Breckinridge Elkins
12-28-2007, 05:10 PM
The American servicemen also discovered from the streetwalkers that 'The English had a curious custom of fucking on foot, fully clothed.' It became a trademark of the Piccadilly Warriors to call 'Hey Yank, quick Marble Arch style!' But there were also many girls who were not prostitutes who believed that you couldn't get pregnant standing up, and 'wall jobs' soon became part of every GI's wartime vocabulary. One Jewish chaplain, puzzled to see so many of his men wearing their greatcoats in Birmingham on a June evening, was shocked to discover that they were wrapped around girls during alfresco couplings in parks and dark side-streets. 'There is absolutely no end to the vulgar business of soldiers making love – or should I say lust – in public places; many cases are reported of the immoral act of intercourse going on in view of the public,' complained Chaplain Frith in 1944 to his superiors in Washington. 'During morality lectures, the soldiers confessed to me, in a general way, that the reason they had thrown away all propriety was that they were away from home, where no-one knew them, and no-one seemed to interfere to prohibit their freedom of action.' The blackout, it appears, made the British policeman even more of a 'friendly bobby' who could be relied on to turn a blind eye to couples making-out in the dark sanctuary of a convenient telephone box or doorway – and US military police were more concerned with rowdy drunken GIs than with breaking up the trysting couples.
American soldiers were often surprised at the apparent lack of jealousy displayed by English males even when they flirted openly with their womenfolk. Mrs Marguerite G., who confessed that she was a 'grass widow and a pretty young miss', enjoyed 'parties galore' at the American bases. 'My husband came home occasionally, and he was always welcomed, I'm sure he regarded himself more or less as "just one of the boys".' According to some women other husbands serving overseas openly encouraged their wives not to be lonely. Margaret G. cited the example of her friend: 'One day I caught her crying and she let me read the letter from her husband. In it he said he was having a good time with the opposite sex and she should do likewise.'
But not all husbands were as tolerant of their spouses' infidelities with their American allies. A GI who was stationed in Norfolk remembers how they lost one of his company, not to the enemy but to a British soldier who returned unexpectedly to the family home and 'found one of our men in bed with his wife, threw the GI out of a second storey window and killed him. He was sent to prison.' There were other incidents of homicides motivated by sexual passion. One US Army sergeant was acquitted in November 1943 of the murder of an ATS private whose partly undressed and beaten body was discovered after a drunken dance.
It was the Canadian troops stationed in the south of England who acquired the worst wartime record as violent lovers, and who extracted the most savage vengeance on those girls who jilted them. On the night of 16 February 1943, a handsome dispatch rider, Victor Eric Gill, stormed into a Brighton pub to launch into a fierce argument with a pretty brunette at the bar. The row continued outside until a piercing scream was heard, followed by a series of shots. Ivy Ellen Eade, an eighteen-year-old hairdresser, lay sprawled in a spreading pool of blood in the car park. It turned out that she was pregnant with Gill's child and their argument began because she had dated another Canadian sergeant. Gill, who admitted he was already married, said at his trial he had never intended to kill Ivy, whom he claimed to love deeply, but had been 'overwhelmed with apprehension and jealousy'. His passionate pleas apparently convinced the jury, who found him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
A month later, a fellow Canadian, a young regimental policeman named Charles Eugene Gautier, was less fortunate. He had taken up with a Brighton housewife whose husband was a prisoner in Germany. When he discovered that Mrs Annette Pepper had taken another Canadian into her house, he blasted his way in with a Bren gun, wounded his rival and then sprayed his mistress's body full of bullets as she pleaded with him at the top of the staircase. Gautier was found guilty of murder and hanged at Wandsworth prison on 24 September 1943 after his appeal had been refused. The publicity given to the case had served to inflame the concern many British servicemen overseas had begun to feel about their wives back home. Reports were being received from field commanders that the morale of men at the fighting front was being badly undermined by stories of rape, violence, and illegitimate births.
