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384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
The generation of gay men and women who served in World War II grew into adulthood fighting one war for their country and another to protect themselves from their government’s escalating mobilisation against them.This is one of those books that’s difficult to review, because who am I to give an opinion on something so culturally important? But I did like it, I did enjoy reading it.
Some gay soldiers and officers, particularly those with a college education, carried with them a mythology, developed from reading the classics and in conversations with other gay men, about “armies of lovers,” such as the “Sacred Band of Thebes” in ancient Greece, and heroic military leaders, such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Lawrence of Arabia, who like themselves had had male lovers. This folklore provided them with romantic historical images that could help allay self-doubts before their first combat missions. It confirmed that there had always been gay warriors who fought with courage and skill, sometimes spurred on by the desire to fight bravely by the side of their lovers.There was also the fact that, with sex-segregated troops, entertainment amongst men was primarily provided by other men. This often took the form of comedic stage performances, which would today be considered more or less identical to drag shows. A similar pattern—male actors playing female roles onstage—can be traced back millennia, all the way to ancient Greek theatre and earlier. Bérubé also acknowledges what he calls “situational homosexuality,” where soldiers would engage in sexual relationships with one another regardless of their romantic interest in other men (it was also believed by a majority of GIs that venereal diseases could only be contracted from heterosexual intercourse, and—given that condom rations were often used on rifle-barrels to prevent weather damage—this was in no small part one of the reasons behind these “situational” sexual relationships; conversely, enlisted women were not told that venereal disease could or could not be contracted from lesbian sex, but based on essentially every reliable report, this did nothing to stop them from engaging in it). This type of “situational” relationship was also prevalent amongst WACs and army nurses—many of whom were either away from their husbands or partners for long periods of time and therefore turned to other women for sexual gratification—or single women curious about lesbian experiences. Of course, queer spaces were hardly nonexistent prior to the war, even in the US (which, compared to pre-war countries such as Germany, the undisputed hub of queer sexual expression and acceptance, was relatively conservative about such matters); Bérubé explains at length how the need for discretion birthed its own discreet community amongst queer servicemen and -women within the context of the war, often forming relationships and connections that would last the length of the war if not even longer after.