"Why Do People Have To Push Me Like That?"

By Mark Thompson/Fort Campbell

If it had been anyone else who stood up to Private Calvin Glover about his outrageous, macho bragging that summer night, things might have turned out differently. But it may have been just too humiliating to be challenged by Private First Class Barry Winchell, of all people. Glover was in full boast on the eve of July Fourth as he and his fellow soldiers drank beer around the concrete picnic table outside their barracks at Fort Campbell, Ky. "He would say he was on 'smack' since he was 10," Private First Class Nikita Sanarov said, "and had been on probation since he was 12. Stuff like that." Recalls Private First Class Arthur Hoffman: "He was just trying to make himself look like a badass. The stories were pretty out there."

Finally one of the beer drinkers, Winchell, told Glover that he was full of it. Glover walked up to Winchell and tried to knock a beer from his hand but failed. Winchell insisted he didn't want to fight, but something drove Glover to keep provoking one. Finally, Winchell tossed his beer aside and hit Glover quickly several times with the heel of his hand. As Glover reeled backward, Winchell grabbed him around the waist and threw him to the ground. That should have been the end to an ordinary fight, but for Glover the stakes were higher. He had just been beat by a man whose suspected homosexuality had preoccupied the barracks for months. "It ain't over," Glover vowed to Winchell. "I will...kill you."

That is the story that Army prosecutors are expected to tell in a court-martial scheduled to begin this week in the tiny, white courthouse at this Kentucky post. They will allege that Glover followed through on his threat the next night, creeping up to Winchell's cot as he slept and smashing his head in with a baseball bat. But Glover is not the only one on trial. The Army is haunted by the fear that it may be seen as his accomplice for fumbling the military's policy on gays in uniform, not just in this case, but on a more widespread basis.

Until 1994, when the Clinton Administration imposed the doctrine of "Don't ask, don't tell," gays had been barred, at least in theory, from military service. Under the new rules, endorsed by Congress, commanders cannot ask about a soldier's sexual orientation without specific evidence of homosexual conduct. And soldiers, regardless of their orientation, are to be permitted to serve as long as they keep their sex lives private. Yet the number of soldiers discharged for being gay has grown steadily since the policy began, from 156 in 1993 to 312 last year. Antigay harassment, too, is on the rise in the military's ranks, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a pro-gay group that tracks such incidents. In fact, the allegations surrounding Winchell's life and death suggest that the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, far from being a neat compromise between barring gays and openly accepting them, is being carried out in a way that can create a dangerous atmosphere of intrigue in the ranks.

While the military has issued a gag order in the Winchell proceedings, a TIME reconstruction of the prosecution's case, based on pretrial statements and testimony, gives a grim account of what transpired at Barracks 4028. Winchell, a .50-cal. machine gunner, loved being in the vaunted 101st Airborne Division--the "Screaming Eagles"--which has played key roles in U.S. military triumphs from D-day to the Gulf War. A native of Kansas City, Mo., Winchell enlisted in 1997 and dreamed of becoming an Army helicopter pilot. But the 21-year-old also had a recurring nightmare: that someone would find out he was gay and end his Army career. Winchell had a girlfriend during basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., but after transferring to Fort Campbell in May 1998, he began spending time with a man who performed as a woman at a Nashville, Tenn., nightclub. He acknowledged to the wife of a fellow soldier that he was gay.

One night last March, Winchell and his barracks roommate, Specialist Justin Fisher, drove to Nashville and visited the Connection, a mostly gay dance club. It was there that Winchell met Cal ("Calpernia") Addams, an ex-Navy medic and female impersonator. Winchell's regular trips to the club led soldiers in his unit to whisper about the "drag queen" he was dating. The talk depressed Winchell. He had struggled in school with dyslexia, and he was succeeding at something for the first time in the Army. He wanted to make it his career. "He was really worried about people talking about him being gay," said Specialist Lewis Ruiz, a friend. "That was a big deal, because he really wanted to stay in the Army and didn't want to have his name dragged through the mud."

But virulent antigay bigotry remains an accepted prejudice in much of the U.S. military. So when rumors began to float around that someone in the unit might be gay, a sergeant--in violation of "Don't ask, don't tell"--launched his own informal probe. Fisher had gone to the platoon sergeant, Michael Kleifgen, and said he had dropped a soldier in their unit off at the Connection. He didn't name Winchell, but he specified the date. Kleifgen thumbed through Delta Company's roster and asked soldiers where they had been that night. The sergeant concluded that Winchell had been Fisher's passenger, and later pressed Winchell about it. "[He] was in my truck," the sergeant said. "I asked him if he was gay." Winchell knew his career was in jeopardy, so he denied it, and the sergeant didn't pursue it any further. "I left it at that, because the military has a policy of 'Don't ask, don't tell,'" the sergeant told investigators, apparently oblivious that he had just violated the policy.

