From the Battlefront to the Bridal Suite: Media Coverage of British War Brides, 19421946

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From the Battlefront to the Bridal Suite

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Media Coverage of British War Brides, 1942–1946

Barbara G. Friedman University of Missouri Press Columbia and London


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Copyright © 2007 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5 4 3 2 1 11 10 09 08 07 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Friedman, Barbara G., 1963– From the battlefront to the bridal suite : media coverage of British war brides, 1942–1946 / Barbara G. Friedman. p. cm. Summary: “Friedman reexamines the stories surrounding the influx of British war brides brought back to the United States by American GIs after WWII with a focus on media representations of sexuality and marriage in wartime, showing how mass media interpretations turned from public suspicion of war brides to popular acceptance”—Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8262-1718-9 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8262-1718-4 (alk. paper) 1. War brides—Press coverage—United States. 2. War brides—Press coverage—Great Britain. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Women—Press coverage. 4. World War, 1939–1945—Social aspects—United States. 5. World War, 1939–1945—Social aspects—Great Britain. I. Title. PN4784.W38F75 2007 070.4'49940531—dc22 2006037070 This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: foleydesign Typesetter: BookComp, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typefaces: ITC Giovanni, Monoline Script, Stuyvesant ICG The University of Missouri Press offers its grateful acknowledgment to an anonymous donor whose generous grant in support of the publication of outstanding dissertations has assisted us with this volume.


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For Jessica and Leah

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Contents

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Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. The British War Brides 13 2. Morality, Marriage, and British Hospitality 35 3. Can She Be Trusted? The War Bride in Armed Services Publications 67 4. In Newspapers, Waiting Wives and Pioneers 85 5. In Magazines, “American Husbands Are A1” 105 6. Wedding Bells in a War Circle 121 Selected Bibliography 135 Index 147

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owe a debt of gratitude to friends, family, and colleagues who helped with the writing and editing of this book. I began this project while in graduate school at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and I am most grateful to Betty Houchin Winfield for her enduring support and encouragement. She has been an outstanding mentor and friend. To my graduate school classmates, I thank you for your patience and persistence as you listened and commented on the earliest drafts of this project. Somehow, it seems fitting that this book should wind up at the University of Missouri Press and in the capable hands of Beverly Jarrett, Jane Lago, and Pippa Letsky. The University of Missouri provided me with travel funds to conduct archival research in England. There, I was fortunate to find a wealth of materials at the Imperial War Museum, and I thank their outstanding archivists. Every effort was made to trace the copyright holders of the personal writing cited in this book, and I thank the families who so generously allowed me to reprint their loved ones’ letters, diaries, and memoirs. I am grateful to the Trustees of Mass-Observation Archive, University of Sussex, for access to their materials, which provided even more firsthand accounts of the British wartime experience. The British Library provided me with valuable materials that were unknown to me in the United States. I appreciate the hospitality of the Newman family, who graciously opened their home to me whenever I was in London. On this side of the pond, I would like to thank Warren Hollrah, formerly at the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in Fulton, Missouri, who years ago offered me the box of letters that eventually led me ix


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Acknowledgments

to London in search of the war brides’ stories. Archivists at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, helped me place the war-bride experience in the context of military and political diplomacy. Additional materials came from the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Hazel Braugh Record Center and Archive of the American Red Cross, an organization that generously assisted the British brides as they traveled to the United States. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I have found a community of scholars who respect and encourage each other’s work. At the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, my writing group offered criticism, “big picture” views, and wisecracks in just the right measure—love and gratitude to Jane Brown, Cathy Packer, Lois Boynton, and Laura Ruel. Additional thanks go to Janas Sinclair and Jan Johnson Yopp, colleagues and friends who generously lent their time and advice during the writing process. The University of North Carolina provided me with the financial support I needed to finish this project. UNC graduate students Robin Roger and Cheryl Bishop offered more than research assistance; they inspired and cheered me throughout the writing of this book. Most of all, I thank my family and friends for their steady presence. Without their love and support, this book would forever be a work in progress.


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001 Friedman Intro (1-12)

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hen the first American servicemen arrived in the British Isles on January 26, 1942, they were said to be all swagger and spectacle. Better paid and better outfitted than their English allies, the Yanks were quick to win the hearts of many young British women who found their gregarious natures a relief from the familiar British reserve. “They were very nice and courteous,” said a Cheltenham typist of the American GIs. “They knew how to be attentive and made one feel like a million dollars, with their ‘Hello, my honey bunch.’” Raynes Minns, a British historian, recalled: “The uniformed men positively sparkled. . . . There could be no denying that the GI became the symbol of all that was glamorous.”1 Their appeal was assured in part simply by their presence, while most of Britain’s eligible men were off fighting. As one woman remembered: “They were there, while all our young men had gone into service.” Eventually, two million GIs would be stationed in Great Britain or would pass through on their way to other destinations. Some of Britain’s rural towns were overrun with GIs, who were there to complete their training before being shipped to the front. But when the soldiers were granted time off, most made their way to London, where they took full advantage of British hospitality.2

1. Norman Longmate, How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life during the Second World War, 477 (typist); Raynes Minns, Bombers and Mash: The Domestic Front, 1939–1945, 164. See also David Reynolds, Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942–1945 (London: Phoenix Press, 2000); “Anti-Americanism,” 26 January 1947, file report 2454.1, Mass-Observation Archive, Sussex, England. 2. Jenel Virden, Good-bye, Piccadilly: British War Brides in America, 21 (quote); Elfrieda Berthiaume Shukert and Barbara Smith Scibetta, War Brides of World War II, 7. 1


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Marriages between American GIs and British women took place almost immediately, with some brides wearing ill-fitting borrowed gowns in an effort to approximate a “traditional” wedding in the midst of severe wartime rationing. But the occasions were not always a cause for celebration. American military commanders accused British women of seducing U.S. soldiers for their money: “Gullible men are readily seduced by British girls, whose ulterior motive may be that of extra remuneration on the part of our Government as well as that of the soldier,” wrote General Russell Hartle, commander of U.S. forces in Northern Ireland. Still, romance bloomed, and eventually one million marriages took place between soldiers and foreign women during and immediately after the war, prompting new immigration legislation and bringing women from more than fifty countries to live in the United States. The largest single group of war brides was the seventy thousand who came from Great Britain.3 The phenomenon of war brides was a newsworthy subject, and how the mass media co-opted their stories to various ends is the main focus of this book. Just as GIs were said to be “symbols of all that was glamorous,” the war brides too became symbols of something greater. The brides’ stories were offered by British and American mass media as verification of the U.S.–British “special relationship,” as evidence of a postwar power imbalance, as proof of women’s depravity, and as a fairy-tale ending to the social upheaval of a global crisis. Public debate concerning the war brides occurred in the press on both sides of the Atlantic, couched in terms of morals and morale. During the war British authorities worried how soldiers away at the front would feel about media accounts of fraternization between civilian women and American GIs. American women wrote to magazines and asked what the British girls had that they did not, while editors counseled married readers to overlook foreign dalliances for the good of their relationships. In armed forces publications such as Yank, servicemen debated the merits of foreign women in comparison to “the girls back home.” At the end of war, what the departure of so many British women meant for postwar reconstruction in

3. Hartle quoted from a memo to General Frank Andrews in David Reynolds, Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942–1945, 213; Shukert and Scibetta, War Brides of World War II, 1.


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Britain, whether they were welcome in the United States, and whether the military ought to provide for their transportation while enlisted men still awaited passage home were among the topics that excited debate. Most of all, news coverage of Anglo-American romances revived public discourse on women’s sexuality and what a woman’s proper place ought to be during and after a war. In this way the public could “read” the brides as a reassuring sign of postwar domesticity or as opportunists, abandoning their country when they were most needed in a selfish quest for material gain or social status. Critiques of the war brides could be harsh, as exemplified in a British editorial that told returning troops the “trash was leaving and the best was home waiting for them,” or in a Time magazine article that noted British women had managed to find the “cheapest, surest and easiest way to enter the U.S.” On the other hand American women’s magazines often urged their readers to welcome the brides to the country and tried to ease their adjustment with tips on how to dress and cook in the American style.4 In addition to suggesting normative gender roles, mass-mediated coverage of the war brides shows us that ideals concerning gender are closely related to notions of political identification and citizenship, two other constructs that become strained in wartime. Lucy Noakes wrote that, during World War II, British men and women were “encouraged to identify themselves as members of the nation in very gendered ways: man as soldier and woman as wife, mother and war-worker.” Newspapers, magazines, motion pictures, and radio programming suggested that “the ideal female citizen kept the home running, and continued to pay attention to make-up and clothing while contributing to the war effort through war work or careful home management. . . . [T]he ideal male citizen joined the armed forces.” Was a British woman, then, acting less than citizenlike if she opted to leave her country just as postwar reconstruction was begun, for the promise of a better life in America?5 What motivated specific categories of the press such as women’s magazines, daily newspapers, and armed forces publications to represent the

4. Shukert and Scibetta, War Brides of World War II, 64; “Manners and Morals,” Time, 10 January 1949. 5. Lucy Noakes, War and the British: Gender and National Identity, 52, 64.


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brides in the ways they did? What did the media have to say about the brides, and what were the discrete agendas behind the messages? As sociologist Gaye Tuchman has explained, the mass media are a constitutive force that manifests dominant ideas and ideals and suggests to audiences what is valued, accepted, or approved. Yet these ideals demonstrate how men and women ought to be, not how they are, and so the ideals cannot always be reconciled with the reality of people’s lives. For instance, British mass media glorified images of motherhood and marriage during wartime, even in the absence of Britain’s eligible men and in the midst of a ban on proxy marriages to absent soldier-fiancés. Magazines and newspapers intended for the U.S. armed forces such as Stars and Stripes, for example, devoted a lot of ink to women and did little to discourage promiscuity, while the military forbade marriages of soldiers stationed abroad.6 For this study, a war bride is a foreign national who has married, or is engaged to be married to, an American member of the armed forces stationed in a foreign country as part of U.S. mobilization during World War II. In a few instances foreign men married U.S. women in wartime. For example, when the SS Argentina set sail from England to the United States in January 1946, it transported 452 brides and 1 groom. Yet this was not what intrigued either the media or the public, whose attention focused overwhelmingly on the women. Politicians similarly thought war grooms to be negligible, because of their numbers. In December 1945, a U.S. Committee on Immigration report to the Senate recommended passage of the War Brides Act, applied to alien brides and “the very few alien men who marry our servicewomen.”7 The following study is divided into six chapters. The first provides an overview of the political and historic context in which American GIs were deployed to the British Isles and describes the sociocultural ripple created by

6. Gaye Tuchman, Arlene Kaplan Daniels, and James Benet, eds., Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media, 8; Harold L. Smith, Britain in the Second World War: A Social History, 61; “Marriage Ban on U.S. Troops,” Stars and Stripes, 27 June 1942, 1. 7. Shukert and Scibetta, War Brides of World War II, 57; “Expediting the Admission to the United States of Alien Spouses and Alien Minor Children of Citizen Members of the United States Armed Forces,” U.S. Senate Report 860, 18 December 1945 bill file 1945–1946 (December 28, 1945, to January 11, 1946), box 8, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri (henceforth HSTL).


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their arrival. Comparisons between wartime Britain and the United States elucidate some of the significant alterations in material and psychological conditions wrought by war. First-person narratives give vivid descriptions of how the GI presence affected the local population, although British women’s lives had already been affected in profound ways, only one of which was the government’s call for women’s wartime service. In addition, an overview shows the U.S. military response to Anglo-American unions and some of the bureaucratic hoops the brides and their grooms were made to jump through. The chapter concludes with some brides’ impressions on board the “bride ships” bound for America. The second chapter explores the dominant discourses on sexuality and marriage in the United States and Great Britain before and after the GIs arrived in Britain. Throughout World War II, men and women were pressed into new roles and forced to negotiate unfamiliar settings. Some admitted to feeling emboldened by the wartime experience. The uncertainty of war inspired a carefree attitude among soldiers and civilians that was sometimes expressed as promiscuous behavior. Numerous wartime surveys initiated in the United States and in Great Britain to measure such things as public attitudes toward the sexual conduct of servicemen and civilians, the rates of sexually transmitted disease, prostitution, and illegitimate pregnancies pointed to a dramatic freeing of inhibitions for some, accompanied by stern disapproval among others. The media imposed a double standard, often condemning women’s sexual behavior while accepting men’s behavior as the natural result of gender and the war environment. War-era news stories, editorials, letters to the editor, and advertisements demonstrated ideals of patriotism to convey expectations about how Brits would treat their American “guests,” and how American women would behave in the absence of departed husbands and sweethearts. The British government hospitality program and the billeting of GIs in private homes, this study argues, were two ways that Anglo-American romances were all but assured, despite any official declarations to the contrary. The next three chapters address specific categories of media, and the ways their specific agendas influenced content. Scholars such as Robert Entman and Stephen Reese have shown that mass media can influence public opinion by “framing” individuals, groups, or issues in specific


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ways.8 Chapter 3 argues that publications intended for the U.S. armed forces depicted British women as sexually available, but predatory. These publications discouraged serious relationships between soldiers and foreign civilians but were forced to change their position when the army was overwhelmed with soldiers’ requests to marry and secure passage to America for their wives, fiancées, and children. British armed services publications went to great lengths to show their readers that Americans were there as fighting allies, not romantic rivals. Concern for the morale of British soldiers abroad was paramount, and thus coverage of American GIs’ fraternization with civilian women was negligible. At the end of the war, images of smiling war brides waving from the decks of their “bride ships” as they docked in New York were plentiful, representing a shift in how the brides were framed for American readers. Chapter 4 examines the coverage of war brides in British and American daily newspapers, the dominant themes, and how coverage changed over time. The publications selected here, the New York Times, the Times of London, and the London Telegraph, were widely distributed and represent papers of national importance. As such they provide insight into popularly held beliefs about wartime marriage and romance, gender roles in wartime, and specific ideas about the British war brides. Indeed, historian Arthur Marwick wrote that war-era newspapers played a bigger part than popular films in the “standardization of aspiration and behavior.”9 Chapter 5 considers content related to sexuality, marriage, and war brides in women’s magazines, showing that a British magazine encouraged Anglo-American unions by glorifying the United States and praising the traits of American men in comparison to their British counterparts. Yet this particular magazine was selective about what kind of men made acceptable partners and did not include all men from the United States; nor did it endorse men from all of the Allied countries. It is surprising to find that the leading British women’s magazine was bold in its acknowledgment (and in some ways encouragement) of wartime sexual freedom, as seen in articles 8. Robert M. Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” 55; Stephen D. Reese et al., eds., Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. 9. Arthur Marwick, Britain in the Century of Total War: War, Peace, and Social Change, 1900–1967, 185.


