00:00:04CHERYL KNOWLES: <Silence>.
00:00:05KNOWLES: My name is Cheryl Knowles. I was born in Whittier, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. I joined the Navy in April of 2002. I served during operation Iraqi and Enduring Freedom as an E-6. I come from a large extended family of military, mostly Army. I have uncles that are, uh, colonels and generals in the Army, uh, stationed on the East Coast. My grandfather, who I was closest to, was in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, and he pretty much inspired me to want to join the military, listening to his war stories and the time in the service. I decided pretty much when I was a kid that I wanted to join the military. I remember watching war movies and school, movies about boarding school and military schools. And I was always fascinated with that life. And I just knew, I knew in high school that I was going to join.
00:01:02KNOWLES: I tried to do the college thing after high school and get a real job in the civilian world, live out on my own, uh, before I joined the military. And it wasn't until after 9/11, uh, which reaffirmed my assumptions that that's where I belonged. Six months after the 9/11 attack, I found myself in a Marine recruiting office. Um, they sent me on my way though, saying that I had too many tattoos. My next stop was the Army recruiting office. And, I probably could have joined the army, but I was looking to pretty much ship out the next day, and their process was taking a little bit longer. And on my way back to my car, just walking past the Navy recruiter, which I had no intentions of going in and talking to them, um, a couple sailors pulled me inside and said, Hey, you know, what are you doing here? Are you interested in the Navy? I'm like, yeah, but you know, I got tattoos, and, you know. And they're like, come with us, we'll get you in. So I did the testing, the physical process, and I was shipped off to Great Lakes, Illinois two weeks later for bootcamp.
00:02:18KNOWLES: Navy Basic Training was great. I had a great time. It was basically summer camp gone wrong, you know, coming from trying to live on my own as a young teenager, young adult, and working in the civilian world struggling to get by. I now had people walking me to medical, making me get my teeth clean, walking me to breakfast, lunch and dinner. And, you know, I got eight hours of sleep at night, and pretty much everything was done for us. You basically just had to keep your mouth shut and your head down, and that's how it went. Um, I made a lot of friends in basic training. I was kind of like the, the unit clown. I had a sense of humor about everything just because I was a little bit older than the other recruits. So, I was a little more boisterous than the others. And, you know I got in a little bit of trouble here and there, but it was mostly "drop and gimme twenty" or "gimme some pushups and sit-ups." But, you know, I was all about that. So, I had a great time with it.
00:03:21KNOWLES: Basic training was interesting in the sense that this was the first time I was in a large group of people from basically all walks of life, people from all over the country. We had people from different countries, different religious views, political views, crazy people, weird people, funny people. So it was, um, it was a learning, it was a learning experience, trying to get used to working together as a team with people that think differently than you. But it was a good time! And I learned a lot about people, and I learned a lot about different parts of the country and how diverse we are. But, you know, we came together and we worked as a team, and we all survived via nine weeks of basic training together.
00:04:15KNOWLES: Upon finishing basic training, I was sent right across the street with my A School. I was going to a machinist training school that was about eleven weeks long. There I met, um, I met a girl, and this was during the Don't Ask, Don't Tell era. And we were in the same school together. We hung out a lot. We ended up dating. We tried to keep it, you know, on the DL just because we were scared of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. And we had heard horror stories about people being outed and kicked out of the military. Um, word got out that we were dating or people thought we were dating, and they reported us to the higher-ups. So one day we both showed up to school, and we were escorted out of school by military police, and we were placed in separate interrogating rooms where we were both asked questions about our sexuality and our relationships to each other. We really didn't have any idea what was going on. It caught us off guard. Um, we didn't admit to anything. We were, you know, basically scared out of our minds because we both wanted to make twenty-year careers out of the Navy. And here they were starting the process to discharge us for homosexual conduct. We were taken out of our training school, and we were placed on a legal hold status where we weren't allowed to continue trading. And they were basically processing us out of the military without any evidence or confessions or anything, just based off of a statement that a roommate I had had made. During that time, we were still allowed to go off base and hang out and stuff, and we did, you know, we weren't doing anything wrong. We would go to Chicago and hang out. We had a hotel that we would go and stay at on the weekends, and the hotel owner would check us in under a male and female name that wasn't our own names, just to kind of cover us, you know, we were staying in the gay area of Chicago. So it was kind of--it was kind of cool and kind of sneaky where we would check in as Mr. and Mrs. something other than what our name was. But basically we were, we were hiding. We were