The main sexually motivated wartime violence in Britain, however, arose not from jilted Canadians or even clashes of GIs and resentful British husbands, but between white American soldiers and their black comrades over Englishwomen who refused to subscribe to the colour bar that was enforced in the US Army. The first serious clash occurred in September 1943, when black and white GIs fought each other in the sleepy Cornish town of Launceston. It resulted in two military policemen being wounded when they tried to restore order. In Manchester the next year, the sight of a black sailor kissing a white English girl in a railway station sparked a series of race riots that brought a call for the city councillors to ban all GIs from places of entertainment for a fortnight. The censored wartime British press played down such incidents, including the fight that broke out in a pub near Kingsclere, Newbury in December 1944. After blacks were driven out of a bar by white GIs they returned with rifles to shoot their way in, killing the publican's wife in the process.
Complaints about the bigotry and feuding between the black and white American soldiers resulted in the Prime Minister being asked in the Commons to 'make friendly representations to the American military authorities asking them to instruct their men that the colour bar is not the custom in this country.' A Home Office letter of September 1942 made this official policy clear in a circular sent to all chief constables. But the Secretary of War found himself on a 'razor's edge' over the issue after a US general in Southern Command issued orders that, 'White women should not associate with coloured men. They should not walk out, dance, or drink with them.' Many British women objected strongly to the discrimination. A NAAFI counter lady explained, 'We find the coloured troops are much nicer to deal with in canteen life and such, we like serving them, they're always so courteous and have a very natural charm that most of the whites miss. Candidly, I'd rather serve a regiment of the dusky lads than a couple of whites.'
Most English people, who were not accustomed to making a distinction between people of different colour, did not appreciate that the politeness of most black troops was the result of generations of subservience to the white population of the United States. 'Some British women appear to find a peculiar fascination in associating with men of colour,' noted a Home Office circular in 1943, giving voice to deeply-rooted racial fears. 'The morale of British troops is likely to be upset by rumours that their wives and daughters are being debauched by coloured American troops.'
A sexual element deriving from the fascination of the exotic affected those women who had never before encountered a black man. Some gullible country girls were eager to believe a popular rumour put about by some of the Negro troops that they were GIs whose skins had been specially darkened for night operations – and that on return to the United States they would be given an injection to turn them white again. Barbara Cartland wrote from her experience as a WAAF moral welfare adviser:
It was the white women who ran after the black troops, not vice versa. Approximately one thousand five hundred coloured babies were born in Britain during the war, bat I am prepared to bet that if the truth were known it would prove in nearly every case the woman's fault. Women would queue outside the camps, they would not be turned away, they would come down from London by train, and they defeated the Military Police by sheer numbers. There were, of course, some hard cases. One girl I knew of personally married a very nice American flier. They were extremely happy, and she was delighted when she knew she was going to have a baby. She gave birth to twins; after twenty-four hours they slowly turned black. It was a third generation throwback and the young flier swore, with tears in his eyes, he had no idea that his blood was mixed. (pp. 316-319)
http://www.heretical.com/costello/15ovesex.html
American soldiers were often surprised at the apparent lack of jealousy displayed by English males even when they flirted openly with their womenfolk. Mrs Marguerite G., who confessed that she was a 'grass widow and a pretty young miss', enjoyed 'parties galore' at the American bases. 'My husband came home occasionally, and he was always welcomed, I'm sure he regarded himself more or less as "just one of the boys".' According to some women other husbands serving overseas openly encouraged their wives not to be lonely. Margaret G. cited the example of her friend: 'One day I caught her crying and she let me read the letter from her husband. In it he said he was having a good time with the opposite sex and she should do likewise.'
But not all husbands were as tolerant of their spouses' infidelities with their American allies. A GI who was stationed in Norfolk remembers how they lost one of his company, not to the enemy but to a British soldier who returned unexpectedly to the family home and 'found one of our men in bed with his wife, threw the GI out of a second storey window and killed him. He was sent to prison.' There were other incidents of homicides motivated by sexual passion. One US Army sergeant was acquitted in November 1943 of the murder of an ATS private whose partly undressed and beaten body was discovered after a drunken dance.