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and readers’ letters. American women’s magazines, for their part, probably recognized a potential new audience and sought to welcome the brides by training their attention on domestic skills. At the same time the American magazines downplayed the threat of foreign women as competition for men, in order to placate their loyal American readers. The final chapter argues that liaisons between GIs and civilian British women represented something more than “a little bit of frat.” Critique and control of public behavior is a considerable concern of a wartime government and, as such, become an interest of the media, which are influenced by propaganda, censorship, or other forms of information control.10 Official expectations for civilians and soldiers in World War II–era Britain and United States, as circulated in the mass media, were myriad and often contradictory. Pubic discourse over what might reasonably be expected of men and women in war could be similarly confusing. Coverage of the GI arrival and subsequent Anglo-American romances mapped, challenged, and reinforced gender boundaries in wartime. In this way analysis of the brides’ experiences suggests new ways for scholars and practitioners to think about women’s roles in war. Primarily a critique of media performance, this study also examines letters, diaries, and memoirs written by the brides to fill in gaps of coverage left by mass media. As one historian noted, this personal writing, unlike edited journalistic accounts, represents “squirrel-like caches in which [the correspondents] deposit miscellaneous fragments of experiences . . . a vast archive of irrecoverable period detail.” In a study that compares newspaper accounts of life on the Kentucky frontier with those found in personal correspondence, Hazel Dicken Garcia noted a significant difference: “While newspapers barely touched on most events and seldom followed-up any, letters reported, followed, discussed, interpreted, backgrounded, analyzed and gossiped about them. Letters . . . reported more information more reliably, quickly and regularly.” In this way, we can look to the war brides’ first-person writing to tell us what 10. “A ‘Bit of Frat’ Is Giving Allied Ban the Works,” Stars and Stripes, 7 June 1945, 3. See Nicholas John Cull, Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign against American “Neutrality” in World War II; Betty Houchin Winfield, FDR and the News Media; Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II.


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issues were of concern to them, to their families, or to the military. Further, their letters and diaries suggest something about the accuracy of mass media by illuminating the ways that the brides’ experiences resembled or departed from mass-mediated accounts.11 Personal interviews with war brides are already well represented in scholarly and popular literature.12 So interviews were not conducted anew. Indeed, recollections fifty-plus years after the event would be of limited use in this study of period media coverage and gender roles. Thus, the focus of this study is on personal writing and mass media of the period—cultural artifacts created at a distinct time, under distinct circumstances, for a discrete audience. Nevertheless, recent published interviews are cited where appropriate for illustrating or clarifying the experiences of the brides. This project draws on scholarship from several fields, including history, sociology, and communications, although it is primarily a study of wartime mass media and gender. Textual analysis identifies persistent themes or repeated frames in U.S. and British mass media coverage of the war brides. News frames are described by Stephen Reese as “organizing principles that are social, shared and persist over time.” More than just chroniclers or neutral observers, the mass media can shape public opinion by reporting or framing issues in certain ways. Robert Entman wrote that the media can lead audiences to understand or respond to issues in distinct ways by emphasizing certain details over others. During a war, news frames are a particularly useful subject for gender study since the upheaval of society tends to prompt formal and informal observations about what roles men and women ought to assume and how they ought to behave during the conflict. Deborah Thom wrote in her study of women workers in World War I that, in a war, concerns over women’s public demeanor begins to suffuse “all discussions about the state of the 11. Daniel Harris, “Anatomy of a Correspondence,” Southwest Review 78 (Winter 1993): 12; Hazel Dicken Garcia, “Letters Tell the News (Not ‘Fit to Print’?) about the Kentucky Frontier,” 49. See also Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith, Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), ix. 12. Shukert and Scibetta interviewed more than two thousand brides for War Brides of World War II.


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nation.” Media framing of gender, then, tells the audience something about normative gender roles and how they were constructed and contested during wartime.13 The brides were framed in specific ways, depending on the media outlet and its audience. Moreover, coverage was appreciably influenced by the media outlet’s agenda, even as it shifted, such as the military’s goal early in the war to discourage foreign marriages, and its goal at the end of war to justify transport of foreign brides to the United States. As Maureen Honey has noted, media campaigns directed to a mass audience intended to recruit white women for wartime work typically framed the women as housewives assuming temporary roles. In doing so the government hoped to allay public concerns about women’s postwar place. Yet war-era magazines created by and for African Americans portrayed women workers as “trailblazers, able to escape low-wage domestic service.”14 Thus, the ways subjects are framed are associated with a publication’s agendas, its distinct audiences, and its sensibilities. The experiences of the war brides have been isolated from the canon of war history for far too long. With few exceptions their stories have been related as a by-product of war—told as fond memoirs or as the fluff of romantic fiction.15 This study argues that the women’s experiences are as much a product of war as any soldier’s. British civilian women encountered death and destruction firsthand as intense German bombing turned the home front into a battlefront. Despite their proximity to combat they have historically been categorized as noncombatants. This status has been used to justify their wartime experiences’ receiving less attention than those of soldiers or politicians. Jean Bethke Elshtain has imagined war’s gendered boundaries as a circle with concentric rings radiating outward. 13. Reese et al., Framing Public Life, 11; Entman, “Framing,” 55; Deborah Thom, Nice Girls and Rude Girls: Women Workers in World War I, 20. 14. Maureen Honey, Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II, 12. 15. See Margaret Mayhew, Our Yanks (London: Corgi Books, 2001), about British American romances in the English countryside; Lois Battle, War Brides (New York: Penguin, 1998), about Australian brides bound for the United States; Monette Goetinck, Bottled Dreams (Los Angeles: Abbott/Adele Books, 1999), about French North African war brides in the United States; Roberta Love Tayloe, I Married a Stranger: A Novel (Santa Barbara: Fithian Press, 1994); and Lucie Street, ed., I Married a Russian: Letters from Kharkov (New York: Emerson Books, 1947).


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The core represents combat, from which women traditionally have been excluded. Their contributions are located in the outer rings; they are part of war, yet mostly supportive and rarely central to the conflict. A field nurse, for example, may be actually on the battlefield, but traditional beliefs concerning gender and war restrict her to noncombatant status. A man, on the other hand, is considered a “soldier” whether he is peeling potatoes, tending the wounded, or lobbing grenades at the enemy.16 Although conventional thinking may assign men the primary tasks of waging war and setting military policy, an increasing body of research shows that few women are unaffected when their countries are at war. Over the course of history, for example, more civilian women have died in war than have soldiers; more women have been left homeless by war; and women have suffered sexual abuse in wartime at a disproportionate rate.17 When armed forces either enter or mobilize within a country, the military encroaches on the lives of civilian women in direct and subtle ways; wartime marriages are one example. Ji-Yeon Yuh wrote of Korean military brides: “U.S. military domination is what made these marriages possible.” The presence of American soldiers in South Korea “not only creates the physical context . . . it also helps create the social and cultural contexts . . . that make marriage to U.S. soldiers an appealing option for Korean women.”18 Similarly, the circumstances of World War II altered Britons’ lives. The war prompted political and social conditions that became the backdrop for so many Anglo-American unions. It brought the women into contact with Allied soldiers, prompted changes to immigration law, and secured the brides’ passage to the United States for marriage and possible citizenship. The “universal feature of war stories is masculinity,” Margaret Darrow wrote, hence the study of civilian women in wartime is of great value for its contrasting and enlightening contribution to a narrative populated largely with male politicians and soldiers. When historical accounts privilege the

16. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War, 183. 17. See Jennifer Turpin, “Many Faces: Women Confronting War,” in The Women and War Reader, ed. Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 3–6. 18. Ji-Yeon Yuh, Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 3, 9.


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male experience, women remain hidden. Eliot Janeway’s 1951 study of U.S. economic mobilization during World War II is just one example of the boundaries defining how women’s wartime contributions have been understood and presented. Despite the significant contributions made to the wartime labor force by American women, Janeway’s Struggle for Survival devotes just one page to the mobilization of women, referring to them as “wives of servicemen and girls waiting to be married.” Moreover, American newspaper publisher Ralph Ingersoll relegated British women to the appendix of his 1940s account of the war in England, under the heading “odds and ends.” Ingersoll trivializes the efforts of women volunteers at the scene of a bombing by likening them to “housewives of a small village preparing light refreshments for a charity bazaar.”19 Unfortunately such neglect of women’s wartime contributions is not uncommon. It endures even though American women, for instance, in addition to supporting the war effort at home have served in the armed services for more than a century. Even as recently as 1993, military historian John Keegan wrote: “Warfare is . . . the one human activity from which women, with the most insignificant exceptions, have always and everywhere stood apart. . . . If warfare is as old as history and as universal as mankind, we must now enter the supremely important limitation that it is an entirely masculine activity.” This mindset stands in the way of a richer and more complex understanding of how war is waged and endured, and therefore this book is intended as a kind of reclamation project. “Whether one applauds or deplores their presence and their actions, women have always been a part of war,” wrote Linda Grant De Pauw. “To ignore this fact grossly distorts our understanding of human history.”20 Thus, a goal of feminist scholarship has been to “find the 19. Margaret H. Darrow, French Women and the First World War: War Stories of the Home Front, 6; Eliot Janeway, The Struggle for Survival: A Chronicle of Economic Mobilization in World War II, 332; Ralph Ingersoll, Report on England, November 1940, 195, 196. Ingersoll wrote: “I wasn’t impressed with its efficiency . . . they reminded me of the housewives of a small village preparing light refreshments for a charity bazaar.” For significant contributions made by American women, see Doris Weatherford, American Women and World War II. 20. Karen Lee Scrivo, “Battling for Benefits,” 3810; also Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa, 87–88; John Keegan, A History of Warfare, 76; Linda Grant De Pauw, Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present, 25.


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women” and bring their experiences into the mainstream of historical inquiry. In doing so, we may succeed in recasting the paradigm of war experience as an enterprise that is neither supremely nor strictly male.21 This examination of the war brides’ experience and the gendered ways in which mass media framed that group is offered in this spirit.

21. See Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Vintage Books, 1990).

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“There was [sic] no men. The men were all away.” “They seem to be the solid home-building type. . . . America is to be congratulated on getting this type of wives and mothers for their homes.”

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hen the U.S. Army’s Second Armored Division arrived in Chippenham, England, in the summer of 1943 fraternizing with GIs was the furthest thing from Avice Wilson’s mind: “We heard ‘the Americans’ were coming to Chippenham,” she wrote in an unpublished memoir. “At fifteen, I was more interested in the boys at school and a nearby farm where my latest endeavor was learning to milk, so the news meant little to me.” Yet just three years later, Wilson was married to a U.S. Army sergeant and found herself among three hundred war brides on board the USS General W. Goethals as it set sail from Southampton, England, to New York on July 29, 1946.1 Like Wilson, few Britons could have anticipated the effect the Americans would have on the course of the war, and on the course of their lives. How did the setting in Britain, into which the GIs arrived, compare to the setting in the United States? How were British women involved in the war effort in ways that distinguished them from American women? As wartime romance

1. Avice R. Wilson, 86/68/1, Imperial War Memorial, London, England (hereafter IWM). The epigraphs are from Penny Summerfield, Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives, 121 (the speaker is Fiona Thomas, who worked at Vickers Armstrong’s Squires Gate factory in Blackpool during World War II), and George Horne, “458 on ‘Bride Ship’ from Britain Arrive Here to Join GI Husbands,” New York Times, 5 February 1946, 1. 13


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bloomed for so many Anglo-American couples, the military erected one bureaucratic obstacle after another until it was finally obliged to address the transport of foreign wives to the United States. In letters and diaries written as they sailed to America, the brides recorded their feelings about U.S. military obstinacy, leaving England, their shipmates, excitement over reuniting with their husbands and fiancés, and anxiety over what was ahead.

Anglo-American Relations, 1935–1942 Before foreign uniforms began to appear on the streets of London, the Brits and the Americans had engaged in a courtship that would link their political futures for years to come. As early as the mid-1930s, the British government was formulating a propaganda campaign to win the goodwill of the American public with an eye toward drawing them into the conflict. “No British minister was inclined to underestimate the importance of retaining and developing the good will and assistance of the United States. No speech was made by the Foreign Office, no speech delivered by the minister, before the effects on America had been carefully calculated,” wrote the biographer of Anthony Eden, Churchill’s foreign secretary during World War II. The British effort was gradually rewarded. Americans had not cared to join the fight prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor but were at least sympathetic enough to the plight of Britain and France to sell them arms—”all assistance short of war.”2 This policy of “cash and carry” allowed the United States to retain a degree of neutrality while selling war supplies to the Allied forces. When the financial health of the European allies collapsed, the cash-andcarry program was modified. Under the Lend-Lease Act, passed in March 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt was empowered to lease or provide goods and services for later payment to any nation whose defense was considered vital to the protection of the United States. Churchill recognized that the mass media were a primary means to influence public opinion. To secure American participation he appealed to American journalists based in London, and journalists who were 2. Cull, Selling War, 13–14; Lewis Broad, Anthony Eden: Chronicle of a Career, 171.


