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

Product Information

Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse. Television Interview Lauren Graham: 'Why are men still surprised they like Gilmore Girls?' Read More In Men at War, Turner looks beyond the increasingly retrogressive and jingoistic ideal of a Britain that never was to recognise men of war as creatures of love, fear, hope and desire. From writers, filmmakers, artists and ordinary men - including those in his own family - Turner assembles a broad cast of characters to bring the war to life. There are conscientious objectors, a bisexual Commando, a pacifist poet who flew for Bomber Command, a transgender RAF pilot, a soldier who suffered in Japanese POW camps and later in life became an LGBT+ activist, and those who simply did what they could just to survive and return home to a complicated peace.

The bravery in, and of, Luke Turner’s book is the reason you should read it. Turner compellingly records the bravery of those who chose not to fight, but to find resistance in continuing to ballet dance on a London stage as the doodlebugs fall; or the bravery to talk about the inability to push a bayonet into another’s flesh and hear the often reported “hiss” as a life escapes the body. All of this we need to read and process, and reflect on. What they are imagining, though, is a falsehood. While there was certainly bravery, these men of war weren’t all “ideologically committed to the fight”. Nor were they all exemplary studies of so-called “normal” masculinity. In fact, Turner argues, the myth of “brave boys doing their bit” has erased “the rough and ready nature of male desire”. Now, as an adult who has come to terms with a masculine identity and sexuality that is often erased from dominant military narratives, he undertakes a refreshingly honest analysis of his fascination with the war. In Men at War, Turner looks beyond the increasingly retrogressive and jingoistic ideal of a Britain that never was to recognise men of war as creatures of love, fear, hope and desire. From writers, filmmakers, artists and ordinary men - including those in his own family - Turner assembles a broad cast of characters to bring the war to life. Men At War does not perpetuate romantic myths. Turner notes how “post-war struggles with mental health and PTSD impacted the generations on”. Britain’s victory had a high psychological price many would argue we’re still paying.This fascinating, intricate examination of World War II and desire and sexuality has a rich cast. It ranges from Wanker Bill — a British serviceman said to have even ‘wanked between wanks’ — to the likes of the storied journalist, commando and poet Captain Michael Burn.

I once read that in some circles in the US Army, thinking about the future effectiveness of its military was increasingly blinded by something called “Wehrmacht penis envy”. Ironically, tragically, the heroics of the ordinary Doughboys and Buffalo Soldiers was weighed against and maybe even subsumed by a “what if” narrative of a vanquished “master race”. The idea that military personnel become drugged automatons, whose actions are dictated by one top-down narrative is something I feel we, too, too often accept in our own national story of war. We need to own the mad and bad stuff, the queer and liminal stuff, the odd, the wyrd, the improbable, the personal, the free. It’s in our hands, if you will excuse the (necessary) euphemism.Here we get echoes to Turner’s last book Out of the Woods, and the chapters exploring this less-trodden arena of wartime sexuality are where Men at War most succeeds in its rehumanisation of the war and where Turner’s prose is most alive. Whereas as a child, he felt connected to the minutiae and machinery of the Second World War, it’s now in this exploration of masculinity and desire that his interest is clearly piqued. In Men at War , Turner looks beyond the increasingly retrogressive and jingoistic ideal of a Britain that never was to recognise men of war as creatures of love, fear, hope and desire. From writers, filmmakers, artists and ordinary men - including those in his own family - Turner assembles a broad cast of characters to bring the war to life. There are conscientious objectors, a bisexual Commando, a pacifist poet who flew for Bomber Command, a transgender RAF pilot, a soldier who suffered in Japanese POW camps and later in life became an LGBT+ activist, and those who simply did what they could just to survive and return home to a complicated peace. For Turner, the “otherwordliness” of wartime conditions represent a period in Britain when many people found themselves free of repressive social norms and able to explore their feelings more honestly. “It was sexually a very radical time,” he says. But what comes out most strongly from his book are not just the homosexual or bisexual experiences of war heroes, but an embryonic picture of the broad spectrum of masculinity that is still emerging today. “I was very adamant that I didn’t just want this to be a book about sexuality,” says Turner. “I wanted to include men who were heterosexual too but who sit outside expectations of a vigorous war-like masculinity.”