11 minute read
LUST. LOVE. LOSS
by Neil Sharkey
The Shrine of Remembrance’s newest special exhibition Lust. Love. Loss: Australian stories of wartime relationships explores the intersection of sex and war. The exhibition examines important themes of the topic by showcasing works of art and historical artefacts representing universal experiences across time. The core of the exhibition is a selection of official Australian war art on loan from Australian War Memorial and original artefacts from the Shrine’s own collection.
The complex issues surrounding matters of love and sex profoundly affect people, everywhere and every day. Wartime is no exception. Indeed, the disruptive nature of war and the extraordinary situations it brings about, inevitably magnify human experience in these areas. The love lives of millions of Australians— military and civilian alike—have been formed by their experiences in wartime as perilous, uncertain times prime individuals for intense and personally transformative experiences and relationships.
Marriage and birth figures from Second World War (1939–45) illustrate the urgency with which Australian men and women strove to establish and cement their relationships during that conflict. Some 374,500 marriages occurred in Australia during the war—89,000 more than the number of marriages projected for the same period before the war. Births reached 39,117 in 1943, the highest figure recorded since 1891. Marriage and birth rates would remain high in the immediate post-war years resulting in the highly influential ‘baby boom’ (1946–64) demographic.
The arrival of almost one million American service personnel in Australia during the Second World War presented ordinary Australians (who had traditionally looked to Britain for cultural leadership) with a very different lifestyle, and the wartime American influx would mark the beginning of an enduring cultural shift in this country.
Among a host of novel customs, the Americans introduced a sophisticated dating culture and more open attitudes to sex. Young Australians, particularly women, were impressed. The American GIs had access to exotic consumer goods, were considered better dressed and mannered than their Australian counterparts and represented wealth, glamour, and modernity.
Soldier and woman 1943 by Sidney Simon (1917–97)
AWM (ART29393)
Soldier and Woman (1943) by American official war artist Sidney Simon (1917–97) depicts a brooding Australian military policeman eyeing off an American GI as he courts a local girl, beautifully encapsulating the jealously, suspicion and rivalry which raged between the men of the two Allied states. An almost identical motif is employed by Australian war artist Roy Hodgkinson (1911–93) in his watercolour One Sunday afternoon in Townsville (1942) but the context is quite different. The dominating figure—again a military policeman, this one American—serves to separate an ensemble of young white male and female Australian and American service personnel from two African American soldiers at a fortified Queensland beach.
One Sunday Afternoon in Townsville 1942 by Roy Hodgkinson (1911–93)
AWM (ART213501)
The United States military attaché reported to Washington on 4 August 1942 that ‘the easy and intimate association between our Negro troops and some white women here has given rise to some resentment on the part of Negroes over the restraint that has been imposed on them at home.’ Reports in the Baltimore Afro-American and other stateside newspapers of the generally warm welcome given to the 8,000 Africa-Americans stationed in Australia helped provide political impetus to the Civil Rights movement in the United States. Indigenous Australians, meanwhile, encouraged to socialise with black Americans by the Australian authorities (a noxious attempt to discourage interactions between white Australians and black Americans) learnt of African American efforts to improve conditions in their own country, thereby drawing inspiration for their own struggle.
Australian servicemen and women have themselves travelled to distant, exotic locales during wartime, interacting with people—however fleetingly—they would never have otherwise met. Migration rates in the years immediately following Australia’s wars bear this out. Over 12,000 Australian soldiers married while serving overseas during the First World War (1914–18) and they sponsored the passage of some 18,000 women and children to Australia at war’s end. Australian airmen participating in the Empire Air Training scheme during the Second World War, meanwhile, brought 4,027 wives and 878 fiancées to Australia in 1948. Conversely some 15,000 Australian women left our shore in the years after the Second World War—two thirds of these moving to the United States.
Portrait of Motoe Higashida in her kimono
Image curtesy of Motoe Higashida
Motoe Higashida was one of 650 Japanese ‘war brides’ who arrived in Australia in 1953. Her husband, career soldier Warrant Officer Ian Robertson, was one of hundreds of Australian servicemen stationed in Japan with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (1946–52) and during the Korean War (1950–53). The pair overcame official prohibitions and considerable social pressure in both countries to be with each other. The exhibition features love tokens exchanged between the two as well as a magnificent kimono Motoe brought with her to her new home.