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favorably disposed toward U.S. aid to England—including Helen Kirkpatrick and Edward R. Murrow—were regular guests at social events hosted by high-ranking members of Parliament and British society elite. The Foreign Office News Department loosened its grip on wartime information and treated American journalists in London to daily press briefings that conveyed the scale of the German military threat and glorified the pluck of the British people. The result of these official efforts was sympathetic coverage of the British situation in the American press. Mary Welsh (later Hemingway) wrote that she and her colleagues worked tirelessly, and under strict censorship, to convey “England’s desperate plight,” hoping to persuade American readers “that they must take the honorable risk and quickly send the British help.”3 In addition, a spate of anti-Nazi, pro-British films by Hollywood in the late 1930s and early 1940s fostered compassion for Britain and suggested that U.S. interest in joining the war effort was mounting. Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 film The Great Dictator, satirizing Hitler and Nazism, grossed $5 million worldwide and became a classic. Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt depicted a big-game hunter who joined the British Army to fight for democracy after being captured and tortured by the Gestapo.4 The motion picture industry would continue to be part of a public relations campaign for the United States–British alliance, particularly once it came under the auspices of Roosevelt’s Office of War Information in 1942. As the case for the Axis threat to American interests became more persuasive, U.S. support for intervention grew, and yet an obdurate Congress voted only by the narrowest of margins to amend the Neutrality Act and arm merchant ships. As Roosevelt and his advisers deliberated how they might finally persuade Congress to declare war against Germany, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, forced Americans into action. “Isolationism collapsed overnight,” one historian noted bluntly. The Americans were now compelled to join the war against the Axis powers. Churchill confessed to a great sense of relief. In his memoirs he wrote: “To 3. Cull, Selling War, 14, 16–17; Mary Hemingway, “The Blitz: What Americans Could Not Be Told” in I Can Tell It Now, ed. David Brown and W. Richard Bruner (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964), 28 (quote). 4. Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profit, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies, 20, 35–36.


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have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. . . . Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.” The British, the Soviets, and now the United States were “bound together with every scrap of their life and strength.”5 Harold Nicolson, private undersecretary to Britain’s minister of Information, puzzled at the lack of political fanfare upon the U.S. entry into the war. In a letter to his wife, the writer Vita Sackville-West, on December 11, 1941, Nicolson explained: “We simply can’t be beaten with America in. But how strange it is that this great event should be recorded and welcomed here without any jubilation.” The New Yorker’s London correspondent, Mollie Panter-Downes, noted too that, although the American journalists who gathered in London’s Savoy Hotel “had everybody worked up to slapping backs and singing, ‘O say, can you see,’” ordinary Britons received the news of American partnership quietly. “There was little outward jubilation over an event which every intelligent Briton has been quite frankly praying for,” she wrote on December 14, 1941.6 Noninterventionists had earlier charged that the United States was being “tricked” into joining the war effort, and that British propaganda to this end was a “serpent” intruding on an American “Garden of Eden.”7 Few people would dispute that Britain desperately needed U.S. help to win the war, but now pride and defensiveness among its citizens, accused by isolationists of not being able to fight their own battles, might have stifled any overt expressions of relief. The celebrations would come later, once the Americans actually arrived. With the congressional declarations of war against Japan and Germany in December 1941, American troops prepared to depart for the British Isles.8 5. Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, the Home Front in World War II (New York: Touchstone, 1994), 295; Winston S. Churchill, Memoirs of the Second World War, 506. For Roosevelt see Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography, 600–603; Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The War President, 1940–1943, 153–54. 6. Nigel Nicolson, ed., Harold Nicolson: The War Years, 1939–1945, 2:196; Mollie Panter-Downes, London War Notes, 1939–1945, 186. 7. Cull, Selling War, 35. See also Richard W. Steele, The Great Debate: Roosevelt, the Media, and the Coming of War, 1940–1941,” Journal of American History 71 (June 1984): 69–92. 8. Norman Longmate, The GIs: The Americans in Britain, 1942–1945, 6. About 125 American civilians were already in England as volunteers in the Home Guard, which was responsible for patrolling British Army headquarters at night so that British soldiers were available for other assignments.


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Life across the Pond The setting in which American GIs arrived in 1942 was very bleak compared to the country they had just left. The British had been at war with the Axis powers since 1939, when Hitler’s troops invaded Poland. London had been devastated by the German blitzkrieg, in which 54,420 tons of bombs were dropped, some 40,000 residents killed, and twice that number seriously wounded. Millions of buildings were destroyed or left uninhabitable. While American cities were transformed into centers of wartime production, many of England’s factories lay in ruins. A Time magazine correspondent writing in January 1942 observed the “gnarled skeletons of bombed-out houses” and the public expectation of further bombing.9 Americans on the home front were just learning to tote gas masks and practice air raid drills in case of an enemy invasion, whereas Londoners were already in the habit of sleeping under heavy furniture or trudging pajama-clad to the tube stations to escape the nightly air raids. Naturally, fatigue was a common complaint. A British survey of civilians showed that on the night of September 12, 1941, 31 percent of Londoners had gotten no sleep at all, and another 32 percent reported sleeping less than four hours.10 Although historians have universally praised the British resolve under the strain of wartime, the psychological effect of daily bombing cannot be underestimated. One account of the German blitz put the total number of air raid alarms at 1,124 from the first incident to the last, meaning that Londoners were threatened “once every thirty-six hours for over five years, threatened at their work, having their meals, putting their children to bed, and going about the ordinary business of their lives.” A young Londoner’s letter to her American pen pal during the blitz suggests just how pervasive the fear was: “I never know whether I

9. Robert Goralski, World War II Almanac, 1931–1945: A Political and Military Record, 249; “Another Year,” Time, 12 January 1942, 40. 10. See, for example, “Americans to Have Gas Masks,” Manchester Guardian, 4 March 1941, 5. The War Department ordered a limited quantity of “cheap gas masks” for noncombatants in areas under military jurisdiction. Tom Harrisson, Living through the Blitz (London: William Collins Sons, 1976), 105. Harrisson was the founder and director of the Mass-Observation Archive, an organization dedicated to recording the firsthand experiences of “ordinary” Britons during wartime.


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will wake up and see the morning and yet the only thing I hope is that I will be asleep and won’t know anything about it,” wrote Betty Swallow, a twenty-two-year-old clerk at a railway company.11 Britons dealt with shortages that were far more severe than in the United States and that would persist long after the war. For example, on February 23, 1942, the British Food Ministry released the last of its imported canned fruits for sale. The New York Times London correspondent likened the sale to a “‘gold rush’ by housewives” and added: “Britain must henceforth be contented to live on the comparatively slender supplies of home-grown fruit.” A housewife in Bradford noted in a wartime diary that the “fruit and tomato situation was serious” and that shortages had led to begging in some towns. A young American lieutenant, William B. French, tried to describe the conditions in a 1944 letter to his mother. He began to list items that were in short supply and then chose another tack: “I think it would be easier for me to tell you what wasn’t rationed over here,” he wrote. “You can put a whole week’s butter ration on two slices of bread. Try it and then you can see what the British are down to. There is no such thing as fruit anymore, unless it’s locally grown. But such things as oranges or lemons have long since vanished. . . . And they are lucky if they see one egg in a fortnight.”12 In consideration of the shortages, American GIs were given explicit instructions by the U.S. Army to avoid eating too much of a British host’s rations.13 A shortage of another kind was apparent, too. Many able-bodied British men had left their jobs, homes, and families and were off fighting; by war’s end more than 5 million British men served in the armed forces. For comparison, one historian has noted that Britain’s building industry employed 1 million men in 1939; by 1945 the number had declined to 337,000. The men who remained on the home front were “just boys and elderly men,” 11. Philip Ziegler, London at War, 1939–1945, 337; Betty Swallow to Helen Bradley, 8 February 1941, Winston Churchill Memorial and Library, Fulton, Missouri (hereinafter WCML). Swallow wrote to her pen pal in Kansas City, Missouri, from 1939 to 1950. 12. “Housewives Rush Fruit Sale,” New York Times, 24 April 1942, 24; Dorothy Sheridan, ed., Wartime Women: A Mass-Observation Anthology, 45; William B. French, “Yanks in the Hayloft,” 56. 13. Longmate, How We Lived Then, 474. See also French, “Yanks in the Hayloft,” 58. French, an army lieutenant, wrote: “We had been lectured many times on the problem of accepting hospitality from British households.”


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one factory worker said. This was not entirely true, since some eligible men remained in civilian employment in 1944, and not all of them were under eighteen or older than fifty. But most available men were “by implication . . . too old, too young or unfit,” wrote Penny Summerfield.14 An anticipated “man shortage” was predicted in some popular media sources, brought on by the staggering number of military deaths in World War I, in which the United Kingdom lost more than 700,000 soldiers. One British woman chided a coworker for rebuffing the advances of a young clerk: “There will be such a shortage of blokes after the war is over that she may have to keep him on a chain,” she wrote in a letter to a friend.15 Small wonder, then, that in the midst of such bleak conditions American soldiers would look so appealing to British women, whose first impressions of the soldiers had already been shaped by Hollywood. “The American invasion struck the British Isles like a huge Technicolor bomb,” wrote E. R. Chamberlin. To young women, the soldiers were “the incarnation of innumerable Hollywood films.” Fifteen-year-old Avice Wilson assumed the Americans arriving in her hometown of Chippenham would be “movie versions of New Yorkers and the soldiers would be the same, but in uniform.” In an unpublished memoir she wrote: “I cannot recall anyone who had the slightest idea of how tremendous an impact the Americans would have on our lives.”16 The Yanks’ arrival renewed hope for an Allied victory and changed the tenor of entire cities and towns overnight, by introducing large numbers of men where there had been few before. May Charters was fifteen years old when members of the U.S. Army Air Force arrived to train in her village of Wigton in northwest England. “It was fantastic,” she said. “For teenagers, it was heaven.” Charters and her friends would walk two miles or more just to dance the jitterbug, the fox trot, and the Palais Glide with the GIs. “I would go to a dance every night if there was one,” she said. “We would walk to Oulton, and walk back from Aspatria. We just didn’t care. If we got 14. Marwick, Century of Total War, 277, 263; Summerfield, Women’s Wartime Lives, 121, 117 (quotes). 15. Colin Nicolson, ed. Longman Companion to the First World War: Europe 1914–1918 (New York: Longman, 2001); Betty Swallow to Helen Bradley, 16 October 1940, WCML. 16. Quoted in E. R. Chamberlin, Life in Wartime Britain, 158; Avice R. Wilson, 86/68/1, Imperial War Memorial, London, England (hereafter IWM).


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there, we didn’t care how we got back.” By the time she was seventeen, she was engaged to a GI, although fear of emigrating to America led her to break off the relationship. Still, she said the Americans provided muchneeded distraction for the residents of Wigton. “Although the war was on, we didn’t know it,” said Charters. “Too busy enjoying ourselves.”17

British Women and War Work Many Britons have noted the ways in which the presence of GIs changed their towns and lives. But in fact British women’s wartime lives had changed in profound ways before the Americans ever arrived in their country. Among the 17.5 million women aged between fourteen and sixty-five, “[t]here were very few women whose entire life was not changed,” wrote Jan Struther. “All sorts of strange modifications of life took place.”18 While certainly American women contributed in important ways to support the U.S. war effort, British women were expected to do far more with far less. In addition to drastic and prolonged shortages of basic goods, they faced abrupt separation from the men in their lives and, when the government initiated an evacuation scheme in 1939, from their young children, who were sent first to “safe districts” and then to Canada or the United States.19 The proximity of the enemy—particularly during the German blitz—meant that British women experienced the war in a

17. Melvyn Bragg, Speak for England: An Oral History of England, 1900–1975, Based on Interviews with Inhabitants of Wigton, Cumberland (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 265–67. 18. Jan Struther, Women of Britain: Letters from England, 35–36. Struther was the pen name of Joyce Anstruther, who wrote a column for the Times (London) about “Mrs. Miniver,” an upper-middle-class housewife, loosely based on herself, who heroically endures the war. The columns were collected in a book, which became a bestseller in the United States and in 1942 was made into a popular MGM film starring Greer Garson. The New York Times movie critic called the title character “lovely and gentle,” saying she “glows with compassion and womanly strength.” See Bosley Crowther, “Mrs. Miniver, Excellent Picture of England at War,” New York Times, 5 June 1942, 23. 19. See, for example, Alistair Horne, A Bundle from Britain (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994); Carlton Jackson, Who Will Take Our Children? (London: Methuen, 1985); “Ship In with Children,” Kansas City Star, 21 August 1940, 1; “Many Children Leave London,” Manchester Guardian, 7 July 1944, 5; “Ten Thousand More Children Coming to the Northwest Today,” Manchester Guardian, 11 July 1944, 3.


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most immediate and threatening way. In 1942 a representative from the British Information Services described the life of the average British woman after nearly three years of war: She has no car, the busses and trains are crowded, and if she does not own a bicycle, she must walk. Domestic help is almost out of the question and English houses are hardly ever fitted with labor-saving devices. Almost surely, she has a son or husband, or a daughter or other nearrelative in work of constant danger. And she herself is living under the threat of an enemy only twenty miles across the Channel . . . who may at any moment destroy her home or her life. If she lives in what is considered a non-vulnerable area, she has extra people in her home. Evacuated children, bombed-out families, soldiers taking extra courses, or factory workers may be billeted on her for whom she has to prepare meals.20

Perhaps one of the greatest changes for middle-class British women was imposed by the government’s employment scheme. While preservation of the home front and all the domestic ideals this connoted was one goal of British victory, significant labor shortages required that the government ask women to step outside their traditional roles and embrace new ones as war workers. Britain’s minister of Labor, Ernest Bevin, said in March 1941 of the effort to recruit women, “I cannot offer them a delightful life. They will have to suffer some inconveniences. But I want them to come forward in the spirit of determination to help us through.”21 This government appeal was aimed specifically at recruiting women to dangerous munitions work. Official policies worked to overcome entrenched attitudes about young women’s embedded place in the family and also helped to redraw the boundaries between what was public and what was private, if only “for the duration,” according to Summerfield.22 Wartime service gave women unprecedented independence as they assumed work for wages 20. Winifred C. Cullis, “What British Women Are Doing in the War,” a speech at Vassar College, April 30–May 1, 1942. Cullis was head of the women’s section of the British Information Services in the United States and spoke at Vassar as part of the Helen Kenyon Lectureship. 21. “One Hundred Thousand Women War Workers,” Manchester Guardian, 10 March 1941, 5. 22. Summerfield, Women’s Wartime Lives, 44–45.


