gay and lesbian veterans at the Tomb of the Un knowns in Arlington National Cemetery--as he does every year.

"The GLBT community--civilian and military--is inextricably woven into the fabric of American life," says Ballard. "We have made the same sacrifices as everyone else; we were there, bleeding and dying, with everybody else. And if we can be expected to fulfill the ultimate responsibility of citizenship---military service in combat--then there is no rational basis to deny us full equality, not just in the military but in all aspects of American life."

RELATED ARTICLE: An overdue monument.

Gay and lesbian members of the military are eagerly awaiting Memorial Day weekend, when the long-awaited National World War II Memorial will be dedicated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The site will honor the 16 million who served in the armed forces of the United States during WWII, the more than 400,000 who died and the millions who supported the war effort from home.

Located on the opposite edge of the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the installation employs a memorial plaza and "Rainbow Pool." Two flagpoles flying the American flag will frame the ceremonial entrance. The bases of granite and bronze are adorned with military service seals.--Tim Bergling

Tim Bergling, a former marine, is a TV news producer in Washington, D.C.