trying to be ourselves, but, you know--in a different, I don't know, identity I guess. Um, one night we were at a club, a gay club in Chicago, and we were just hanging out, having a couple drinks, and in walks one of our chiefs, You can imagine the surprise on her face, you know, we're in a gay bar and here comes one of our superiors walks in. I don't know how she found us, but she basically wanted to tell us that she was gonna go to bat for us, we were gonna be okay, and that we both needed to find a male and, uh, get married. I had met another gay, uh, sailor. His name was Chris. And we were pretty good friends, and we all hung out together. So in my attempt to find a "husband," I pretty much told him the scenario is, "Hey, I need to get married and portray myself as a heterosexual female, and I need a husband, you know? Are you down for it?" And, you know, he thought about it, and it ended up benefiting us both because we would get paid the rate of a married a couple for housing and stuff like that. So, we went to a courthouse in Chicago. We exchanged vows and had an awkward peck on the cheek, and voila, we were married. My girlfriend at the time, Tara, she also got married. She married a friend of a service member who was an immigrant of Poland. And, he needed citizenship. She needed a husband, so she can look like a heterosexual female to stay in the Navy, and so they got married. So here we are, both E-1s, um, scared out of our mind thinking we're gonna get kicked out of the Navy and having to get married to a male. It was just, it was weird. It was awkward, it felt wrong. I had to tell my family about it. It was just--the whole situation was unpleasant. It was scary. Um, I felt like we were targeted and discriminated against, and that's just part of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the military during that time. After the charges got dropped against us for homosexual conduct, we were both free and clear to finish tech school. And, um, that's what we did for the rest of our time in Chicago. You know, we laid low, made plans to get stationed with our respective "husbands," and just tried to stay out of trouble. I got stationed in San Diego. It was my first duty tour. I joined the Navy to get out of California and to explore the world. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw orders that I was going back to Southern California. I wasn't too happy about it, but it turned out to be a good experience.
00:10:05KNOWLES: My first tour was on shore duty in San Diego. I was repairing survival equipment that was sent out to the ships, like life rafts and survival food kits and stuff like that. I was the only female working there, and there was probably about twelve males. And the first thing that I got asked when I checked in, uh, had nothing to do with my training, my abilities, my goals. They wanted to know if I was married, and once I told 'em I was married, they wanted to know where he was for how long and it was just like this weird, invasive personal interrogation into my life. But, you know, it just--it just set the tone for the rest of my military career and I know it's a very male dominated profession. And as a female, you have to work twice as hard to prove yourself. And that's what I did the whole time I worked there was I worked, uh, I tried to keep my personal life, my personal life. I had to lie about what I was doing on the weekends and who I was doing it with. Um, you know, and then it was--it was hard. It's hard to live like that and work in an environment where you can't talk about who you went to dinner with the night before, or--or what you're gonna do that weekend. You just, you have to make things up and make it vanilla and cookie cutter and non-interesting. So they stopped asking questions.
00:11:43KNOWLES: I worked there for two years, and then I got transferred to my first ship, which was the USS Ronald Reagan. I felt comfortable taking orders there because my girlfriend from A School who became my best friend--uh, the dating thing didn't really work out with us. But, she was stationed there. And her supervisor, or my supervisor too, was also gay. So I felt comfortable taking orders there. I was excited and looking forward to it. And I checked on board in February of 2005. We spent a lot of time out to sea that year. In preparation for the ship's first deployment. We deployed for the first time in January of 2006. And, uh, we were heading over to the Operation Iraqi Freedom. On the way there, we stopped in a few countries; Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, um--and I think Japan. But we would stop in these countries for three or four days at a time, and we'd get off the ship, go blow some steam out in town, do a lot of drinking. The guys would all go get hookers and--it's the sailor life, I guess.
00:13:11KNOWLES: My job aboard the ship was a machinist. So I worked down in the machine shop with about twelve other machinists. And we were also connected with the welders who also did the plumbing. So we were involved with the ship's sanitation system as well. And there was a lot of times where I was knee deep in a bathroom that's overflowed with, uh, with poop and pee, trying to stop it from flooding the rest of the ship. I was also the ship's only locksmith. I went to a security institute in Kentucky and got trained on basic locksmithing and safes and vaults. So, on an aircraft carrier there's typically three to four thousand safes. So I kept pretty busy. I was also the only locksmith for our battle group, which included about six other ships as well. So whenever something would break on another ship I would helicopter off my ship and spend the night on another boat for a night or two until it took me to, uh, however long it took me to do the repair.
