Australian Army Journal

HISTORY
‘A Homosexual Institution’:
Same-sex Desire in the Army During
World War II
(compliance with directives versus the maintenance of good order and goodwill
within the unit), their various personal attitudes towards homosexuality, and so on
meant that in reality homosexuals were often able — with some luck and discretion
and care — to carve out a space for themselves, to forge a sub-culture in which
they could live their lives. In recent years historians have accumulated a small but
significant collection of memories which reveal the ways in which opportunities
presented themselves and were taken up. 27
Opportunity knocks
It may seem obvious to modern readers that joining or being conscripted into
the Army, Navy or Air Force during World War II would present many chances
for homosexual men to enjoy a rich sex life — our expectations of the realities of
single-sex institutions such as the military are strong. To this we would add the
recognition that for those caught up in the radically uncertain world of wartime
where death might strike at any moment, a desire to ‘live for the moment’ informed
the experiences of many women and men. In Sumner Locke Elliot’s fictionalised
memoir of his war years in the Northern Territory, a captain tells the corporal to
whom he is making love: ‘Don’t be formal for a few fucking minutes, it’s all we’ve got,
it might be all we ever have.’ 28
But this kind of opportunity was not always what men of the time expected.
Some, at least, assumed that it would be necessary to adopt a heterosexual
persona — and tried to do so. John O’Donnell, who served in Port Moresby and
Lae in the Engineers Company from 1942 to 1945, decided that he would be
‘butch and straight’. 29 ‘Mata Hari’, who enlisted in 1940, was captured in Crete in
1941 and was a prisoner of war for the next four years, remembered the need to
be cautious until other camp men could be identified. 30 This was by no means an
unreasonable precaution. Many of those who told their life stories to the authorities
in New Guinea in 1944 reported harassment and bullying from their comrades.
Len was teased: ‘they would make swishing noises and call me a poufter [sic] and
mimic a cissy voice whenever I walk into the mess or around the camp’. 31 Ron had
an even worse time — many, he says, gave him ‘a bad spin’, and as word of his
activities got around, his comrades took to calling him ‘queen’s names’. 32
Others went further, imagining that they could actually change their sexual
orientation, that ‘the Army was going to make a man of me’, to help them ‘become
a decent, square Australian soldier’ as ‘Hadrian’, who signed up in 1940 and spent
14 years as a soldier, put it. 33 Some, of course, must have stuck to their guns
(as it were), eschewing sexual activity entirely, although they have not recorded
Australian Army Journal
Culture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 30