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and their supervision by parents, husbands, and beaus was minimized. Such opportunities brought many women into contact with GIs. Further, as the notion of citizenship became closely linked with wartime service, socializing with GIs as hostesses at Red Cross dances, for example, was just one way that British women were encouraged to “do their part.” Shortly after Bevin delivered his speech to mobilize women, the government adopted compulsory registration, and unmarried women between the ages of twenty and thirty-one were selectively conscripted into various professions under the National Service Act. The order was later extended to include married women and some mothers of young children, who were able to leave their children in day nurseries at a rate subsidized by the government. By 1943 it was “impossible for a woman under 40 years of age to avoid war work,” according to Marilyn Boxer and Jean Quataert.23 Under the registration scheme, women were encouraged to register their skills or occupations with a local employment exchange. Based on their expertise or proficiency they could be directed, under law, to fill jobs required by the conditions of war. Wireless operators, for example, might be selected from among the ranks of musicians or typists, whose “fingers [were] trained to be nimble and sure.” Waitresses might be assigned as mess orderlies or canteen workers. Eventually, women filled a variety of positions, in factories, hospitals, offices, soup kitchens, and other wartime industries, all intended to free up men for combat. In an official publication M. D. Cox wrote: “When the men are called up, women carry on their jobs; they are serving as dustmen, lamplighters, taxi drivers, window cleaners and in many other posts. The small garage, whose owner was his own principal mechanic, is not forced to close down because that owner is now attending to the engines of our bombers—his wife takes over.”24 Some eighty thousand women, known as “land girls,” were drafted into the Women’s Land Army, as farmworkers to tend livestock, harvest 23. J. B. Priestley, Britain at War (New York: Harper and Bros., 1942), 80. See also “One Hundred Thousand Women War Workers,” Manchester Guardian, 10 March 1941, 5. Women would pay about the prewar rate for child care (sixpence a day), and the government would match that amount. Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert, eds., Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World, 1500 to the Present, 215–16. 24. M. D. Cox, British Women at War (London: John Murray and the Pilot Press, 1941), 18, 72.


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crops, and maintain the wartime food supply.25 “Unspectacular and vital work,” one American visitor to England called the work of the Land Army. “Farmerettes did not have too easy a job at first,” wrote Margaret Biddle. “It took a great deal of endurance and grit. Their muscles ached, their hands were raw, and the long hours of work seemed endless. But slowly and surely they became stronger and fitter, until now they have proved that they can earn their keep and more. Most farmers, I understand, have so far overcome their early prejudice as to be really enthusiastic about this new-fangled Land Army.”26 At least one British historian has noted that the majority of war brides were land girls. This is not surprising since many American bases were situated in rural locations. “It is safe to assume that wherever there was an American airfield in England, about 20 percent of the men would marry an English girl from around the area,” according to the account of one soldier in Britain.27 Still other women were placed in noncombatant roles in auxiliary military services such as the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), or the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) so that men could be available for combat. The women’s responsibilities were wide-ranging: inspection and servicing of planes, providing the weather forecasts with which military missions were planned, bombplotting, code-breaking, and selecting air crews, for example. Government recruitment efforts suggested that women’s contributions were a critical part of winning the war, but ultimately, their military roles were supportive and their responsibilities as caretakers of home and family remained a priority. A representative of the British Information Services said in a 1942 speech that working women were “somewhere on the sidelines protecting the men.”28

25. For a first-person account of the Women’s Land Army, see Ellis Foy, Peaceful Wartime (Edinburgh: Pentland Press, 1999); also Vita Sackville-West, The Women’s Land Army (London: M. Joseph, 1944); Nicola Tyrer, They Fought in the Fields: The Women’s Land Army, the Story of a Forgotten Victory (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996). 26. Margaret Biddle, The Women of England, 48. 27. Longmate, The GIs, 327; Dick Reynolds, “America’s Seventy Thousand Sweethearts, the GI Brides,” in Edwin R. W. Hale and John Frayn Turner, eds., The Yanks Are Coming, 201 (quote). 28. Cullis, “What British Women Are Doing in the War,” a speech at Vassar College, April 30–May 1, 1942.


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Underscoring the temporary nature of women’s wartime work was the issue of wage disparity, taken up by Parliament in numerous debates. In 1941 Edith Summerskill, the Labour Party representative from Fulham West, objected to the fact that women trainees were paid thirty-eight shillings to men’s sixty. Women in the armed forces were paid a third less than men.29 “The wages were poor, but everything else was found,” wrote Mavis Nicholson, to explain the sense of independence that wartime employment brought to the working women. Myra Roberts, an air ambulance nurse, said: “The war taught me to stand on my own two feet. . . . I didn’t shirk from anything.”30 For some women wartime work constituted their first-time employment outside the home. Women who were already employed volunteered for after-hours work to help with the war effort. Thus, all women in Britain had more freedom and more responsibilities than before the war. The labor of young single women in particular was critical to the war effort, though the propaganda portrayed their contributions as temporary and supportive of, never equal to, the contributions of fighting men.31 Yet it was precisely because of their foray into the public sphere that British women came into contact with America’s fighting men. These encounters would forever change the lives of seventy thousand of those women, who became war brides and fiancées to American GIs.

Permission to Marry, Sir The muted response to the American entry into the war gave way to more festive celebrations once the troops began to arrive en masse. When the first shipload of GIs arrived on January 26, 1942, they were given a 29. “Women’s Part in War Effort: Ready and Anxious to Help, Demand for Equal Treatment,” Manchester Guardian, 21 March 1941, 8. Summerskill, a physician, would go on to hold positions as junior minister in the Ministry of Food and as minister of National Insurance. She founded the Socialist Medical Association, which in turn developed the National Health Service. Cullis, “What British Women Are Doing in the War,” a speech at Vassar College, April 30–May 1, 1942. 30. Mavis Nicholson, What Did You Do in the War, Mummy? Women in World War II, 5, 223. Myra Roberts was one of three nurses selected for the crew of the first experimental flight of the Normandy air evacuation ambulance service. 31. Summerfield, Women’s Wartime Lives, 80–81.


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heroes’ welcome courtesy of the Churchill government. A royal band played “The Star Spangled Banner” and a cadre of attractive young women served them refreshments of British tea and cakes. In some of the small towns where the GIs came ashore, crowds lined the streets. Some villagers simply wanted to catch a glimpse of their first American; others cheered as the GIs walked by.32 Most of the GIs who arrived on that ship and the others that followed knew little of Britain or of its people. Their curiosity, however, was generally limited to questions about the availability of women. British historian Norman Longmate, who served in an Anglo-American army unit during World War II and has written extensively about U.S.–British relations, recalled: “Two queries common to every shipload, covered the whole extent of their curiosity about England: ‘Are the girls willing?’ and ‘Are there red lights outside the whorehouses so you can find one when you want one?’” As Paul Fussell has noted, sex was top on the mind of most men in World War II. Whereas soldiers on the front line were “too scared, busy, hungry, tired and demoralized” to think much about sex, among armed forces yet to depart for the front, he wrote, “Desire was constantly seeking an outlet it seldom satisfactorily found.” Thus, the “chatting up” of civilian women began immediately and, not surprisingly, was soon followed by the opening of medical clinics, as the rate of venereal disease skyrocketed.33 Neither the British nor the U.S. authorities were happy about GIs fraternizing with civilian women. Disease weakened the fighting forces; indeed, contracting a venereal disease was a punishable offense. British military authorities also worried about the effect this fraternizing might have on the morale of their fighting forces, should it become widely known what their wives and girlfriends were doing in their absence. In all fairness it should be noted that British soldiers stationed in France during World War II were accused of the same sexual exploits with the civilian women in that country.34 Some military authorities viewed sex as an “unfortunate necessity,” and according to Fussell, the U.S. military was 32. Longmate, The GIs, 56. 33. Ibid., 51, 57; Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, 108. 34. Fussell, Wartime, 108; Reynolds, Rich Relations, 64.


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reluctant to admit publicly that soldiers and civilians were having sex together. In fact a report by the surgeon general published before U.S. troops left for England called venereal disease the “number one saboteur of our defense” and criticized military indifference to the increasing rate, although the army issued condoms to service members going on leave and insisted they visit a prophylaxis station immediately upon return.35 An issue of related and perhaps greater military concern was that of marriages between American GIs and British civilian women. The governments of some countries had already made relationships between women and foreign soldiers illegal. Many U.S. politicians worried what AngloAmerican romances would do for home front morale and tried to discourage them. Richard Russell, a congressional representative from Georgia and chairman of the U.S. Immigration Committee, told reporters in 1946 he did not see the appeal of foreign brides and in fact, “deplored such foreign entanglements.” He proposed legislation that would allow British fiancées to enter the United States not to “shop around to get a man,” but to determine whether or not their intended grooms had “changed their minds.”36 The U.S. military has long tried to exercise control over service members’ personal lives. As early as the post–Civil War era, the judicial branch of the U.S. Armed Forces was asked to consider whether the army had an interest in preventing soldiers from marrying. The worry was that personal problems would carry over into a soldier’s job and thus “degrade 35. Franklin D. Roosevelt to Paul V. McNutt, 18 November 1941, in FDR: His Personal Letters, 1928–1945, 2:1243. McNutt at the time was the director of Defense, Health, and Welfare Services. In response to the surgeon general’s report, Roosevelt asked McNutt to “personally investigate these charges” but noted, “of course, that the Public Health Service itself is responsible for civilian health in areas outside military reservations.” 36. “Trips to U.S. Urged for GIs’ Fiancees,” New York Times, 6 May 1946, 18 (quote), and “Bill to Let Alien Fiancees Join GI’s Here Approved,” New York Times, 17 May 1946, 2. See, for example, Patrick Cockburn, “Wartime Sweethearts Sent to the Gulag for Falling in Love,” London Independent, 4 August 2001, 12, which relates the story of a Soviet librarian who was accused of treason and sentenced to ten years in prison for bearing a child with a British soldier. Also see Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Nathan Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996). More recently, two American GIs stationed in Iraq were denied permission to marry. See Larry Kaplow, “Two Soldiers Defy Orders, Marry Baghdad Women,” Chicago Tribune, 28 August 2003, A8.


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duty performance and draw resources from the defense mission.” The judge advocate general declared that the army could not prohibit soldiers from marrying, although this did not stop the military from imposing certain other restrictions. For example, in World War I, members of the army nurse corps were not permitted to marry, upon threat of dishonorable discharge. Further, male service members who knowingly married prostitutes could be punished for bringing discredit on the forces.37 The marital status of soldiers stationed overseas had always been a concern of the army, since foreign brides were often found to be ineligible for immigration to the United States. Further, certain state laws have at times prohibited interracial marriages, an issue that confronted black soldiers who served abroad in World War II and sought to bring their foreign, white wives to the southern United States.38 For all these reasons, between the two world wars, the military began to require all soldiers, but especially those serving abroad, to secure their commanding officers’ permission before marrying. This rule was relaxed, however, in February 1942, owing in part to the fact that marriage was recognized as a personal right and many of the men serving in World War II were draftees, not volunteers. Within two months of the GIs’ arrival in Britain, marriages were taking place between soldiers and civilians. As a result, the order requiring official permission was reinstated in June 1942, when the army became concerned at the rate of marriages and thus the number of dependents due military allowances. One suspicion was that prostitutes were dunning for husbands among unwitting soldiers. According to historian David Reynolds, the change was prompted by interracial marriages between white GIs stationed in Trinidad and that island’s black civilians, whom the military considered “socially and mentally inferior to the average American soldier.”39 Although the commander of American troops in Northern Ireland was determined to “discourage . . . to the maximum” foreign marriages, by 37. Ross W. Branstetter, “Military Constraints upon Marriages of Service Members Overseas, or, If the Army Had Wanted You to Have a Wife . . . ,” Military Law Review 102 (Fall 1983): 5 (quote), 7. 38. Ibid., 7–8. 39. Reynolds, Rich Relations, 210.


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December 1942 there had been little effect on the rate of soldiers seeking permission to marry British subjects.40 But at least by requiring the soldiers to await official permission, the army could hope to exercise some control. The hope was that subjecting the betrothed couple to an interminable waiting period, during which they had to endure embarrassing medical exams, interviews, and character investigations, might cause some couples to grow disillusioned and abandon their marriage plans.

“Accept the Responsibility and Carry Through” Despite their best efforts U.S. military officials failed to prevent foreign marriages, however, and eventually they supported passage of the war brides to the United States, perhaps acceding to public pressure. “While I think it was a mistake to permit any of our soldiers to marry overseas, as long as the Army permitted this they should accept the responsibility and carry through,” wrote Harry Vaughan, army brigadier general and military aide to President Harry Truman, in a November 1945 letter to the American consulate in Australia.41 Indeed, prompted by the unprecedented number of war brides seeking admission to the United States after the war, Congress passed the War Brides Act of 1945, the first nonrestrictive immigration legislation of the twentieth century. The War Brides Act allowed foreign wives to enter the United States as nonquota (or preferred) immigrants. Later, to allow intended brides (and grooms) to enter the country as nonimmigrants, Congress passed the Alien Fiancées and Fiancés Act of 1946, also called the G.I. Fiancées Act.42 Legislative action was required because the 1924 Quota Law had established a preference 40. Ibid., 212. 41. Harry S. Vaughan to Joseph P. Ragland, 23 November 1945, Presidential Papers, White House Central Files, Official File (hereafter OF) 190-Z (1 of 2), HSTL. Among Truman’s official files are many letters seeking expeditious transport of foreign wives, for example, Jack Powell to Harry S. Truman, 18 March 1946, OF190-Z (1 of 2); John J. Griffin to Harry S. Truman, 27 January 1946, OF190-Z (2 of 2). A telegram signed by forty New Zealand brides and sent to Truman stated: “We love forty of your countrymen and have been faithful through many difficult years. Please help us get to them now.” Telegram, 15 March 1946, OF190-Z (1 of 2). 42. War Brides Act, Public Law 79-271, 59 Stat 659 (1945); G.I. Fiancées Act, Public Law 79-0471, 60 Stat 339 (1946).


