Homosexuality within Armed Forces, WW2

A few passing mentions in obituaries to the proclivities of individuals who had seen war service, got me thinking. many of us wouldn't bat an eyelid now, but what was it like for people in uniform then?

Of course the practice thereof was illegal then, but are there any contemporary references in publications to individuals in service, attitudes towards homosexuals, treatment, punishment or tolerance?

i have heard a few stories from veterans (summed up by a 'so what?' attitude) about men in their units, are there any more?

 

Interesting topic. I suspect the attitude to this at the time was such that if you were homosexual it was kept very quiet. Also, whilst attitudes to these subjects have changed these days people from that era may still have the same attitude they did then. I wouldn't therefore expect an outpour of exposes.

 

Tristan Jones in his book 'Heart of Oak' which covers his time in the Royal Navy during WW2 makes a few references to the subject. It's a long time since i read it, but from what i can remember, even though he didn't personally witness anything, it was common knowledge that it went on. It seemed that as long as they kept themselves to themselves and conducted it away from eveybody else, then it was ignored.

 

My understanding (from Dad who once mentioned that he served in WWII with a guy 'who batted for the other side so I kept my distance' [his words, not mine]) is that 'blind eyes were turned'. I've also heard it said that if the rules prevailing at the time were actually imposed (and which I understand excluded that 'class' of person from serving in the Armed Forces) then anyone who wanted to avoid conscription could simply make it known they 'were "inappropriate"': might have made the recruitment process more 'interesting'!

Note: my comments are based totally on what Dad mentioned nearly 40 years ago and I've not validated any of what I've stated above (Army Regs etc etc) so please take these comments as verbatim from some-one who was actually around at the time.

 

i suspect the same too but given the difficult nature of the topic, (even now it creates heated debates) i was hoping that others might've come across references, or even discussed related issues no matter how briefly with veterans or others living at the time.

i'm not looking for exposes, if that was directed at 'outing' or confessions. maybe i'm being overly cautious but i 'm curious to know if there is much recorded about this.

 

Thanks ClankyPencil and SDP for your responses, exactly the kind of thing i heard too.

 

Tristan Jones in his book 'Heart of Oak' which covers his time in the Royal Navy during WW2 makes a few references to the subject. It's a long time since i read it, but from what i can remember, even though he didn't personally witness anything, it was common knowledge that it went on. It seemed that as long as they kept themselves to themselves and conducted it away from eveybody else, then it was ignored.
See also George Melly's memoir "Rum, Bum and Concertina" (Part 2 of his "Owning Up" trilogy).

I recall seeing an American TV documentary fairly recently - perhaps on PBS? - which dealt with homosexuality in the US forces in WW2. IIRC they were shipped home, confined to special camps (no pun intended) and eventually dishonourably discharged. I think some non-homosexual men also took that route as a way out rather than face further (or any) combat.

According to this, there were about 10000 "blue discharges" during WW2:

History of the Exclusion of Gays in the US Military | 10,000 Dishonorably Discharged During WWII | Event view

 

Callisto
it was a well known fact that any one who had served in India for any lengthy spell had tendency for the "other side " shall we say - not too prevalent but nevertheless there - as opposed to the state of the Desert Army on reaching Sicily was handicapped by an outbreak of VD.....which annoyed Monty no end....

Equally was the fact that MANY US Homo's fled to the sancticty and safety of the RC seminaries - destroying the main order of Dominicans and others even unto to-day since 1942....

Cheers

 

Vitesse
Interesting documentary, never seen it. Admittedly without any solid foundation, but that would suggest to me more than a slight difference in attitude between the 2 allies

Thought this link i just found was worth adding, not a passing reference as in the obits which i mentioned, this one confronts the issue with quotes from the veteran himself :
Obituary: Dudley Cave - Arts & Entertainment - The Independent

ANTI-FASCIST, SOLDIER, prisoner of war, advocate of peace and reconciliation, gay rights pioneer, Dudley Cave was above all a humanitarian.

An early career with Odeon cinemas was interrupted by the Second World War. Cave was initially inclined to register as a conscientious objector, but revelations about the horrors of the Third Reich changed his mind, "I was basically a pacifist, but I thought the Nazi persecution of the Jews made it a just war."

Cave joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, in 1941, aged 20. "Homosexual soldiers were more or less accepted," he said. "There was never any disciplinary action taken against them." Despite gossip that he was a "nancy boy", Cave said the worst prejudice he ever experienced in the Army was being chided for "holding a broom like a woman".