Motoe's kimono fabric
Image courtesy of Motoes Higashida
Beyond the forging of lasting and meaningful relationships, Australian service personnel have also often been guilty of objectifying local people, in the countries to which they have been deployed, as the exotic ‘other’. Sexual politics aside, a nude post card of a Balinese woman kept by Lieutenant Jim Bryant MM during his captivity at the Changi POW camp served as a beacon of hope, nonetheless.
Erotic and sexually provocative imagery have long been a popular diversion for troops on deployment, far removed from romantic prospects. The explicitness of the images—be they nude postcards, pin-ups or pornographic videos— has changed with the times, but the end goal—of placing the viewer in a fantasy world, far removed from danger—remains unchanged.
Strong, rigorously trained warriors have been celebrated by their societies since ancient times and are themselves often presented as sex symbols. Powerful associations have been drawn between valour and sexual potency. Warriors are encouraged to glorify physicality and their own bodies. The uniforms servicepeople wear, particularly dress uniforms, are often designed to enhance this sex appeal. For example, the jaunty and tightfitting uniforms worn by the Royal Australian Navy throughout most its history were arguably as attractive as they were functional.
Gunner 1919 by Roy Hodgkinson (1911–93)
AWM (ART19992)
First World War Official War Artist, George Benson’s (1886–1960) bare-chested Gunner (1919)—tall, lean, chiselled, poised—represents the classical ideal of male beauty. His virility is underscored symbolically (if not subtly) by the six-inch charge case nestled in his hands and the backgrounded howitzer rising from his loins. A cheeky juxtaposition to the Gunner’s magnificence is the nude portrait of Corporal Alicia Carr, Darwin (1999) by Wendy Sharp (b. 1960) painted during the deployment of INTERFET forces to East Timor (1999–2000).
Corporal Alicia Carr, Darwin 1999 by Wendy Sharpe
AWM (ART191152)
The maintenance of open lines of communication between service personnel posted overseas and their partners at home, or at other battlefronts, is among the greatest challenges faced by any wartime couple. Separation brought about by military deployments may intensify a couple’s longing for one another but can just as easily erode the bonds that sustain their relationship
Clutching a letter from her husband, scrawled on YMCA stationery, everywoman Jessie (1940) by William Edwin Pidgeon (1909–81) represents the anxiety felt by the partners of all service personnel on deployment. Letters, parcels and postcards have been supplemented by newer communications technologies— telegrams, letter-grams, recorded messages, e-mail, satellite calls, Facebook and Zoom. The end goal remains the same—to keep love alive.
Jessie 1940 by William Edwin Pidgeon (1909–81)
AWM (ART94590)
The spectre of infidelity hovers over all couples in wartime. Partners of individuals in the armed forces not only have to deal with anxiety arising from the potential harm that might come to their lovers on the battlefield but the temptation they might encounter behind the lines. Sweetheart brooches of various designs (handmade ‘trench art’ and those acquired commercially) were gifted to women by servicemen in both world wars and allowed women to support a loved one serving in the armed forces. Men risking their lives far from home, no doubt, hoped the jewellery would also ward off prospective suitors while they were away. Love tokens and mementos remain popular among service personnel of both sexes today.
‘Wartime morality’, stemming from fear that death may come at any time, disrupts pre-war social norms and lowers inhibitions. Civilians and troops alike have found themselves compelled—by loneliness, frustration or economic privation—to pursue encounters, or engage in sexual behaviours, that may not have occurred in peacetime.
Constantly on the move, short on privacy and the time needed to cultivate meaningful relationships, many servicepeople will seek out the services of sex workers. Conversely, other Australians, for reasons personal and economic, will opt to provide these services. Garrison towns and naval harbours have long been home to higher ratios of sex workers, especially in wartime. Lieutenant Frederick Manning, an Australian serving in the British Army, wrote in his novel Her Privates We:
Far removed from disapproving family and friends, often among peers who would turn a blind eye or actively encourage them to pay for sex, Australian soldiers during the First World War were notorious for the gusto in which they sought out the Red-Light districts of Columbo, Cairo, Paris and London. The Australian Digger’s pay of six shillings to the British Tommy’s one meant that Australians tended to dominate the market for sex workers in any town they passed through. Compensation (Back of the Waggon Lines) (1918) by Australia’s first official war artist Will Dyson (1880– 1938) provides an idealised depiction of such a transaction.
