Homosexuality within Armed Forces, WW2

There were rumors about Mountbatten when he was a young officer. His wife apparently strayed with men (Nehru?) and possibly with women as well (rumor, once more).

 

Chindit Frank Baines made his sexuality pretty clear in his posthumously published book entitled "Chindit Affair", having had an "affair" with a young Gurkha - I've found some references in Jack Masters' book and in other accounts that may point to Captain Frank Baines... the book pulls no punches on this subject...

There were some issues "Mad" Mike Calvert fell foul of in the fifties but he strenuously denied them...

 

Future SS, no doubt.

Nazi soldiers don skirts, dresses and even bras in Second World War photos | Daily Mail Online

 

An additional thought on this topic which has not been explored is this. If in 1939, a man thought he was going to be called up, could he explain to the person who collected the National Registration form that he was a homosexual and therefore incapacitated in some way. Or if he got as far as the medical, could he reveal his sexuality and be exempted from the armed forces?

 

Just finished "Battle Tales from Burma" by John Randle and one of the chapters talks about homosexuality he says its was on a low scale but varied a bit by different Indian Races with the Pathans getting a mention and also their marching song Zakhmi Dil having explicit homosexual overtones. He says that officers were supposed to deal with homosexuality when found but tended to try avoid it and leave it to the Indian Officers and VCO's to deal with. He goes on to talk about how amongst the Indian soldiers British Officers were considered Pukka Sahibs (Proper Chaps) and that the soldiers tended to look up to them as higher class so the officers had a duty to behave in a manor in line with this - they had an officer arrive who he was later told had been trying to take advantage of his position and force himself on his men - the men were very upset by this not "Pukka" behaviour and there was even talk of them plotting on killing him so the matter was raised up the chain and he was removed. Randall talks of his distaste for homosexuality but he is much more scathing in his words for the officers abuse of authority.

 

I don't know about the British forces, but when we still had the draft in the United States in the 1960s hinting at or explicitly admitting queer tendencies --whether you had any or not--was a known strategy for getting out of your service obligation. This shtick was even mentioned in an anti-Vietnam song of the time.

 

Interesting.I was unaware of that. Because it was very much underground in the UK during that period, there seems to be little recorded about it. Although common in some circles such as the theatrical world, it was illegal, and not openly discussed or acknowledged and men such as Alan Turing suffered because of this.

 

Sorry forgot to include this quote above.

 

National Lampoon magazine said to wear women's underwear to your draft physical. Also to shoot off a pinky toe or puncture an eardrum.

 

Funnily enough I had a telephone conversation the other day with the man who rescued Mike Calvert from the streets of the city (Glasgow?) where he was living rough. He reckoned that Calvert was gay and was set up by the security services in the 1950s.

 

"The boy across the stream has a bottom like a peach but alas I cannot swim....?"

There was a lot of hypocrisy in the British military's approach to homosexuality. There were plenty of opportunities for upper class men and women in and out of the services for satisfying a wide range of desires and for their sexuality to be fairly open. Miles Hilyard brought a male guest to a pre war ladies night at his yeomanry officers mess. The Ritz Hotel was known for its wartime gay bars (one male one female). At the same time an other rank might have to dodge the vice squad which targeted public lavatories, parks and street air raid shelters.

I suspect the stories about guardsmen and sailors were as much about prostitution by the penniless as sexual proclivity.

During my service in the 1980s there were several sex scandals involving soldiers in Colchester Garrison where my unit was based. One involved a soldier found having sex with a 17 stone transvestite. He claimed he thought he was having sex with a woman and explained himself thinking "she" was a WRAC officer... Two soldiers in the RMAC were found in bed together. At this time homosexuality was a military offence. I had a conversation with the troop sergeant majors and sergeants in the troop office. They were surprising liberal and tolerant, they went through the names of the soldiers, and identified those gay and transvestite.

One of my soldiers - my signaler was a really tough scouser. I picked him to serve in the team I was due to lead as battle casualty replacements in 1982. He was also the most deviant oversexed individual I have ever met. He deserted after he woke up one morning in bed with another of my soldiers. The response from the NCOs and the rest of the troop was that we were really sorry to lose him and would have forgiven him if he came back, We wont go into details about another soldier's affection for the Falklands or the attractions of its inhabitants. Baaaaa.