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Men at War: Loving, Lusting, Fighting, Remembering 1939-1945

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Despite the richness of British masculinity studies and the pervasiveness of queer First World War poetry in British school curricula, Emma Vickers’ 2013 Queen and Country: Same-Sex Desire in the British Armed Forces, 1939-45 remains one of the few academic monographs to consider queer men not just as a given in British histories of war, but as a distinct culture enabled by wartime mobilisation. For a while, the Second World War provided me with an escape from my peers, with my weak body, physical ineptitude, and confused sexuality’, Turner reflects: ‘but I was starting to feel like I was nothing like this generation who were held up as heroes. Armed with the knowledge of a war aficionado, Turner cements his seat at the table alongside those who might resist his queer narrative of World War II. Turner uses firsthand accounts by gay men such as Peter de Rome (who served in the Royal Air Force) and Quentin Crisp (who was rejected on account of ‘sexual perversion’) to demonstrate the variety of queer experiences during the war, and the need for nuanced study of those experiences. He gives a different and very personal insight into the long established "national narrative" about World War 2.

This seemingly uncomfortable fit is heightened by the emergence of lad culture in the 90s and an increasingly jingoistic exhumation of the fallen soldiers for nationalistic and increasingly far-right causes.

I was 14 when I began to notice that my relationship with war stories had a different bent from those of my male relatives.

The final 100 pages in particular beautifully synthesise personal experience and the untold queer context of the text.

Comparing British memory of the war with that of other countries, Turner asks why British soldiers are not remembered alongside Japanese and German men as potential perpetrators of sexual violence, despite evidence of these crimes during the Allied occupation of Germany and postwar colonial uprisings. This certainly confirms his knowledge of the period and gives some historical colour and substance but if, like me, you aren't really interested in the engineering then it can be a bit of a struggle at times. Engaging, with remarkable insights into aspects of WWII which I hadn't seen explored in print before. The army which fought for the Allies was largely composed of conscripts who were not necessarily respectful of military mores and martial manners. Insightful and affecting account of the people whose lives and love lives have been forgotten since World War 2 - to the detriment of them and to us.

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