pastmalebeauty: LEN AND WILLIAM, A GAY COUPLE IN WW2 In wartime, tolerance or “turning a blind
pastmalebeauty:LEN AND WILLIAM, A GAY COUPLE IN WW2In wartime, tolerance or “turning a blind eye” in regard to gay relationships, was practised because the potential loss of soldiers, due to court martial, would have left front-line regiments badly under strength.Jeremy Seabrook’s A Lasting Relationship: Homosexuals and Society (1976), features an interview with Len and William, a “happy couple” in their fifties, living in North London. The interview is very revealing and deeply moving.They had been brought up in the slums of Deptford in South London and they were in their early twenties and working as dockers in Rotherhithe when they became a couple. They were both called up in 1939, and conscripted into the Army, but this meant a separation.Len became a cook: “peeling potatoes and so on. Do you know, all the officers knew I was gay, and they all accepted it. I had a picture of William by my bed; and I wrote to him and he wrote to me every day. Of course, with the post being so erratic, I sometimes got six letters in a day and then none for a week. One day I was in the kitchen, and one of the batmen comes up behind me and puts his hand over my eyes, and says ‘Don’t look, there’s a surprise for you.’ And I said ‘What surprise?’, and there in the doorway stood Will. I was overjoyed. They let us have the rest of the day to ourselves; so that shows how sympathetic they were to us, it proves they didn’t have any prejudice.”Photographs shows the popularity of sailors performing drag acts. -- source link
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