A story about "passing" in the military

The selection from Tobias Wolff, from 2009, in 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories. Awaiting Orders, is a military story, but not one that draws on TW's experiences serving in Vietnam. It's a stateside military story (come to think of it, so was his short novel, The Barracks Thief, which pretty much launched is writing career). The story was most likely in the era of don't ask, don't tell, and TW does a short character sketch, based on one incident, of a soldier who is not telling. We sense near the start that the sergeant is probably homosexual, and as TW fills in on his back story we see that he's had a series of clandestine relationships w/ a # of soldiers - we get the sense that there was and is a whole gay undercurrent to military life, talk about don't tell - and is at the time of the story living off base with another soldier. Though the sergeant is a lifer with about 20 years of service, it's obvious he has to watch every step he takes. We are w/ him on one day in service when he gets a call from a woman seeking to locate her brother, and the Sgt informs him that the brother has been sent overseas into combat. The woman seems in need of help, and the Sgt agrees to meet her in a coffee shop after his shift. She's there w/ a young boy - her nephew - and she had no capacity to care for this child. The Sgt offers to help her financially, but nothing comes of this. So why the meeting, why the story? From a few hints we see that it's important of the Sgt to be seen - there were others from the base at the coffee shop - w/ a young woman and child, whom others may assume to be his wife, his son. (The waiter makes this assumption.) We sense that this kind of calculation, the need to establish a false front of heterosexuality, pervades every day of his life in the Army. There's not a lot to this story; it's one of the more understated - I suspect TW could have addressed this topic and this soldier's life experiences in a more dramatic, violent manner - even minimalist stories (echo of Carver?) in this anthology, but it's also one of the few to take on the issue of "passing" - even in an age supposedly of civil rights and laissez-fair tolerance.