Throughout military history, long before the “LGBTQ+” was even a thing, members of the community were either banned from joining the service or hidden away. Soldiers, especially men, were painted as tough, brave, and everything masculine, and there was no room for anything that was not deemed “honorable.” Regardless, there were LGTBQ soldiers who braved the wars and went to protect their nations even when they were hidden, dismissed, and just plainly discriminated against. Most of them were either forced to hide their true identities or at least not talk about it with policies like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Here are some of them:

Oliver Sipple

Oliver “Billy” Sipple was from Detroit, Michigan, and grew up part of a large devout Baptist family. Billy knew that he was gay at an early age, but knowing that it would upset his religious parents, he chose to hide his sexual identity from them. He eventually dropped out of high school and instead joined the US Marines, where he was deployed in Vietnam. There, he was wounded not only once but twice, with one of them in the head.

At that time, the US military had not passed its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy yet that allowed gays to enlist as long as they kept their identity a secret. Regardless, Sipple still chose to keep his identity hidden.

Oliver Sipple in his apartment. (Associated Press/AP Images via allthatsinteresting.com)

Perhaps one of the interesting parts of his career was when on September 22, 1975, the US veteran was walking through Union Square in San Francisco when he noticed a big crowd that formed at the St. Francis Hotel. He found out that President Gerald Ford was causing the build-up, as he was there for a conference. The President emerged, and Sipple immediately noticed a dark-haired woman raising her .38 caliber pistol and was aiming for the president. In a heartbeat, he lunged forward, knocked the gun out of the assassin’s hand, and saved Ford’s life.

Later on, in an interview, he said, “I’m not a hero, I’m a live coward… It’s probably the scariest thing that ever happened in my whole life.”

Sipple did not really appreciate the public recognition that came with what he did. When he was discharged from service, he moved to San Francisco and entered the burgeoning gay scene. The press looked into his background and discovered he was gay and reported it for reasons that varied from advocacy for public acceptance of gays to reinforcing bigotry against gays. Sipple was horrified by the narrative shift to his sexual preferences over what he did to thwart an assassination attempt on the President  He did not want to announce to the world his sexuality as he knew his parents would disown him. He called news outlets one by one and begged not to be named or mention anything about him being gay. They still did anyway, and the news reached his family. His father did not want anything to do with him. He was not even allowed to attend his mother’s funeral when she died. Due to what happened, Sipple filed a lawsuit against several newspaper companies for $15 million. In his selfless act to save the President, the media ended up all but destroying his life.

“My sexuality is part of my private life and has no bearing on my response to the act of a person seeking to take the life of another,” Sipple said in the lawsuit. Unfortunately, he lost the lawsuit and was kept isolated by his family. What was even sadder was that Sipple died alone at the early age of 47 in 1989, and because he was just by himself, his body was not discovered until two weeks later.

Patricia Davies

World War II veteran Patricia Davies was born into this world as a boy named Peter, and she lived by it almost throughout her life. Davies served in the Army between April 1945 and 1948, but her bravest moment came when she was 90 when she finally decided to come out as a transwoman. She said,