00:14:21KNOWLES: Ship life is interesting. Um, we lived in a small confined space with about sixty females. Our racks were stacked three high. The middle rack is the ideal place to, you know, to sleep. So eventually I got a middle rack. We had a small locker, and our mattress lifted up, which exposed more storage space. There wasn't much room for storage, so you pretty much took what you could, the basics. Underwear, socks, and t-shirts. A few pairs of civilian clothes, and the rest was room for your uniforms and toiletries. We had two showers for sixty females. Three toilets and two sinks. You would imagine that it would be super crowded in the mornings, but with the way shifts work out the sea, we have a night shift, the day shift, um, people that sleep a little bit later because they had watched throughout the night or whatnot. So, mornings were a little bit crowded, but it wasn't ridiculous as you would think it would be with sixty females trying to, you know, line up for two showers. The food was good starting out on deployment. The farther away from the United States, you get, the more food you get imported from different places. So once we got to the Middle East, the milk, uh, changed color and texture. The lettuce, by the time it would reach us was brown. Vegetables weren't really good. Lunch meat was--colorful, but, um, ship life is about networking. So if you know somebody who works in the galley or works in the chiefs' mess or where the officers eat and you can do something for them, then you're gonna get taken care of food-wise. I ran the laser engraving shop that--you know, I can make signed, engraved coffee cups or pretty much anything. So, pretty--everybody wanted to send home gifts to their family. So I did a lot of engraving of personal items in return for real food and cooked food and cookies and snacks and stuff like that. I got my laundry done, so I rarely had to wait in line to use the washers and dryers, which is mass chaos on a ship. Um, I also--I did some work for the post office, you know, on the side. And when they would fly on mail, the postal guys on shore would go and pick up pizzas or Subway and throw 'em in the mailbox--mail bags. And even though it took a few hours or eight hours to reach the ship, by the time he got those cold McDonald's hamburgers or pizza, they were the best, best things you've ever had.
00:17:31KNOWLES: Um, being a worker in engineering, I had to prove myself as a female. Like I said, you had to work twice as hard to prove that you could do the job of a male, and it was common for girls or females to, you know, not want to do their job, and they'd get placed in more like an admin type of a setting and less engineering, less hands-on. And that's just what some, you know, females prefer. But I wanted to be out there with the guys getting my hands dirty and stuff, so that's what I did. And it took a while but I gained the respect of the guys that I worked with, and they pretty much--they just start thinking of you as one of the guys. My sexuality was never an issue while I was on that ship. I worked with some of the coolest guys you'd ever meet. They treated me fairly. We made gay jokes or whatever, and, you know, it was cool. I was just like one of the guys. The military is kind of a game. It's a political game. It's all about who you know, good ole' boys club, and doing what you got to do to--to get ahead. Promotions and evaluations aren't based fairly, It's based on who likes you and its popularity contest. On my ship, I learned to play the game, and I did it well, and I got good evals. Sometimes you have to keep your mouth shut and let things slide, like, you know, I put up with some sexual harassment and--and stuff like that, and physical assaults. But, I just felt at the time that this is the way it is, and me complaining about something that's going on would just come back negatively on myself. And so, you just learn to let things go and kind of just join in, I guess.
00:19:34KNOWLES: Being deployed to the Iraq area of operation, um, it was really hot out there. The food that we got on board, it wasn't good. We spent long hours working, because the air conditioning would stop working or we'd have problems making water. So, uh, we were pulling like eighteen-hour days. On top of that we would have watches in the middle of the night where we would sit down in Damage Control Central. We were basically the 9-1-1 / 4-1-1 dispatcher for the entire ship. Um, we had four hour watches while we were out to sea, and they rotated throughout the day. So if you ended up working from seven in the morning until ten at night, and then you had to be on watch from midnight to four am and you're only gonna get about two hours sleep before you had to get up and start working again. And that was just the way it was. You know, we just, we lived on Red Bull and taking Xenadrine and, you know, little sleep.