It was the Canadian troops stationed in the south of England who acquired the worst wartime record as violent lovers, and who extracted the most savage vengeance on those girls who jilted them. On the night of 16 February 1943, a handsome dispatch rider, Victor Eric Gill, stormed into a Brighton pub to launch into a fierce argument with a pretty brunette at the bar. The row continued outside until a piercing scream was heard, followed by a series of shots. Ivy Ellen Eade, an eighteen-year-old hairdresser, lay sprawled in a spreading pool of blood in the car park. It turned out that she was pregnant with Gill's child and their argument began because she had dated another Canadian sergeant. Gill, who admitted he was already married, said at his trial he had never intended to kill Ivy, whom he claimed to love deeply, but had been 'overwhelmed with apprehension and jealousy'. His passionate pleas apparently convinced the jury, who found him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
A month later, a fellow Canadian, a young regimental policeman named Charles Eugene Gautier, was less fortunate. He had taken up with a Brighton housewife whose husband was a prisoner in Germany. When he discovered that Mrs Annette Pepper had taken another Canadian into her house, he blasted his way in with a Bren gun, wounded his rival and then sprayed his mistress's body full of bullets as she pleaded with him at the top of the staircase. Gautier was found guilty of murder and hanged at Wandsworth prison on 24 September 1943 after his appeal had been refused. The publicity given to the case had served to inflame the concern many British servicemen overseas had begun to feel about their wives back home. Reports were being received from field commanders that the morale of men at the fighting front was being badly undermined by stories of rape, violence, and illegitimate births.
The main sexually motivated wartime violence in Britain, however, arose not from jilted Canadians or even clashes of GIs and resentful British husbands, but between white American soldiers and their black comrades over Englishwomen who refused to subscribe to the colour bar that was enforced in the US Army. The first serious clash occurred in September 1943, when black and white GIs fought each other in the sleepy Cornish town of Launceston. It resulted in two military policemen being wounded when they tried to restore order. In Manchester the next year, the sight of a black sailor kissing a white English girl in a railway station sparked a series of race riots that brought a call for the city councillors to ban all GIs from places of entertainment for a fortnight. The censored wartime British press played down such incidents, including the fight that broke out in a pub near Kingsclere, Newbury in December 1944. After blacks were driven out of a bar by white GIs they returned with rifles to shoot their way in, killing the publican's wife in the process.
Complaints about the bigotry and feuding between the black and white American soldiers resulted in the Prime Minister being asked in the Commons to 'make friendly representations to the American military authorities asking them to instruct their men that the colour bar is not the custom in this country.' A Home Office letter of September 1942 made this official policy clear in a circular sent to all chief constables. But the Secretary of War found himself on a 'razor's edge' over the issue after a US general in Southern Command issued orders that, 'White women should not associate with coloured men. They should not walk out, dance, or drink with them.' Many British women objected strongly to the discrimination. A NAAFI counter lady explained, 'We find the coloured troops are much nicer to deal with in canteen life and such, we like serving them, they're always so courteous and have a very natural charm that most of the whites miss. Candidly, I'd rather serve a regiment of the dusky lads than a couple of whites.'
Most English people, who were not accustomed to making a distinction between people of different colour, did not appreciate that the politeness of most black troops was the result of generations of subservience to the white population of the United States. 'Some British women appear to find a peculiar fascination in associating with men of colour,' noted a Home Office circular in 1943, giving voice to deeply-rooted racial fears. 'The morale of British troops is likely to be upset by rumours that their wives and daughters are being debauched by coloured American troops.'
A sexual element deriving from the fascination of the exotic affected those women who had never before encountered a black man. Some gullible country girls were eager to believe a popular rumour put about by some of the Negro troops that they were GIs whose skins had been specially darkened for night operations – and that on return to the United States they would be given an injection to turn them white again. Barbara Cartland wrote from her experience as a WAAF moral welfare adviser:
It was the white women who ran after the black troops, not vice versa. Approximately one thousand five hundred coloured babies were born in Britain during the war, bat I am prepared to bet that if the truth were known it would prove in nearly every case the woman's fault. Women would queue outside the camps, they would not be turned away, they would come down from London by train, and they defeated the Military Police by sheer numbers. There were, of course, some hard cases. One girl I knew of personally married a very nice American flier. They were extremely happy, and she was delighted when she knew she was going to have a baby. She gave birth to twins; after twenty-four hours they slowly turned black. It was a third generation throwback and the young flier swore, with tears in his eyes, he had no idea that his blood was mixed. (pp. 316-319)
http://www.heretical.com/costello/15ovesex.html