Instead of fighting the Nazis, as he expected, Cave was posted to the Far East. During the fall of Singapore in 1942, he was captured by the Japanese. Marched north in a prisoner-of-war labour detachment, his unit was put to work on the Thai- Burma railway, 10 miles beyond the bridge on the River Kwai. Three-quarters of Cave's comrades in H force perished. He was lucky. After he suffered a bad bout of malaria, the Japanese declared him unproductive and ordered his incarceration in Changi Prison, Singapore.

It was in Changi that Cave began to accept his homosexuality. A British army medical officer gave him a copy of Havelock Ellis's "enlightened, eye-opening" 1920 book Sexual Inversion. It made him feel "much better about being gay".

Changi was, nevertheless, a nightmare of physical deprivation. When liberated in 1945, he was near death from malnutrition, down from 12 stone to less than eight. "If the war had gone on another month," he said, "I don't think I would have survived."

After risking his life to defend what Winston Churchill called the "freedom- loving nations", Cave returned to a country where freedom was still denied to gay people. Not only were homosexual relationships illegal, homophobic discrimination was rife. In 1954, Cave was dismissed as manager of the Majestic Cinema in Wembley after it was discovered he was gay. "They asked me to resign," recalled Cave. "I refused, so they sacked me."

Fortunately, that same year, Cave met the man who became his life partner, Bernard Williams, an RAF veteran and schoolteacher. At the time, Williams was married. As with many gay men then, the marriage was an attempt to overcome his homosexuality. But the wedding "cure" did not work. Williams's wife, June, realised this. She encouraged the relationship with Cave. All three became lifelong friends and ended up living together in a Bloomsbury- style domestic arrangement in Golders Green. Cave and Williams remained side by side as lovers and gay rights champions for 40 years, until Williams's death in 1994.

...

From the early 1980s onwards, Cave turned his attention to "unfinished business" arising from his wartime experiences. Furious at the ban on lesbians and gays in the armed forces, he accused military chiefs of cynically enlisting homosexuals when they were needed to defeat Nazism, and then witch- hunting them as soon as the war was over. "They treated gay people like cannon-fodder," he complained.

Despite his own wartime suffering, Cave was a leading figure in the promotion of peace and reconciliation with Japan. This provoked denunciation and rejection by many former comrades. "I will never forget what the Japanese did to us, but the time has come for forgiveness," he wrote to a friend. He was involved with the Peace Temple near the River Kwai, and lectured extensively on the need for rapprochement between former adversaries.

For 20 years, Cave battled against the Royal British Legion's refusal to acknowledge that lesbian and gay people served and died in wars defending Britain. He also challenged the Legion over its opposition to the participation of gay organisations in Remembrance Day ceremonies.

He was incensed in the early 1980s when the Legion's Assistant Secretary, Gp Capt D.J. Mountford, condemned moves to promote the acceptance of gay people as an attempt to "weaken our society", and declared that homosexuals had no right to complain about being ostracised by Legion members.

One of Dudley Cave's final public acts was last November, when he was the keynote speaker at OutRage!'s Queer Remembrance Day vigil at the Cenotaph. After laying a pink triangle wreath honouring gay people who died fighting Nazism and in the concentration camps, Cave deplored the fact that gay ceremonies of remembrance are still - in the late 1990s - being condemned by the British Legion as "distasteful" and "offensive".

Peter Tatchell

Dudley Scott Cave, soldier and gay rights campaigner: born London 19 February 1921; died London 19 May 1999.

 

never came across any..Though if they were prepared to fight for their land? I do know that the Navy took quick action to get rid of them.... if they were found...

 

From my 1914 Manual of Military Law, Chapter 7:

"1.The first forty sections of the Army Act specify the various military offences of which a person subject to military law may be guilty. The sections embrace not only offences against discipline, but also offences against the persons and property of soldiers. Nearly all the offences of which a soldier can be guilty as a soldier and as against another soldier are included in these sections.

A soldier, however, is not only a soldier but a citizen also, and as such is subject to the civil as well as to the military law. An act which constitutes an offence if committed by a citizen is none the less an offence if committed by a soldier, and a soldier not less than a civilian can be tried and punished for such an offence by the civil courts.

2. In order to give the military courts complete jurisdiction over soldiers, those courts are authorised to try and punish soldiers for civil offences, namely, offences which, if committed in England, are punishable by the law of England."

And, later:

"42. The offence of sodomy is when a male has carnal knowledge of an animal or has carnal knowledge of a human being "per anum". Penetration is required, as in the case of rape, to constitute carnal knowledge.

A person over the age of fourteen allowing himself or herself to be known in this manner is guilty of the same offence.

43. It is an offence for a male person, either in public or private, to commit, or to be a party to, the commission of any act of gross indecency with another male person; or to procure the commission of any such act.

It is also an offence to do any grossly indecent act in a public place in the presence of two or more persons, or to publicly expose the person, or exhibit any disgusting object."