00:20:45KNOWLES: Some of the best parts of deploying overseas were visiting different countries on the way to our area of operation and on the way home. Um, checking out the different cultures in Asia was a lot of fun. And I learned a lot about bargaining and drinking and met some really nice people. Um, a lot of, uh, a lot of shadiness goes on behind the scenes with people trying to solicit themselves sexually or trying to sell us drugs and aftermarket, fake watches and stuff like that. But, um, there was a lot of people that got in trouble, you know, no doubt. But, every time we would pull into a port, they would brief us on what to look out for, different customs and courtesies in the country, what to do, what not to do. Like, we pulled into Dubai and it was the end of Ramadan, so, they basically told us that we weren't allowed to drink until Ramadan was over. And that people, you know, they would stop throughout the day and pray and stuff, and just to stand by, let them pray and then continue on what we're doing, not to keep talking and yelling or taking pictures and stuff like that. Basically just telling us how to act.
00:22:20KNOWLES: Six months after returning from our first deployment, President Obama started the surge to Afghanistan. And, we were the first aircraft carrier to be sent over there. So, just as we were unpacking from a deployment, we were throwing our stuff back in our sea bag and getting ready to head out again. This one, uh, we didn't have as many port visits just because we were in a quick hurry to get over where we needed to be. And, once we got there, we basically launched planes that drop bombs over Afghanistan and return. And it was pretty cool because they would record it and they would play it on the ship's TVs. And we'd get to watch like bombs drop, and you can see the explosions and stuff like that. What I found interesting was, every night before we go to sleep, the chaplain comes on the ship's intercom and does an evening prayer. I'm not religious at all. And I was actually, you know, I got kind of tired of having to listen to evening prayers every night because I felt like they were kind of forcing prayer and religion in the military. But I don't know. Anyways, they would--they would pray and, um, they would pray for the safety of our pilots as we're dropping bombs that are killing essentially civilians and people. And they were just, I don't know, using Christianity to justify war, I guess. And I mean, I'm not an expert on the Bible, but I'm--you know, isn't God and religion against war? And here we are, interpreting the Bible to justify what we're doing over there.
00:24:06KNOWLES: Our surge deployment lasted about four months, and then we were headed back to San Diego or, you know, home port. And then, um, we deployed again the next year back to Afghanistan, where we sat off the coast for six months, doing the same thing. Flying jets, uh, "dropping warheads on foreheads." And by this time, this was my third deployment in three years. I was over it. I'm like, why are we here? What are we doing? You know, when we first deployed to Iraq, I was like, why? What are we here? What are we doing? If we're here because of 9/11 and the bad guys are in Afghanistan, why are we looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? But anyways, you just don't question anything. I guess you just do your job like a good soldier or sailor. But by my third deployment, I was--you know I was tired. Tired. I didn't believe in the mission anymore. I wanted to go home, I missed my family. I had missed funerals and weddings, and my nephew was born. I was just tired of it, and I was like, what is this for? Why am I doing all this?
00:25:25KNOWLES: Time in port turns into drink fests because you didn't know when you were going to be deployed or sent out to sea again. And our schedule was so busy. We'd come back from a six-month deployment, and we'd be home for, you know, two weeks, then we'd be back out to sea doing exercises again for another month. So being home was like a--we treated it like a port visit, so it was just like nonstop partying and drinking, and, you know, it was just, it was just, it was bad. <laugh>.
00:25:59KNOWLES: By the time my fourth deployment came around, I was just about to transfer to a new duty station, but I still left and did half the deployment with my ship and my crew. Um, and I was way over it by then. I'm like, I don't want to do anything. So I, I just pretty much chilled and hung out and talked with everybody and didn't really take much seriously. And then in July of 2009, I was finally, you know, released from ship life. And I was sent back to the States to go to advanced machining school before I went to my next command. And I was pretty excited because I was gonna be off the ship for two years, and I could sustain some sort of normalcy in my life.