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system that severely restricted the flow of immigrants from all non–Western hemisphere countries.43 The brides would be transported to their new homes at the expense of the U.S. government aboard chartered planes and ocean liners that were specially outfitted to accommodate the women and their children. And while the U.S. government eased the way for foreign brides to enter the United States in terms of immigration law, there was nothing simple or easy about the bureaucratic maze the brides had to negotiate before they could set sail for the United States. After he reluctantly recommended the government should be responsible for reuniting the brides with their soldier-husbands, General Vaughan conceded to a friend who had married an Australian woman: “I can think of nothing . . . which has been handled more stupidly than the bringing of Army wives back to the [S]tates.”44 First, a soldier had to petition the Immigration and Naturalization Service for his wife’s entry to the United States by providing documentation proving he was who he claimed to be, that he was not already married, that he had the means to support his new wife and, in some cases already, his children. If his petition was approved, then his wife—or, when the Alien Fiancées Act was passed, his fiancée—was notified that she was eligible for a visa. She might need to devote several days’ work to gathering the appropriate paperwork and then she was required to apply in person. Only after she was granted a visa could she apply for government-sponsored transport. Later, the visa requirement was waived in lieu of a British passport, although stepchildren of U.S. servicemen still needed visas to travel to the United States.45 43. See, for example, Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America; Eithne Luibh, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 44. Harry H. Vaughan to Hayford Enwall, 1 March 1946, Presidential Papers, White House Central Files, OF190-Z (1 of 2), HSTL. The correspondent, a colonel who had married an Australian woman, sought Vaughan’s help in securing her passage to the United States. 45. “Instructions,” Area Transportation Office, Personnel Movements Division, London, item 1993, misc. 128, IWM. This form letter was sent to war brides to explain what was required with regard to documentation for travel. The letter also informed the war brides how much luggage they could bring (no more than two hundred pounds) and what kinds of provisions were made in the staging areas and on board the ships for medical care and children.


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The bride then waited, and waited, for word that she was cleared for transport. “The war brides lived in a state of constant anxiety” as a result, wrote Helene Lee.46 Would they ever be reunited with their husbands? Would their husbands still want them? Passage to the United States was prioritized according to a soldier’s status. Dependents of soldiers hospitalized in the States were considered “priority one.” As for others, “priority two” applied to servicemen who were permanently stationed in the United States, deceased soldiers, discharged soldiers, or those missing in action; “priority three” was assigned to military personnel who had been ordered to the United States as a permanent station change; and “priority four” included all other service members. Upon receiving official notification, the bride was to proceed to a staging area in southeast England that was used for further processing before she could board one of the “bride ships.” One bride described the embarkation camp at Tidworth as “a bleak and dismal little hole slap in the middle of Salisbury Plain.”47 There, the bride’s documents were put through another check, she was submitted to a medical examination, she paid a “head tax” for travel, and she was fingerprinted and cleared through customs. The bride had also to complete an army questionnaire within forty-eight hours of arriving at Tidworth, indicating, among other things, if she was pregnant and if so the approximate date of conception. Women who were more than six months pregnant were not permitted to sail, nor were infants younger than six weeks, after the deaths of several infants on board the USS Holbrook in April 1946 and, later, on the SS Zebulon Vance. 48 Finally, the last thing the women waited for was notice that their ship was in port and ready to be boarded. Although in correspondence with the war brides, the Red Cross urged families to “say goodbye at home” rather than travel to the staging area or dock, many could not resist spend-

46. Helene R. Lee, Bittersweet Decision: The War Brides Forty Years Later, 75. 47. Pamela Winfield, Sentimental Journey: The Story of the GI Brides, 48. 48. “Instructions,” Area Transportation Office. Also see “War Dept. Bars Infants under 6 Mos.,” New York Times, 8 June 1946, 23. For the rash of infant deaths, see for example, “Death of 7th Baby from Zebulon Vance Revealed,” New York Times, 26 May 1946, 7. Many of the ships reported infant deaths, including the USNS John Ericsson and the SS Brazil. In May 1946 fourteen infants on the USS Santa Paula fell ill and were hospitalized upon arrival in the United States. See “Fourteen Infants Stricken on War Bride Vessel,” New York Times, 30 May 1946, 24.


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ing every last minute with their children and, in some cases, grandchildren. Parting was bittersweet, for many brides could never afford to return. “I was scared and confused when we boarded,” said one bride. “All I thought of was whether I would ever see my family in England again.” Another bride wrote of her second night at sea headed to America: “It was the hardest thing in the world for me to go to sleep, and I wished with all my heart that I was back in my bed at home in England.”49

Across the Seas On board the ships, conditions were less than desirable, but many brides were willing to overlook the various discomforts in anticipation of seeing their husbands at the end of the voyage. During the nine-day voyage from England on board the USS Goethals, many of the women suffered from sea-sickness or other digestive trouble after they gorged on American food, which was rich and plentiful on the ship. At least three of the forty-five babies on board became ill enough to require transport back to England. “Every girl is sick,” Avice Wilson wrote. “It is almost a crime to be well.” Yet, she insisted, “It’s worth any discomfort to join Johnnie.” Throughout Wilson’s trip, she and her shipmates were encouraged to attend screenings of American movies and sessions organized by the Red Cross on topics such as U.S. geography and American-style cooking and fashion, intended to ease their adjustment. At least one evening was devoted to dance lessons.50 In one journal entry, written as the boat neared New York’s Staten Island, Wilson described the anticipation she and the other brides felt at the prospect of being reunited with their husbands and fiancés. “The thought of seeing Johnnie . . . makes me breathless,” Wilson wrote. “Everyone is very excited and making last-minute preparations—nail filing, varnishing and vigorous hair-brushing.” No doubt the excitement was tinged with apprehension, as many of the women had not seen their sweethearts

49. Winfield, Sentimental Journey, 51; Marie E. Boissy, “Notes on my voyage to America,” 7 May 1946, 86/88/1, IWM. 50. Avice Wilson to Mummie, 28 July (quotes), 4 August 1946, 86/68/1, IWM.


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for a year or more. Already, one young bride had received a cable, “Don’t come, not wanted,” and now faced the prospect of returning to England.51 When the USS Goethals docked at Staten Island on August 6, 1946, Wilson and the other war brides eagerly searched the waiting crowd for their husbands and fiancés. A dance band was playing, and according to Wilson, “dozens of reporters” approached the women for interviews. On that day, she made a single pronouncement in her journal: “Johnnie and I are together in New York.”52 Who were these women, the British war brides? Writing in letters and journals, the brides represent the spectrum of social classes. Wartime propaganda promoted a “people’s war,” in which class systems were easily dismantled as disparate groups dedicated themselves to a common goal. Scholars have since proved this to be more wishful thinking than wartime reality, and yet, the bride ships represented a commingling of social groups—or at least of wartime professions.53 “Very few GI brides were drawn from the privileged ‘upper crust,’” wrote Longmate. “The largest groups were munitions workers, secretaries, servicewomen and, best represented of all, those most visibly long-suffering and industrious of all war-workers, members of the Women’s Land Army.”54 One bride, a student at Bristol University when war broke out, in an unpublished memoir described her shipmates on the USS E. B. Alexander as “a cross-section of our society.” Margaret Paroutaud wrote: “There were singers and actresses from the London stage; there were nurses and ex-servicewomen; there were country girls; there were shop assistants and secretaries and teachers.” She added, however, that the Red Cross workers aboard the ship found the childless women “selfish and egotistical” and mostly unwilling to help the mothers or children who inevitably suffered from sea-sickness. “It was true, of course,” she wrote.55 Avice Wilson wrote in an August 2, 1946, journal entry on board the USS Goethals, “There are so many accents on this ship.”56 Wilson was 51. Ibid., 29 July 1946. 52. Ibid., 7, 6 August 1946. 53. See, for example, Ziegler, London at War, 165. 54. Longmate, The GIs, 327. 55. Margaret Paroutaud, “Is Your Marriage Really Necessary? A War Bride’s Story,” 51–52, 86/5/1 IWM. 56. Avice R. Wilson to Mummie, 2 August 1946, 86/68/1, IWM.


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from Chippenham, and one of her roommates hailed from Andover, a small market town that was home to Britain’s Royal Air Force Maintenance Command. In the days leading up to the invasion of Normandy, U.S. fighter squadrons trained in Andover. Another roommate was from Cornwall, where some five hundred American paratroopers had been stationed. The third roommate was from Oxford, where American personnel operated a wartime hospital. Based on personal accounts of these voyages, it seems most of the women got on well despite their disparate backgrounds. But cramped into small quarters and anxious about the reception awaiting them in the United States, they saw the occasional dustup occur. One bride wrote that the wives of officers complained about having to share quarters with the wives of privates, for example.57 In addition to class distinctions and differences in marital status, the brides who set sail for the United States varied in age. According to one source, the average war bride was twenty-one; the average age among American GIs who married British women was twenty-five. In the Holbrook Crier, a newsletter produced on board the USS Holbrook, a passenger wrote that she intended to interview the oldest and youngest brides on the ship: “I was forced to give up the idea of interviewing the youngest, as there are so many of them the same age,” she wrote in the newsletter. “Seventeen years seems to be a popular age to get married, and some to whom I have spoken have children.” The oldest bride on the USS Holbrook was forty-two-year-old Annie Jacobson, who had two children, aged twelve and sixteen, from a previous marriage. Margaret Paroutaud, a twenty-year-old war bride, described the women she sailed with on the USS E. B. Alexander from Southampton: “Some were young, just kids.”58 Among the brides on board the USS Argentina, the youngest was sixteen and traveled with her eighteen-month-old daughter; the oldest was fortyfour, with a seventeen-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. Finally, in a New York Times article about the arrival of a navy transport 57. Shukert and Scibetta, War Brides of World War II, 119. The situation was described by Simonne Migden, who sailed from LeHavre, France, on the SS Vulcania. 58. Virden, Good-bye, Piccadilly, 47; Peggy Turner, “From John Bull to Uncle Sam,” Holbrook Crier, 6 April 1946, 1–2, item 1897, misc. 123, IWM; Paroutaud, “Is Your Marriage Really Necessary?” 51, 86/5/1 IWM.


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carrying “sixty young attractive war brides” from Northern Ireland, the reporter noted “92 percent . . . were under the age of 25.” Among them were the Jack sisters; all three sisters married U.S. sailors who had been stationed at a naval operating base in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, for two and a half years. The oldest sister, Margaret Evelyn Jack, twenty-two, married a ship’s cook. When her husband had another sailor deliver a letter to her, that sailor met and fell in love with her younger sister, Muriel Constance, nineteen. When Muriel’s husband asked a third sailor to deliver a letter, that man met and fell in love with the youngest sister, Noeline. The New York Times article did not provide Noeline’s age.59 In many ways, conditions in wartime Britain were ideal for Anglo-American romances. Most of Britain’s men were away fighting, and women were thrust into the public sphere in unprecedented numbers. Into the void of British men came the Yanks, smartly outfitted, well paid, and already idealized as Hollywood screen idols. While certainly not every Brit warmed to the Americans, extending hospitality to these “guests” was considered every civilian’s wartime obligation. There were, however, considerable contradictions in official attitudes toward women’s sexuality in wartime, and between military discouragement of Anglo-American relationships and wartime policies that may have fostered them. One notable policy was the Churchill government’s hospitality campaign, which used mass media to persuade the Brits that it was their patriotic duty to entertain American troops in their homes.

59. Shukert and Scibetta, War Brides of World War II, 57; “Sixty Navy Brides In from Ireland: Three Londonderry Sisters in Group,” New York Times, 6 September 1944, 21.


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2 Morality, Marriage, and British Hospitality

D

“Don’t promise her anything . . . marriage outside the U.S. is out.” “My husband was away in the RAF. . . . I lived in a vacuum of loneliness and fright . . . for me, it was attraction and the need to hold on to someone. So it happened that we finally made love.”

P

ublic anxiety over moral order is rarely more exaggerated than in the upheaval of war. As men prepare for combat and women take the place of men at work, discourses about sexuality are one way the public attempts to understand and control women in their newly appropriated public spaces, according to sociologist Philomena Goodman. Expressions of fear in total war—Will we survive? How will we survive?— are linked inevitably to women’s behavior, specifically their dual roles as producers in wartime industry and reproducers of the next generation.1 An overview of the dominant war-era themes in mass media and government policy surrounding women’s sexuality before and after the GIs arrived in Britain argues that official calls for sexual restraint existed alongside other messages ensuring American-British intimacy, such as

1. Philomena Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 158. Epigraphs are from “Don’t Promise Her Anything—Marriage Outside the U.S. Is Out,” Yank, 1 July 1942, 2, and Cate Haste, Rules of Desire: Sex in Britain, World War I to the Present, 107 (the speaker is a twenty-four-year-old Manchester woman who had an affair with an American serviceman during World War II). 35


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the film industry’s persistent glamorization of America and its GIs and the British government’s call for women’s wartime service and civilian hospitality. Indeed, a 1945 article about foreign war brides in the popular American magazine Reader’s Digest noted that “most of them met their husbands at Red Cross or village dances, or as billeted guests in their own homes.” The war brides’ personal writing illustrates their reaction to the Yanks, and the ways they negotiated the nation’s conflicting expectations of women in wartime. Messages that glorified marriage and motherhood persisted in British mass media and propaganda, despite the absence of most eligible British men and during a ban on marriages by proxy.2 At the same time, U.S. armed services publications offered their readers conflicting messages about military policy regarding foreign marriages.

Gender and Sexuality in World War I In World War I, British women’s newfound independence as they entered the workforce was met by public unease that they were becoming “dangerously autonomous.” Rampant venereal disease was considered “the hidden scourge” of that war, and immoral women were thought to be the cause of the outbreak.3 “At a moment when the concept of ‘morale’ began to be associated not just with the military but with noncombatants, the moral behavior, particularly the sexual behavior, of women came to be seen as potentially imperiling the nation,” wrote Susan Grayzel. Fear of widespread social disorder was soon apparent in debates over women’s sexual behavior and in legislative measures to regulate their conduct such as criminal punishment for women found to have infected “members of His Majesty’s forces” with venereal disease.4 2. George Kent, “Brides from Overseas,” 98 (quote); Smith, Britain in the Second World War, 61; also “Marriage Ban on U.S. Troops,” Stars and Stripes, 27 June 1942, 1; “ETO Headquarters Issues Official Ruling on Marriages,” Stars and Stripes, 30 December 1942, 1; “Marriages by Proxy Urged by Woman MP,” London Telegraph, 21 October 1942, 3. 3. Sheila Rowbotham, A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the United States, 85; Mary Scharlieb, The Hidden Scourge (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1916), cited in Susan R. Grayzel, “The Enemy Within: The Problem of British Women’s Sexuality during the First World War”; Thom, Nice Girls; Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 4. Grayzel, “Enemy Within,” 73.