From page 118, the maximum penalties for sodomy are set out as:

sodomy = penal servitude for life
attempted sodomy = penal servitude for 10 years

Page 116 sets out the maximum penalties for indecency as being imprisonment for 2 years, with or without hard labour.

Although my version dates from 1914, little had changed by WW2.

I also have the War Diary for the CRASC, 4th Division for 1940. There is a reference in it to a disciplinary investigation into an incident of alleged sodomy in the 4th Division Supply Column, RASC. I have the War Diary for 4th Division Supply Column as well. I don't have these to hand just now but will see what they say and post the relevant bits.

Cheers

Ian

 

When AIDS was recognised in the 1980's I recall me Dad telling me he thought he saw the symptoms of AIDS in the trenches. I was only a teenager when he made this remark, but he was also a psychiatric charge nurse by then so had some medical knowledge behind him post WW2.

 

Myles Hilyard was an officer in the Shewood Rangers who seems to have never entered the closet.
His obituary is fairly coy
Myles Hildyard - Telegraph

but his memoirs "it is Bliss out here" are fullof his attempts to seduce the soldiery

My father served with a man who was pretty openl gay. he also described him as the bravest man in the unit. As a medic he would treat soldiers under mortar fire and take control of the situation when the chain of com,mand was still in their slit trenches.

 

Some more American sources, including the interesting point that many of those who received Blue Discharges later gravitated to California - particularly San Francisco:

GLBT: WWII

Coming Out Under Fire: Allan Berube: 9780743210713: Amazon.com: Books

 

I wonder if it reared its head in COLDITZ ,, though i have never come across it in all
I have read of the prison ,,or have i missed something ..

 

As Chick 42-46 points out, this whole subject is most likely to surface officially in the disciplinary records. I looked at a lot of court martial stuff for my book and I only recall two cases, one in 50th Div (actually 8th Armd Bde I think) and one in the 9th Australian Div. This suggests that "unnatural practices" were a pretty rare offense, at least in frontline divisions. What it was like in garrison and service units stationed in India and Egypt I couldn't guess. MacDonald Hull touches on the subject briefly in his novel, A Man From Alamein, vis-a-vis a Bren gun team suspected of being more than just pals. Hull's attitude seems to have been "so what, so long as they do their jobs."

American writers seem to have given more attention to the problem. William Manchester recalls a number of incidents in the wartime Marine Corps, one of which involved the "busting" and imprisonment of a veteran USMC sergeant major. James Jones discusses it extensively in the first two volumes of his wartime novel trilogy, From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line. If Jones is to be trusted some prewar US regular servicemen often earned pocket money from queers in Hawaii, but queers in the ranks were generally regarded as bad eggs and disciplinary problems and shifted to cruddy assignments as soon as possible.

 

Chick thanks for quoting from the Military Law

TTH, the story of US pre war Regulars tallies with what was also rumoured elsewhere, for instance
Guardsman Higgins, 1830 (c) | Online Collection | National Army Museum, London

 

I had the pleasure of interviewing a very frank Guards veteran (certainly not PC) some years ago - naming his 6pdr crew, he commented of one "he was a puff, but a good soldier and one of us so we made sure he wasn't picked on".

There was an excellent BBC documentary about the RAMC in the Western Desert broadcast about ten years ago. They interviewed homosexual orderlies (one of whom admitted to occasionally, discretely, 'helping relieve the stress' of wounded soldiers in the absence of drugs). The main point was that people in the recruiting system acknowledged that these guys had qualities that would be better used in the front line medical service than combat arms - rather than any kind of threat.

Keith

 

It's certainly a very thought provoking subject. An episode of Only Fools and Horses springs to ming where Delboy is making fun of Uncle Albert and the goings on in the Navy. Uncle Albert retorts with, " Nothing like that went on on my ship. A few funny ones but nothing like that".

Stereotypically the Navy has always had this homosexual activity tag attached to it and I have no idea why or what the origins of that are. Or why the Army or Air Force would be any different? Maybe the Navy has it because in history it involved a bunch of men going off on a boat for months on end. With no women folk on hand maybe relationships did blossom? Which would lead to questions about concentration camps. Men together, facing death and despair every day. Surely it's human nature to want companionship and love? Like I say, very interesting thought provoking topic.

 

.....Stereotypically the Navy has always had this homosexual activity tag attached to it and I have no idea why or what the origins of that are........

According to an old friend of mine, now passed on, who served on HMS Rodney, when they entered Scapa Flow and HMS Nelson was already at anchor and crew members were lining the rails (or whatever it's called!), the crew of Rodney would greet the Nelson crew by giving out a loud 'baaaaaaaa'; something to do with sheep apparently