00:26:47KNOWLES: During this time on shore duty, my partner and I--we had been together since right before my second deployment in 2007. So this is 2009 now. And we were in our thirties, so, you know, we're discussing kids and stuff, and we, uh, we started using fertility treatments through the military, in order to get pregnant. And while I was on shore duty, my partner Nicole, she got pregnant with twins, and I was able to be there for all of the doctor's appointments. Although I had to lie and say I had medical appointments to go to, and I was very fortunate that nobody ever questioned me where I was going or why I was leaving early. I was basically allowed to--I was in charge of the, uh, the machine shop, so I pretty much did what I wanted to do. The work still got done though, but I prioritized my personal life a little bit above what was going on at work. The twins were born prematurely in February of 2009. And, one of 'em quickly deteriorated and had to be transferred to a children's hospital. This got a little complicated with work because, I wasn't able to talk about, you know, the fact that I was about to be a parent. The fact that I had a partner, or the fact that I had an infant that was really, really sick. So the next day after they were born, I had to go back to work, and I had to leave Nicole in the hospital with one baby, and the other one was at (Rady) Children's Hospital. I got a phone call while I was work saying that I needed to get to the hospital, right away at Children's Hospital. And I had to drive over to UCSD to get Nicole discharged as soon as she could. She'd had a C-section. She could barely walk, but I kind of threw her in the car. And we got over to Children's Hospital, and we were able to hold our daughter before she, she died. Uh, she had a heart defect that caused other problems, and she didn't make it. I was still in uniform that day, just because I had come from work, and I knew that there was no way that I could go back to work that day or the next day. I just didn't know what to do. So, I got ahold of the Command Master Chief. I was pretty sure that she was gay, even though she was a Command Master Chief. So she's playing the political game of, um, hiding it, I guess. Anyways she wanted--she made me lie and say that it was my sister and my sister's baby that died. And, um, I mean, I was able to go on emergency leave or whatever, but I wasn't allowed the same, I don't know, grievance, um, bereavement leave of somebody else who had a close family member die, or the counseling and the support really, from the command. Usually if there was a death or a problem of command, we'd all pull together and raise money and send flowers or anything just for, you know, for everybody, for anything. But, you know, this tragic situation I was going through had to be a secret and a lie.
00:30:38KNOWLES: A year later. I used Navy Fertility Services to, um--and I got pregnant this time. We already had our daughter, Avery, who was about one years old, and I got pregnant with our second child, Luca, through the Navy. And, I was discharged off of active duty before she was actually born. But, you know, if there's anything about the Navy that I could say good is they take care of, they take care of you. The fertility center never questioned. Um, you know, where's your husband? Why are you infertile? They gave me the medicines, did the procedures, and never asked questions. So, you know, because of the Navy, I've got two beautiful girls. I was able to buy a house. I'm able to use my post-9/11 GI Bill. I'm studying at Cal State San Marcos, about to transfer to UMass Boston. I mean, I just, I wouldn't be where I'm at today if it wasn't for the Navy.
00:31:40KNOWLES: With that said, I did endure a bunch of bullshit along the way. You know, being a gay service member during Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The last line of (The) Sailor's Creed is, "I'm committed to excellence and the fair treatment of all." And we say The Sailor's Creed every single morning, and we say it before award ceremonies, we say it when we go through promotion boards, and I'm like, who wrote this thing? And fair treatment of all of, of all? Of all, except for gays, except for women, except for minorities, you know, fair treatment of all. It's a bunch of crap. I guess I do hold a lot of resentment, because I was out there defending, uh, defending freedoms that I myself couldn't even take for granted. Like I couldn't even say that I was in a relationship with somebody. I couldn't get spousal marriage privileges to who I really wanted to be married to. Instead, I had to marry a guy who I didn't even really like anymore. But, I was getting extra benefits for that. You know, the system's definitely flawed.
00:32:58KNOWLES: I separated in February, 2012. The military started downsizing. So I finished my reenlistment and I was denied my request to reenlist. So I joined the Navy Reserves, and that's what I'm doing now. Um, I don't like it. I don't want to do it anymore. Um, I'm kind of, I feel like I've finished what I needed to do with the military. I'm just, I'm just ready to move on and do something else. And I am proud of what I did and all I accomplished and what The Navy has done for me. But I think it's time to go.
00:33:43KNOWLES: Just to answer some of the, uh, the stuff that that's on this outline. As far as communication with family and friends, communication was pretty good. We had email most of the time, unless we had some, some tragic event or we were in harm's way or something, they would shut down email. And the internet, we weren't allowed to use it. But that never lasted longer than a day. So email, we had letters through the postal service, which mail took forever. So basically email. And then towards the end of my last deployment, they started allowing Facebook. They quickly turned it away. I mean turned it off, since people started posting our deployment schedule. But for a while we did have Facebook. We did have internet and the mail. So that's how we did communicating. We also had, uh, sailor phones. It was a dollar a minute, and you would buy a calling card and you can use that. Or if you knew somebody that worked in the communications department, you could use the ship's line. And, there were different codes. To open a line, you can just call out. So, I was able to call my family a lot, and I was constantly on email, so communication was never too big of an issue. Email was basically the reason I got up in the morning. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END