The gossip persisted and "seemed to be affecting the platoon," Staff Sergeant Eric Dubielak testified. Even Winchell's superiors began piling on. The company's first sergeant said he was going to "get that little faggot" when Winchell showed up for duty one day smelling of alcohol, according to testimony. "Pretty much everybody in the company called him derogatory names," Kleifgen told a pretrial hearing. "They called him a 'faggot' and stuff like that, I would say on a daily basis. A lot of times, he was walking around down in the dumps." Yet the sergeant let the trash talking continue, contrary to Army policy. "Everybody was having fun," Kleifgen said, trying to explain why he hadn't ordered a halt.

Winchell was in a bind: to complain about the abuse would suggest the stories were true. If he acknowledged he was gay, he would have to leave the Army. Better to simply shrug off the slurs. But by the time the fight broke out between Glover and Winchell, the atmosphere was poisoned. "I can't believe it," Glover confided to his fellow grunts after Winchell floored him. "I won't let a faggot kick my ass." But Winchell apparently had dismissed Glover's death threat as more braggadocio. And he didn't relish his win. "Why," he asked a fellow soldier, "do people have to push me like that?"

The next night--Independence Day--a dozen or so soldiers held a hot-dog cookout around the picnic table. A radio blared music while the soldiers played Wiffle ball and drained a keg of beer. Although 21 is the legal drinking age in Kentucky, younger troops--like the 18-year-old Glover--downed many beers that night. A staff sergeant on duty in the barracks did nothing to halt the illegal drinking. Glover and Winchell kept away from each other, one soldier said, and there was no overt hostility between them. As midnight drew closer, the keg dribbled dry. Glover began whacking the empty aluminum cask with the Wiffle-ball bat.

With the beer gone, soldiers drifted away. Winchell was taking care of the battalion's mascot, an Australian blue heeler named Nasty. Dogs aren't allowed in barracks rooms, so he pulled a cot from the third-floor room he shared with Fisher, 26, onto the open-air landing. What happened next is based on what Fisher has told the Army. His credibility is questionable, though, because he faces charges of lying to Army investigators, in addition to conspiring with Glover to murder Winchell and being an accessory to the crime. Sometime after 2 a.m., Fisher said Glover saw Winchell sleeping on the cot, with the dog tied to it. "What's that fag doing sleeping there?" Glover asked Fisher. The pair entered the room Fisher and Winchell shared, where Fisher kept a baseball bat. Glover grabbed the bat and, with what an Army prosecutor called a "wide-eyed, psychotic look," began making slashing motions with it.

Fisher then apparently left the scene for a while. He returned a short time later to see Glover at the sink. "'I got some blood on your bat--help me clean it,'" Fisher quoted Glover as saying. "How'd you get blood on your bat?" Fisher asked. "I hit Winchell with it," Glover allegedly replied. The pair went outside to check on Winchell. The cot, the nearby walls and Winchell's blanket were all splashed in crimson. Glover slipped a gloved hand underneath Winchell's battered head. "Yeah," he said. "He's done." Nasty began barking loudly. Glover fled the scene, allegedly trying to rid himself of Winchell's blood and any other incriminating evidence. Fisher became hysterical. "Don't die, Winchell! Don't die!" he shouted at his comatose roommate. "Come on, breathe!"

Fisher ran down one flight of stairs to Sanarov's room because Sanarov had a car they could use to take Winchell to the hospital. "Winchell is dying!" he screamed. Sanarov saw Glover as he retrieved his car. "I saw Private Glover running with his hands full of gloves and clothes, heading toward the Dumpster," Sanarov said. (Army investigators say they found bloody jeans and gloves in the trash bin and a bloody T shirt and socks in Glover's room.) Back in the barracks, Winchell struggled to breathe, gurgling on his own blood. Both his eyes were blackened and swollen shut. Blood poured, and brains oozed, from the left side of his head. An Army investigator said it had been shattered "like an eggshell." Fisher, panicking, pulled the barracks fire alarm, which woke the rest of the soldiers. As medics loaded Winchell into an ambulance, a soaking-wet Glover showed up and asked the soldiers what was going on.

Winchell, airlifted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, died 30 hours after the attack. He never regained consciousness. That same day, Glover--by then in the Fort Campbell jail--allegedly confessed to a fellow prisoner. Glover claimed he had left the party to escape Winchell's homosexual passes. "He ran into the guy again, and that's when he beat him down," Private Kenneth Buckler said. "He said he didn't want to kill him--he wanted to teach him a lesson. But he could tell he was dead after he did what he was doing." Nonetheless, Glover pleaded not guilty to the murder charge last month.

He faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kans. Fisher, scheduled to face a court-martial next week, could receive the same sentence. Their fate, and Winchell's, suggests that "Don't ask, don't tell" is an unfulfilled promise, not a functioning policy.