Compensation (Back of the Waggon Lines) 1918 by Will Dyson (1880–1938)
Shrine Collection
Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI), or Venereal Disease as they were previously known, have been a scourge of the Australian military throughout its history. At least 55,000 Australian soldiers were treated for gonorrhoea and syphilis during the First World War and cost more than two thousand five hundred years in lost military efficiency. It was the largest collective self-inflicted wound of the war. On display in the exhibition is one of the thousands of Blue Light Outfits issued during both wars, named for the Army treatment depots, illuminated with blue lights, where men received treatment.
STI infection rates for Australian Troops in the Second World War (a peak of 48 cases per thousand troops in 1941) was only 65.7 percent of the rate ‘achieved’ on the Western Front in First World War but began climbing alarmingly at war’s end among BCOF troops in Japan (29 percent of the Australians who served with the force). Among Australian troops in Korea infection rates peaked at 386 cases per 1,000. The rates of infection among Australian troops in Vietnam (1962–73) reached an astounding 478 cases per thousand troops in 1967. Those servicepeople who had not sought proper treatment often found their prospects for a successful relationship at war’s end was greatly compromised.
Adapting to war’s destructive aftermath tests even the most committed couples. Divorce rates in Australia rose dramatically in the years immediately following both world wars and some 38 percent of Vietnam veterans’ marriages failed within six months of their repatriation. One study indicated a staggering 42 percent of Australian Vietnam veterans had engaged in at least one act of violence against a partner in the preceding year. Veterans of modern wars will continue to struggle. Without support, some individuals—restless, traumatised or alienated—will neglect, abuse, or desert their significant others. Long periods of self-sufficiency, meanwhile, may give their spouses confidence to contemplate life alone.
War kills. Bereft lovers must decide how they will proceed—alone or with new partners. The death of Australian Major General George Vasey in an air crash near Cairns, Queensland on 5 March 1945, spurred his wife Jessie to advocate on behalf of other war widows. Jessie Vasey founded the War Widows’ Guild of Australia on 22 November 1945 and achieved an increase in the war widows’ pension and other benefits, such as free public transport and allowances for children.
The Lust. Love. Loss. exhibition does not shy from the most odious aspects of sex in wartime. Sexual violence has been a constant, hideous companion of war since the very beginning—employed to victimise and intimidate. Battlefield injuries, physical and psychological, have harmed veterans’ ability to forge future relationships and build families and has left damaging sexual fixations and behaviours. Sex too has been a weapon—exploited by spies, recruiters, propagandists—to coerce soldier and civilian alike to fulfil a nation’s war aims.
The exhibition design of Lust. Love. Loss. is an important aspect of visitor experience. The colour palette will be dominated by pink—a hue closely associated with sensitivity and romance but also of luridness— coupled with a dark shade of khaki, emblematic of military uniforms, trench mud and grime. The salonstyle hang highlights the eclectic nature of the items on display and the exhibition’s non-linear storyline. Items and works of art from the world wars sit alongside artefacts and depictions of more modern-day deployments.
The Shrine’s East Gallery can only hope to host an introduction to such a vast topic but the visitor is sure to come away with an enhanced perspective. Lust. Love. Loss. explores how Australian attitudes to sex in wartime shifted further away from duty and procreation to pleasure and self-realisation. Australians have grappled with complicated wartime relationships, endured long separations, infidelities, abuse and abandonment. Unplanned children and sexually transmitted infections have thrown lives into turmoil. Same sex attractions and liaisons with exotic lovers opened new worlds. Public behaviour, attitudes and discourse around sexuality today, while certainly more sophisticated than in decades past, continues to be affected by the social, political, moral and economic fallout of wartime.
Neil Sharkey is Curator at the Shrine of Remembrance.