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British women seeking sexual adventure were roundly criticized in the mass media and by the organizations and agencies responsible for containing disease and maintaining social order. “During the war, concern with social order and the moral battles that had to be won if the war was to be a true victory became intensely caught up with the behavior of women,” wrote Grayzel. An abundance of “alarmist morality-mongers” portrayed liberated young working women as oversexed and uncontrollable, Sylvia Pankhurst noted. One advocacy group that responded to a perceived “moral panic” over the rate of illegitimate births was the League of Decency and Honour, formed in 1914 by the National Union of Women Workers to promote high moral standards among women in wartime.5 Although many British women joined the workforce and armed forces in World War I, the fundamental boundaries between public and private spheres did not change. Nor did they change when British women won the vote in 1918. If anything, the war reinforced the primacy of a woman’s role as wife and mother. “Whatever they did, they were always ‘women,’ usually regarded as potential or actual mothers,” wrote Grayzel.6 With the lessons of that previous war in mind, the British government in World War II quickly moved to rein in women’s sexual behavior, as they urged them into previously male-dominated workspaces and braced for the arrival of American troops in England.7

Gender and Sexuality in World War II Concerns about women’s sexual behavior were revived well before the arrival of American troops in Britain in 1942. The war-brides-to-be would have figured into the discourse since young single women were among 5. Ibid., 83; E. Sylvia Pankhurst, The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England during the World War, 98; Thom, Nice Girls, 20. 6. Susan Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 7. Also Jane Lewis, Women in England, 1870–1950: Sexual Divisions and Social Changes, xi. In 1918 women over thirty won the vote; in 1929 women over twenty-one were given the vote as well. 7. The official announcement that U.S. troops would be stationed in Britain was made in Washington on January 5, 1942, and an advance party of three American divisions arrived in Northern Ireland at the end of the month. See Goralski, World War II Almanac, 197.


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the first to be recruited for wartime work in 1939 and then more vigorously in 1941. They were already highly visible in public spaces by the time the Americans arrived. Soldiers encountered these women in an environment that was already characterized by a “less rigid social and moral order,” Jenel Virden noted in her 1996 study of British war brides, Good-bye, Piccadilly. Virden notes that 96 percent of the brides had worked during the war. The reorganization of social roles was necessary to the war effort, and many British women embraced new opportunities that afforded them a degree of sexual and financial independence. Yet, articulated in mass media and in official policy, women’s wartime obligations were a contradictory mix of liberties and restraints, the result of “fears surrounding women’s social relations, independence, and freedom from customary controls,” wrote Goodman.8 For example, women were mobilized for industrial work, but they were expected to work for lower wages than the men they replaced. Further, they were expected to remain “feminine” no matter how physical or filthy that work might be. In a January 1942 issue of the British magazine Woman’s Own, women were encouraged to use a medicated face cream to protect their delicate complexions from harsh factory conditions (women who handled TNT in World War I had been known to develop yellowish complexions).9 In another warera advertisement, the makers of Glymiel cream reminded women burdened with an ever-increasing workload that “home front hands can still be charming.” Although the ingredients used to make many cosmetics were in short supply during the war, rarely was it suggested that makeup was optional for women. Some women’s magazines even instructed their readers to secrete a few makeup items in their dressing gowns in case they had to evacuate to a public air raid shelter.10 The shortage of fabrics and rising costs of new clothing led to many creative fashion solutions, but women were still encouraged to “keep up 8. Virden, Good-bye, Piccadilly, 16–17; Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 147. 9. Summerfield, Women’s Wartime Lives, 164; also Shelley Saywell, Women in War: From World War II to El Salvador, 81–82; “What Women Are Doing and Saying,” Woman’s Own, 30 January 1942, 6; Panter-Downes, London War Notes, 139. 10. Jane Waller and Michael Vaughan-Rees, Women in Wartime: The Role of Women’s Magazines, 1939–1945, 84; Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 66. Some factories prohibited women from wearing cosmetics on the basis that it was distracting to men. Waller and Vaughan-Rees, Women in Wartime, 80.


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the mark.” Although short hair and slacks were more practical for women during the war years, magazines instead promoted the least severe of haircuts and tailored clothing that would show off the female figure. Lady magazine told its readers that slacks were “sloppy and unsuitable in towns and never for fat women, or with high heels, or brightly-coloured, or by mothers pushing prams, or long, floppy hair.”11 Thus, while women were called upon to do men’s work, they were repeatedly cautioned not to become masculinized. Mass media were part of a public discourse that reminded women of their proper feminine place, and even then, a woman who was “too feminine” could be accused of distracting men from their important work.12 Mass-mediated campaigns to mobilize women for war work were similarly paradoxical. Government-sponsored campaigns promoted women’s war work as necessary and heroic, as in a call to join the Land Army: “It is in the fields of Britain that the most crucial battle of the present war may well be fought and won.” Yet, the mass media also had to reassure the public that women’s presence in previously male-dominated spaces was “contingent and temporary.” To this end, the London Telegraph reported in a 1942 article that, “because she is always, eternally feminine, the average woman will want to return to home life and raise a family.” Women who heeded the call to work were not framed as surrogate men, but rather, they were uniquely suited to work that now required feminine qualities: “nimble fingers, a keen eye and delicate touch.”13 Stereotypical beliefs about women were never completely abandoned, no matter how wide the range of wartime jobs they filled. For example, the House of Commons agreed in 1942 that female fire watchers were not suited to patrol a particular area in Liverpool because it was known to be infested with rats. Further, the town of Derby preferred to go shortstaffed rather than allow women to join their police force. Eighteen female applicants were rejected for being too young, too old, or too short. The town council agreed to reconsider the matter at the end of the 11. Waller and Vaughan-Rees, Women in Wartime, 81, 82, 92. 12. Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 66. 13. Suzanne V. Cook, “Emancipation or Exploitation?” Minerva 18 (Summer 2000): 1; Summerfield, Women’s Wartime Lives, 82; Eldridge Haynes, “British Women’s Great Part in War Industries,” London Telegraph, 10 June 1942, 4.


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war, by which time, of course, men would return to fill the jobs and the issue of women’s employment would be moot.14 In the armed services, the gendered boundaries of wartime were even more blatant. For example, a 1941 proposal to place women’s branches of the armed services under military law would have entitled members to additional benefits such as dental care, bringing them at least slightly closer to parity with men. But speaking in London, a commander of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) opted to recruit new workers with a gendered appeal. “A woman’s hands might be better for working delicate instruments such as predictors,” she said, referring to the calibration of anti-aircraft gun sights.15 Servicewomen found their behavior subject to even closer scrutiny than civilian women’s. Their experiences are perhaps the most illustrative of the wartime double standard in sexual matters. For example, female recruits were forced to undergo medical examinations before and throughout their service to identify the presence of venereal disease; men were not subject to the same indignity although they were encouraged to seek preventive treatment when returning from leave. Propaganda urged women into uniform using heroic themes, and further, certain military assignments put them directly in harm’s way without benefit of the weapons their male counterparts used to defend themselves.16 Yet, the military primarily considered them sexual objects and debated how they might be “controlled so that they can be made available to satisfy individual male soldiers” who might otherwise turn to prostitutes, thus risking infection.17 Indeed, the U.S. armed services newspaper Stars and Stripes referred to British ATS women as “something for the boys” when they were sent to Germany in 1944 to deter fraternization between soldiers and civilian German women.18 14. “Women Fire Watchers in Liverpool,” Times (London), 24 September 1942, 2; “Why Derby Has No Police Women,” Manchester Guardian, 3 March 1941, 5. 15. “Women May Serve with A.A. Guns,” Manchester Guardian, 4 March 1941, 5. 16. Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 92, 84–85. As one example, some members of the ATS were trained to operate giant searchlights to track enemy bombers and guide damaged English planes to safe landings. These women were in constant danger of being targeted by German bombers. 17. Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives, 29. 18. “Something for the Boys: WACs to Be Sent to Reich to Keep GI Minds GI,” Stars and Stripes, 6 December 1944, 1. Both ATS women and American WACs were assigned to jobs in Germany: “The view prevails strongly that the sight of British and American girls in German cities and towns undoubtedly would act as a deterrent to fraternization,” the reporter wrote.


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British military women could not escape the gossip about their alleged promiscuity. “All the criticism of us just had to do with sex,” said ATS member Joan Cowey: “Most people thought we were loose women, just there to entertain the troops.”19 The gossip was so insistent by December 1941 that the British government launched an official inquiry for fear that the rumors would impede recruitment. “There is the general impression that the ATS is not the sort of service that a nice girl goes into,” said one official as Parliament debated the conscription of women in 1941. It is interesting to note, among the government’s investigative findings was the fact that the pregnancy rate of unmarried women in the service was actually lower than in civilian life.20 Still, persistent rumors about women’s immoral behavior in the armed services prompted the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) to appoint “moral advisors” to serve as chaperones and counselors.21

Venereal Disease and Delinquency The issue of moral delinquency in wartime necessarily involved measures of and solutions to the rates of venereal disease and prostitution. Since the beginning of the war in England, the rate of syphilis had increased by 50 percent among the civilian population, and by 70 percent if members of the armed services were included. Government agencies, religious figures, and feminist groups such as the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene all took part in identifying the problems and remedies. In a letter to the Times (London), the National Council of Women gave its support to Defense Regulation 33B, which legally required 19. Cowey quoted in Saywell, Women in War, 12. For an American perspective, see Irene Brion, Lady GI: A Woman’s War in the South Pacific (Novato, Calif.: Presidio, 1997), 37–38. Also see “This Army’s OK, but WAACs Like Table Linen on the Sabbath,” Yank, 5 August 1942, 4, in which American servicewomen were complimented for their work but said to prefer a “soft hotel room with a mattress . . . nice white linen tablecloth, fine silverware and thin glasses.” 20. Summerfield, Women’s Wartime Lives, 12; “Parliament Debates Conscription of Women,” Times (London), 11 December 1941, 1 (quote). See also Marwick, Century of Total War, 291–92; Rowbotham, Century of Women, 224–25, 241. Edith Summerskill, a Labour Party MP, was one of the public authorities to investigate the accusations of immorality among servicewomen in 1941. She toured 123 military camps, conducted thousands of interviews, and found that servicewomen had lower rates of VD and illegitimate births than a comparable civilian population. 21. John Costello, Love, Sex, and War: Changing Values, 1939–1945, 319.


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an individual accused of infecting two sexual partners with venereal disease to submit to treatment.22 Although the law applied to men and women alike, it was used far more often against women, who were blamed for jeopardizing the health of future generations and weakening the Allied forces. In the first year, more than 3,300 women were reported as carriers, whereas only 213 men were reported. Edith Summerskill, a medical doctor and MP, charged that Regulation 33B violated women’s civil liberties and subjected young women to wrongful accusations: “It is conceivable that a young silly girl may have become infected, but if her name is given by a second informer, she is labeled not as just young and stupid needing advice and protection, but belonging to the prostitute class,” she wrote to the Times (London).23 Another civilian group, the Public Morality Council, policed parts of the city in response to residents’ complaints about prostitution. In 1940 the council reported that women aged between twenty and sixty were “importuning for immoral purposes” at the rate of ninety-eight times an hour in a certain part of London. But “professionals” were not exactly a new phenomenon; of greater concern was that young English women were exchanging sexual favors with local soldiers for money. A volunteer recording wartime observations for a social survey agency wrote in 1940: “Evacuation and the black-out combine with the presence of large numbers of RAF men and militia boys . . . these factors have opened up a great field of opportunity for experience by which young girls, in considerable numbers, have been quick to profit.” The author went on to report that girls as young as thirteen had been known to take money from soldiers for sex—and proudly report the fact to their parents. Concerns were usually intensified when British women or girls were found to be fraternizing with black soldiers.24 22. Smith, Britain in the Second World War, 35; also “Wartime Rise of Disease,” London Telegraph, 9 December 1942, 3. Letter to the Editor, Times (London), 2 December 1942, 5. The correspondent is Gwendolen Peel, president, National Council of Women of Great Britain. See also “MPs Approve Venereal Disease Regulation,” London Telegraph, 16 December 1942, 3. 23. Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 150; Haste, Rules of Desire, 134; Letter to the Editor, Times (London), 28 November 1942, 4. 24. “Sex in War Time,” Us: Mass-Observation’s Weekly Intelligence Service, 29 March 1940, 80 (quotes). Mass-Observation was a private survey organization founded in 1937 to measure British preparation for and response to war, through a combination of volunteer diarists, observers, and interviewers. Sonya O. Rose, “Sex, Citizenship, and the Nation in World War II Britain,” American Historical Review 103 (October 1998): 1147–76.


