Australian Army Journal

HISTORY
‘A Homosexual Institution’:
Same-sex Desire in the Army During
World War II
their experiences. For the others, the opportunities presented were rich indeed.
John O’Donnell comments that, in his experience, it was harder to find gay men
than to find sex. 34
In Hadrian’s case, however, his determination simply meant that he missed out on
opportunities while in training during the early years of World War II near Atherton in
Queensland that, on reflection, he would rather have taken. Many years later he ran
into someone with whom he had shared a two-man tent to be told that sex had
always been a possibility at the time, if only he had been alert to what was going
on around him. Roderic Anderson had the same (lack of) experience, regretting in
his memoirs that he had, though his own overly cautious approach, missed out on
much pleasure. 35
Others picked up on the opportunities early on — the temptations were all around,
all the time. Pete, one of the New Guinea informants, tried ‘over and over’ to give
up homo-sex, but he couldn’t help himself. 36 Ian had hoped that the discipline of
Army life might help him curb his ‘impulses’, only to find the ‘opportunities were
better and more consistent’ even than in civilian life. 37 Not that the temptations
were all on the one side: like Pete, Ken found that many soldiers (gay and straight)
were ‘able to pick me for what I am’, and would approach him. It was only in
response that he found himself unable to ‘resist the urge to go with them’. 38
The squares
Some of this — perhaps most — was situational homosexuality. In the absence of
women with whom to interact, many heterosexual men were prepared to involve
themselves in sexual acts with other men, as the Army itself reluctantly admitted.
Pseudonym John, who served in the RAAF from 1943 to 1944, knew of many men
who, in ‘civvy street’, would never have thought, never dreamt, of having sex with
a male but who, ‘because there were no women around [and] they were missing it’,
were ‘very, very happy’ to participate. 39 Many of these men went on after the war
to marry, including some of those who had extended affairs in wartime. 40
John O’Donnell was one of these, marrying after he returned home because
the family expected it. 41
For heterosexuals, sex with men was always a managed process, self-justified and
explained to others in a variety of ways. One option was simply to deny that there
was any homosexuality at work. John O’Donnell reports that most of the men he
had sex with would tell him they ‘definitely weren’t camp, they only did it because
there weren’t any women to be had, so if you agreed no one was a poofter,
Australian Army Journal
Culture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 31