The guys I have worked with in my 13 or so years have always had a highly-developed "gay-dar." We never had any problem figuring out who was a buggerer...however, I don't ever recall anyone doing much about the ones in our midst until such a time when the gay ones would do something to expose themselves.
Live and let live is alive and well in the USAF...methinks the little buggerer let on a lot more than he wishes to admit.
I think the N'Stync CDs on his shelf would have been the first clue.
All I can say on this issue, is that the gay men that I have worked with love a man in uniform.
We have a friend who was in the Army and one night some gay guy started messing with him while he was asleep.The other soldiers had to pull this friend of ours off the guy because he was going to beat him to death.Were in our 50's so it hasn't been too long ago. Yea I guess it was about 30 years ago. Dang I just made myself feel so so old.
I asked my father about homosexuals in the Army when he served in WWII. He said that most of the overt or effeminate ones did not make it through basic training; not that anyone tormented them - basic in that time was just serious and hard business. . then, after they left for N. Africa, there wasn't much time for any frivolous considerations. Simply staying alive through the battles there and then boarding ship for Sicily, Italy and on to Germany with the tough combat for every inch in those places - stopping Hitler and ramming it down the Panzer Divisions throats (not an easy job, incidentally) was the daily reality of combat. They were brothers and they weren't abusing or humiliating each other; I think a lot of this crap is very little more than too many people having way too much coddling by mama and way too much time on their hands to contemplate their belly buttons.