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Worry over the problem of sexual delinquency was prompted by a 100 percent increase in the arrest of teenage girls in the first three years of war. In fact, young women were often identified in official reports as taking advantage of the disruption of war to exercise their freedoms promiscuously. As a result a variety of controls were proposed, including a curfew and a ban on the sale of alcohol to young women. In a December 1942 debate in the House of Lords, the archbishop of York noted the presence of young women near military bases: “Around the military establishments there often collect a number of silly girls who are a nuisance to the soldiers and who occasionally, through sheer foolishness, run into moral danger and find themselves suffering from venereal disease. Male police find it extraordinarily difficult to deal with girls of this type.” Delinquency among male youths was also reported by the mass media, although mostly in accounts of theft and vandalism rather than promiscuity.25 Sexual delinquency as practiced by young women was attributed in part to earlier maturity, the upheaval of evacuation, and the negligence or absence of mothers who had been mobilized for work. A 1944 British Home Intelligence report on the rise in juvenile crime cited a lack of supervision by “working mothers with ‘money to spare’ who spend their time in pubs and cinemas.” Thus, a conundrum for British women in wartime: the mother who failed to do her part for the war effort was made to seem unpatriotic, but an absent or negligent mother was to blame for her daughter’s sexual improprieties. Fathers away fighting for the nation escaped blame.26 Wartime policies related to women have historically taken shape around their perceived effect on men. In World War II Britain, the notion of “patriotic femininity” conveyed by official and mass-mediated discourse encouraged women both to step into new roles and to continue tending home and femininity for the sake of civilian, but particularly 25. John Costello, Virtue under Fire: How World War II Changed Our Social and Sexual Attitudes, 205; Smith, Britain in the Second World War, 71; “War-Time Rise of Disease,” London Telegraph, 9 December 1942, 3 (quote); Manchester Guardian articles “The Increase in Juvenile Crime,” 6 March 1941, 7; and “Probation Officer on the Problem in London,” 7 March 1941, 6. 26. Costello, Virtue under Fire, 206; “Youth,” Home Intelligence Report, 2 June 1944, Central Office of Information (INF) 1/292, Public Record Office, London. See also Paul Ferris, Sex and the British: A Twentieth-Century History (London: Michael Joseph, 1993), 147.


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male, morale.27 Even though women’s wartime opportunities might have challenged traditional ways of thinking about gender roles, the dominant belief was that women had no more important role in wartime than that of wife and mother.

Marriage and Motherhood, the “Most Honorable War Work” Throughout history, women in wartime have been ideologically constructed as “symbols of the nation . . . and national ‘property’ to be defended and protected by men,” wrote Joshua Goldstein. Such ideals are vividly rendered in propaganda, “the most explicit and deliberate” source of gendered meaning in wartime, according to Margaret Higonnet et al.28 In many examples of World War II propaganda, female vulnerability was depicted as a natural condition and motherhood a supreme goal. One British poster depicted the Axis threat as a pair of sharp claws poised to slash at a fair-haired woman and her rosy-cheeked infant. “Keep these hands off,” the caption implored. During the same period, a series of “Who Is the Enemy” posters depicted a “ravaged Madonna” lying dead in a charred field with her orphaned child nearby.29 While other wartime propaganda might have appeared to reflect new realities, such as women working at factory jobs, the messages were grounded in previous social and cultural norms. Thus, a woman’s work was said to be supportive and temporary, in imagery she was not masculinized by the work, and her true calling was to home and hearth. “Ideologically, men went to war to protect women and national boundaries; women stayed at home and were responsible for male morale,” Good-

27. Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 4. 28. Goldstein, War and Gender, 369; Margaret Randolph Higonnet et al., eds., Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, 5. 29. Reproduced in Anthony Rhodes, Propaganda, the Art of Persuasion: World War II (Secaucus, NJ: Wellfleet Press, 1987), 169. A similarly themed poster, depicting three children playing in the shadow of a swastika with the caption “Don’t Let That Shadow Touch Them” is reproduced in Therese Thau Heyman, Posters American Style (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), 108. See also Susan Gubar, “‘This Is My Rifle, This Is My Gun’: World War II and the Blitz on Women,” in Higonnet et al., Behind the Lines, 231.


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man wrote. Mass-mediated discourse about gender was distilled to its crudest form. Such narrative frames could never match the complexity of women’s lived experiences. For example, a dominant discourse that glorified heterosexuality, marriage, and motherhood persisted throughout the war despite numerous complications: a shedding of social and sexual inhibitions, the evacuation of children, the call for women’s labor, the absence of most British men, the abundance of GIs, and a marriage ban on U.S. troops stationed abroad.30 In fact, the onset of war has been known to hasten marriage. A 1940 Mass-Observation report noted that the war had a brief and “sensational effect” on marriages in Britain. “The nature of the pressure is complex,” the author explained. “Partly it is through new contacts formed in the war, partly through prospects of parting, partly through a sort of fashion, especially where there are a lot of young people in the same office or factory, swapping stories about girl or boy friends.” Certainly couples could argue an economic reason for marrying in wartime, since the army provided wives of servicemen with an allowance. The economic appeal of marrying an American might have been even more persuasive, as the U.S. Army extended more than twice the British rate to its soldiers’ dependents.31 This is not to minimize the emotional component of marriages undertaken in the disruption of war. No doubt a shared sense of urgency, excitement, and dread rushed many couples to the altar just before the groom shipped out. “To have a husband . . . was to occupy an island of permanence in an uncertain world,” Longmate wrote. The British experience in World War I may have been another motivator. In that conflict, more than seven hundred thousand of Britain’s young men were killed, about 9 percent of the male population under forty-five years of age. A 30. Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 17. See also Amy Simpson Strachey, Borrowed Children: A Popular Account of Some Evacuation Problems and Their Remedies; Travis L. Crosby, The Impact of Civilian Evacuation in the Second World War (London: Croom Helm, 1986); Summerfield, Women’s Wartime Lives, 51; Smith, Britain in the Second World War, 61; “Marriage Ban on U.S. Troops,” Stars and Stripes, 27 June 1942, 1; “ETO Headquarters Issues Official Ruling on Marriages,” Stars and Stripes, 30 December 1942, 1. 31. “Reasons for Marrying,” Us: Mass-Observation’s Weekly Intelligence Service, 29 March 1940, 78 (quotes); Denise Riley, “Some Peculiarities of Social Policy concerning Women in Wartime and Postwar Britain.” See also “Pay Family Allowances to Mothers, MPs Urge,” London Telegraph, 9 March 1945, 3.


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study published in 1942 cited a post–World War I surplus of 1.2 million women in England and Wales and noted that “young women’s chances of marrying after a prolonged war are seriously diminished.” Jane Lewis wrote that, for many Brits, the dramatic loss of male life “caused considerable anguish, because it became inevitable that some women would not be able to fulfill their ‘natural destiny’ of marriage and motherhood.”32 Popular media in World War II encouraged women to remain focused on the twin goals of marriage and motherhood and to prohibit wartime work from distracting them from either. For example, asked whether a reader should seek employment and leave her children in the care of others, Margaret Storm Jameson wrote in a 1939 issue of the British magazine Woman’s Journal: “I told her . . . that her most honorable war work consisted precisely in keeping her home what she had made it for her children and her husband, a small cell of warmth and peace in the noisy thoroughfare of this world.” She warned other mothers that succumbing to the “peculiar excitement” of wartime work was “a feeling to be ashamed of, to be guarded against . . . like a very subtle form of madness.” In another British magazine, Woman’s Own, a reader considering divorce is faulted for not spending more time at home: “I think you have made a mistake of going out to work so much because men don’t really like women to be independent,” counseled Leonora Eyles. “Part of the trouble may be that he did not find home such a good place, since you were not in it to look after it for him.” In short, women were advised that their fulfillment was located in the private sphere, specifically in their domestic responsibilities. Since wives and mothers were not required to take on war work at the same rate as young single women, if a married woman’s family or home suffered because she sought a “temporary” thrill in the public sphere, the blame was hers alone.33 The stability and moral integrity of the home front were depicted in mass media as being critical to the war effort, and their preservation was one measure of victory. If women tended to family and femininity, if they 32. Longmate, How We Lived Then, 156; Marwick, Century of Total War, 62; Katherine Whiteside Taylor, “Shall They Marry in Wartime?” Journal of Home Economics 34 (April 1942): 214; Lewis, Women in England, 4. 33. Margaret Storm Jameson, “In Courage Keep Your Heart,” Woman’s Journal, 1939, reproduced in Waller and Vaughan-Rees, Women in Wartime, 14–15; “Life and You,” Woman’s Own, 16 January 1942, 22; Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 39; Summerfield, Women’s Wartime Lives, 80.


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remained chaste and loyal to their absentee men, then the enemy had not won. Although it was “tacitly accepted” that British servicemen abroad would seek sexual comfort with girlfriends or prostitutes, women on the home front were expected to endure long periods of sexual deprivation.34 Religious figures cautioned British women that extramarital affairs would bring shame upon their homes and undermine the very thing men were fighting for. “You may have special temptations here in wartime Britain, but you will best preserve and strengthen the links of all that is best in our heritage, most effectively enable morale to be kept up at a high pitch, if you do your part to keep your domestic ties firm and sound, unembarrassed or complicated by broken homes or romances,” said a local bishop in May 1944.35 That their women might not be faithful was an almost constant source of worry among British soldiers. Indeed, a 1942 study found that the fighting ability of British forces was compromised by the knowledge that wives were unfaithful. “The British War Office made a startling discovery: that papa can’t fight good when mama’s running around,” reported Yank, an American armed services publication. It is not surprising that the study did not appear in the British armed services publications.36 Enemy propaganda exploited men’s anxiety over separation from their women. A German leaflet dropped on British and American forces in Normandy depicted a woman on the telephone with the caption, “Will you ever hear her sweat [sic] voice again?” Even more nefarious was the attempt to undermine the Anglo-American alliance by suggesting that British women routinely and enthusiastically cavorted with foreign troops. “Undoubtedly planned by the enemy but much circulated . . . by U.K. troops overseas were the rumors that their wives and women were being consoled, usually for money, by the Yanks preparing for the invasion. Some rumors held that the women had opened brothels for the 34. Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain, 1939–1945, 314. In a July 1942 poll in Great Britain, 43 percent of respondents stated that the war had separated them from a family member, fiancé, or sweetheart, up from 28 percent in 1940. See Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion, 1935–1946 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), 1109. 35. “Bishop’s Call to Wives: Keep Faithful,” London Telegraph, 8 May 1944, 3. 36. P. A. Lewis, A People’s War, 208; “Battle of Sexes Slows Real Scraps,” Yank, 5 August 1942, 4.


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Yanks because of poverty, their husband’s allotments being so tiny by comparison,” wrote Fussell.37 Those anxieties were exacerbated in 1944 when there were more than 5 million U.S. troops serving overseas, up from 940,000 in 1942. The vast number of Americans stationed in England made it necessary to billet some GIs in the homes of married women whose husbands were serving overseas. It was a reluctant breaking with official policy, which sought to maintain the integrity of the marital home—or, more accurate, the morale of fighting men—by not conscripting the wives of servicemen. In requiring the women to house American GIs, the “authorities did their utmost to ensure that extramarital activities took place,” wrote Audrey Kay. One British woman recalled that GIs considered married women particularly easy targets for seduction: “I got very independent during the war, having to fend for myself and of course, fight off young men who thought servicemen’s wives were easy game,” she wrote.38 The swell of U.S. troops was part of the buildup to the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, and on the eve of D-Day there were more than 1.65 million troops in the British Isles, more than ten times the number in the previous year. The increased presence of Americans also coincided with the start of the German V-weapon “flying bomb” campaign in England on June 13, 1944, which, one historian said, “had a profound psychological effect on the civilian population.”39 Germany’s new secret weapon was particularly fiendish, wrote Marwick. V-weapons were pilotless planes that carried high charges of explosives. They flew until their fuel was depleted, at which point they would dive to the ground with the most “sinister, grating sound” and explode in an enormous blast. By August 1944, flying bombs had killed six thousand civilians and severely injured more than sixteen thousand.40 37. “German Propaganda in Normandy,” Manchester Guardian, 2 August 1944, 6; Gubar, “‘This Is My Rifle,’” 238–39; Fussell, Wartime, 39. 38. U.S. Bureau of the Census, cited in Goralski, World War II Almanac, 422; Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 138–39; Audrey Kay, “Wythenshawe, circa 1932–1955: The Making of a Community?” 328; married woman quoted in Ben Wicks, Welcome Home: True Stories of Soldiers Returning from World War II, 55. 39. John Keegan, The Second World War, 381; Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory: Britain, 1900–1990, 205; Goralski, World War II Almanac, 324 (quote). 40. Arthur Marwick, The Home Front: The British and the Second World War, 152, 154. Because of the sound made by these flying bombs, they were referred to also as “doodle-bugs” and “buzz bombs.” See also Goralski, World War II Almanac, 428.


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German propaganda, as always, attempted to cow the Britons. “They are putting out stories of panic, of the evacuation of London, of vast explosions, of a pall hanging over the city which prevents the Luftwaffe from taking photographs,” wrote Harold Nicolson in a June 19, 1944, diary entry. London was not vacated, but the V-weapons bombing was followed by the large-scale evacuation of children from England’s city centers and the opening of five “deep shelters” in London for people whose homes had been bombed. Thus, the conditions of the earlier German Blitz returned in 1944, as people woke to the sounds of air-raid sirens, mothers packed their children off to safer locations, and the rest of the family sought shelter in the underground tube stations.41 Although the successful advances of Allied troops across Europe halted the V-1 menace, the Germans quickly introduced the V-2 rocket. More than three thousand civilians were killed in V-2 attacks, which continued until March 1945. A young Londoner who was bombed out of her apartment wrote to her American pen pal in 1945: “The flying bombs commenced last June and nearly blasted us all to Kingdom Come. The rest of the country can have no conception of what the Cockneys have had to endure.”42 In fact, there had been no significant daytime air raids for months, and many Brits felt secure enough to return to a semblance of their old routines before the terror started anew. Perhaps the presence of American troops in local households in the midst of this renewed Axis assault offered a degree of security to the families or women who billeted them. Marwick described the period from June 1944 to March 1945 as one of the most distressing for soldiers and civilians: “Up to this point, war for many men meant no more than life in barracks or training camp. . . . Now, at this late stage in the war, the men were marching out to hazardous and bloody battle on the heartland of Europe. For the whole of society, this moment, and the weeks and months which followed, were as poignant as any in any war.” Winston Churchill characterized the V-weapon attacks as approximating frontline warfare for civilians: “The people at home could feel they were sharing the 41. Nicolson, The War Years, 380; “Evacuating Children out of London,” London Telegraph, 8 July 1944, 3. In four days, 40,500 children were evacuated from London to outlying districts, out of range of the V-1 bombs; “Tickets for Deep Shelters,” London Telegraph, 8 July 1944, 3. 42. Marwick, Home Front, 154; Betty Swallow to Helen Bradley, February 1945, WCML.


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perils of their soldiers,” he wrote in his memoirs. In a speech to Parliament in July 1944, he praised the Americans for lending “a helping hand to anyone in distress. . . . From the highest officer to the ordinary soldier one meets they have in every way made common cause with us and been forthcoming as helpers with assistance of every kind.”43 In addition to emotional security, the presence of GIs in British homes might have offered practical benefits, too. A relationship, whether sexually intimate or not, with a well-paid and generous American soldier might offer financial relief to British servicemen’s wives who, “dependent on the miserable allowance paid to soldiers[,] were badly off,” wrote Marwick. Yet, if the army got word that a British wife was unfaithful to her soldier-husband, she risked losing her family allowance. A notorious case in 1945 involved a soldier who strangled his expectant wife after learning her pregnancy was the result of a liaison with another man; the husband was acquitted.44 The influx of American soldiers also coincided with an official appeal for an increased birthrate. In World War I, pronatalist policies encouraged women to “reproduce for the sake of the country.” A declining birth rate in the 1930s and prospects of a lengthy war in the 1940s led to official concern that Britain would fail to replace its own population by the end of the century. The result was a series of initiatives to stimulate reproduction. Although women’s labor was needed for the war effort, a sexual division of labor was effected to protect women’s reproductive health. Pregnancy forced women out of the workplace, reflecting the dominant belief that her primary responsibility was to bear and rear children.45 Indeed, Churchill said in a 1944 speech that the future of Britain depended on “an ever-flowing fountain of healthy children,” and the London Telegraph reported that a solution to “the empty cradle” problem was urgently needed.46 Thus, as has been done in many wars, families were provided 43. Marwick, Home Front, 149; Churchill, Memoirs of the Second World War, 819; Churchill in Parliament from “Tribute to the Americans,” Manchester Guardian, 7 July 1944, 6. 44. Marwick, Home Front, 142; Haste, Rules of Desire, 111; Smith, Britain in the Second World War, 81. 45. Susan R. Grayzel, “‘The Mothers of Our Soldiers’ Children’: Motherhood, Morality, and the War Baby Scandal, 1914–1918,” 122 (quote); Clarke, Hope and Glory, 218–19; Lewis, Women in England, 191–92. 46. Churchill cited from J. C. Johnstone, “Britain’s Destiny Depends on Her Birth Rate,” London Telegraph, 4 March 1944, 2.


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benefits under a welfare plan that rewarded multiple births. Information about birth control remained difficult to obtain, and abortions were both expensive and illegal. As Summerfield noted: “Motherhood, undertaken full-time and not combined with paid work, was the socially acclaimed role for women in the 1940s discourse of pronatalism.”47 Yet, with most of Britain’s eligible men away fighting in Europe and a ban on proxy marriages, the hypocrisy of this wartime pronatalist policy was soon manifested in the overwhelming number of illegitimate births between 1940 and 1945. About three hundred thousand illegitimate babies were born in England, Scotland, and Wales, that is, one hundred thousand more than in the six years preceding the war. Beginning in 1942, many of these pregnancies resulted from Anglo-American romances, and in 1945, “extramaritally conceived maternities” peaked at sixty-five thousand.48 A Life magazine article in 1948 claimed some twenty-two thousand babies were born to British women as a result of Anglo-American romances. Earlier, Time reported that “70,000 U.S. Negro troops left behind hundreds of illegitimate mulatto babies,” whose mothers were ostracized from their communities and in dire need of financial support. One could argue that these women were in fact only satisfying their government’s expectation that they would aspire to motherhood and marriage. But U.S. military officials, while acknowledging that soldiers’ morale could be helped by sex, cautioned the GIs from pursuing anything more serious with civilian women. “Don’t promise her anything, marriage outside the U.S. is out,” Yank told servicemen. Another U.S. Army publication, Stars and Stripes, reported a “marriage ban” on American troops stationed overseas.49 47. Summerfield, Women’s Wartime Lives, 210. See also Rowbotham, Century of Women, 246; Kathleen Kiernan et al., Lone Motherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain: From Footnote to Front Page, 33; Riley, “Some Peculiarities of Social Policy.” 48. Sheila Ferguson and Hilde Fitzgerald, Studies in the Social Services, 103; Smith, Britain in the Second World War, 16; “The Registrar General’s Statistical Review of England and Wales for the Six Years 1940–1945,” text, vol. 2, civil (London 1951), 82, reproduced in Reynolds, Rich Relations, 405 (quote). 49. “The Babies They Left Behind Them,” Life, 23 August 1948, 41; “Plain People,” Time, 11 March 1946, 27; Reynolds, Rich Relations, 209; “Don’t Promise Her Anything—Marriage outside the U.S. Is Out,” Yank, 1 July 1942, 2; “Marriage Ban on U.S. Troops,” Stars and Stripes, 27 June 1942, 1. However, Stars and Stripes reported in 1942 that women in the U.S. Navy were encouraged to marry: “‘Waves’ May Marry, Use Lipstick, but No Street Smoking,” Stars and Stripes, 26 September 1942, 3.


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That GI Appeal The arrival of U.S. forces en masse in 1942 brought much-needed relief to Great Britain but also further disruption to a country already devastated by war. Towns and villages throughout England were soon overrun with American soldiers, who required considerable space for billeting and training. For example, by 1944 in the coastal towns of Suffolk, there was one American GI for every six civilians. In Wiltshire the number of troops rose from 74,000 in December 1943 to 136,000 in April 1944, when GIs made up nearly half the local population. “Americans seem to be everywhere!” wrote a British woman in a 1944 letter to her son. Indeed, even the most remote British villagers found it difficult to avoid the GIs. “The American invasion struck the British Isles like a huge technicolor bomb, scattering nylons and cigarettes and candy and goodwill over the whole country,” E. R. Chamberlin wrote.50 The presence of American soldiers was not universally welcomed. For example, the expropriation of rural land for U.S. Army training was protested by British farmers as “undemocratic and autocratic.” In British cities, some civilians resented having to compete for taxis or bus seats with GIs when transportation was already compromised by war conditions. Still others were disgusted with the coarse behavior of some soldiers on leave. Residents near Piccadilly Circus in London’s West End complained of soldiers urinating in their doorways or engaging prostitutes (sometimes called “Piccadilly Commandoes”) and then disposing of used condoms by depositing them into the nearest mail slot.51 But the GIs were popular among many Brits, in part because they offered a dramatic contrast both to the traditional British reserve and to the Polish soldiers who had arrived ahead of them.52 “These differences, whatever form they took, seemed to fascinate the women of Britain,” 50. Reynolds, Rich Relations, 112; Phyllis Marian Higgins to Stephen Higgins, 92/25/1, IWM; Chamberlin, Wartime Britain, 158. 51. Clarence Roesler, “A Yank Abroad in London,” in Hale and Turner, The Yanks Are Coming, 26–27. 52. “Government Eviction Order,” Times (London), 12 November 1943, 2 (quote). Polish soldiers were said to be “masters of the soulful gaze and the kissing of hands,” giving British women “an entirely new perspective on courtship.” See “‘Our Scotland,’” Time, 12 January 1942, 40.


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wrote Jane Waller and Michael Vaughan-Rees in a study of women’s magazines: “Allied troops were gallant and appreciative; they had the allure of the exotic . . . it is not surprising they had immense success with local women.” Longmate wrote that American GIs were “natural, unabashed, unselfconscious and friendly.” By comparison, British soldiers “were sadly handicapped in the serviceman’s traditional recreation, the pursuit of women,” wrote Chamberlin.53 To ease any lingering anxieties over the arrival of so many GIs, military authorities asked anthropologist Margaret Mead to explain the similarities and differences between American and British cultures in a 1944 article, and in doing so, she identified one source of the GIs’ appeal: “American men and boys enjoy the company of girls and women more than the British do,” Mead wrote. “If [Brits] want to spend a pleasant evening, more often they spend it with other boys.” The Americans’ social ease was attractive to many British women, who were exercising newfound freedoms of their own in wartime. Many of them readily adopted the casual style of dating that was popular among Americans. For example, Pauline Arnold, a wireless telegraph operator, wrote in her wartime diary that in the absence of her boyfriend, a British serviceman, “I have been out with Americans, Canadians, Australians, soldiers, sailors and airmen.” An earlier, April 1944, entry describes a date with “George, my American. . . . Laying in a field, I made George feel the way I always wanted a man to feel over me.” Yet a week later, she wrote: “Went out with George in the evening. Had a drink then went for a country walk. I told him quite definitely that I had no intention of giving him what he wanted. So we said goodbye.” The breakup caused minimal disruption to her social life, judging from subsequent entries; there were more than enough GIs to replace George.54 Another source of American charm most certainly was the money; American GIs earned five times the salary that “Tommies” did, and they were known to be generous in their spending. While Brits were struggling 53. Waller and Vaughan-Rees, Women in Wartime, 117; Longmate, How We Lived Then, 476; Chamberlin, Wartime Britain, 159. 54. Margaret Mead, The American Troops and the British Community: An Examination of the Relationship between the American Troops and the British, 10; Pauline Arnold, 88/3/1, IWM.


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with severe rationing, the newly arrived Americans “seemed to get any and everything,” recalled Irene Corry, who went on to marry a Yank. “The Yanks coming over made a whole difference to the girls,” recalled one British woman. “The American servicemen did have a lot of money and showered the girls with luxuries.” Indeed, a 1943 letter from a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service suggests that a bit of disposable income might have been a GI’s best attribute. Joan Kirby wrote of her new American beau: “As long as he’s still got some money, he suits me.” Similarly, when a woman asked her friend why she continued to date a GI who seemed “about [as] exciting as a piece of wood,” the answer had more to do with his means than with his personality. The GI in question, a former chef and now an army cook, provided her with an endless array of food: “All the food that we were short of,” she wrote. “Steak, chicken, beef, pork, bacon, lamb and sausages, all served up with the appropriate trimmings.”55 It is interesting that soldiers’ narratives are more likely to attribute their romantic conquests to the sexual eagerness of British women. One soldier remarked: “We never got over how easy it was to make it with the girls, and not just the single ones, either. One of our sergeants actually had a time with a married lady while her husband was upstairs cabinet making!” A military police officer, among the first Americans to arrive in 1942, recalled it took very little effort on a GI’s part to meet women: “The fact that we were among the first GIs made us something of a novelty to the English, and especially the girls,” he wrote. “These young ladies would parade back and forth on the Green Park side of Piccadilly in the hopes of meeting one of us.”56 In fact, it appeared that the “proper GI etiquette for getting a date” was to simply show up, according to a 1945 letter to Yank that ridiculed an earlier correspondent who had confessed he needed help to woo women. Armed services publications promoted the

55. Irene Corry, 88/50/1, Doris Farrell, 97/27/1, Joan Kirby, 88/3/1, Anne Chalmers, unpublished memoir (1989), 90/10/1, all in IWM. 56. Earl F. Hayter, “A Remembered Place,” in Hale and Turner, The Yanks Are Coming, 43; Roesler, “A Yank Abroad in London,” ibid., 19. The author continued: “I ought to say that all this took place in daylight, these were decent girls. After dark, it was a different state of affairs.”


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idea that the mere presence of American GIs was enough to drive women into a romantic frenzy. For example, an item in Stars and Stripes on July 18, 1942, reported that soldiers were “mobbed by autograph seekers,” mostly young girls, at a Wimbledon event.57 The presence of American soldiers resonated with those who saw in them “the incarnation of innumerable Hollywood films.” The GIs “carried with them . . . that vicarious glamour of the movies, which reduced so many amorous young ladies to the last extremity of passion,” wrote Benny Green in Britain at War. Regardless of a soldier’s humble standing back home, many Britons greeted him with the kind of adulation reserved for the most revered film stars, despite a London Telegraph article that decried the film industry’s distortions as another menace of war. “At first, the euphoria was hysterical,” Chamberlin wrote. “Each GI was a Tyrone Power or Andy Devine, only for real.” Even the mental health community weighed in on the American appeal: “A British psychologist decided that one big reason U.S. soldiers so fascinate British girls is that the Yanks talk with the same accents as male Hollywood film stars,” a London correspondent wrote in a November 1942 issue of Yank.58 In fact, moviegoing was a popular leisure activity during the war years, as other sources of entertainment became limited or unavailable. Officials in the United States and Britain were quick to recognize it as an important publicity medium, thus film industries on both sides of the Atlantic deserve the credit—or blame—for creating certain expectations among Britons. Wartime films “contain particular forms of identity governed by historical mechanisms,” Tony Williams wrote. In fact, early in the conflict, as interventionists in the United States and the United Kingdom lobbied for American involvement, mass media offered up a version of how things could be. A series of Hollywood releases shown in both countries depicted the romance and glory of combat alongside British

57. “Lonesome Lieutenant,” Yank, 4 May 1945, 19; “English Gals Mob Yankees,” Stars and Stripes, 18 July 1942, 4. 58. Chamberlin, Wartime Britain, 158 (quote); Benny Green, Britain at War, 159; Campbell Dixon, “Is the Screen Really an Ally of Britain and America?” London Telegraph, 10 September 1942, 4; Chamberlin, Wartime Britain, 133; “English Girls May Like Our Talk, but They Don’t Go for Our Walk,” Yank, 4 November 1942, 8.


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allies. These “preparedness films,” as they were known, included films such as I Want Wings, Devil Dogs of the Air, and Here Comes the Navy.59 Another film, A Yank in the RAF, starred Tyrone Power as a fighter pilot and Betty Grable as an American who joins the British Royal Air Force. This 1941 film became a fixture in British cinemas throughout the war, one bride recalled. Indeed, one source suggests that films released early in the conflict were among the most popular and memorable for British audiences.60 In this way, the glamorization of Americans in feature films made the soldiers attractive and offered scenarios in which it was “safe” for British women to engage in romances with them. So, too, did the military guides distributed to GIs as a way to help them negotiate the peculiarities of British culture. Highlights of the pamphlets were carried by armed services publications. Americans were cautioned to avoid certain kinds of behavior that Englishmen might find offensive: “Don’t brag. Don’t tell an Englishman we came over and won the last war for them. . . . Don’t tell an Englishman we’ve come over to win this war for him.” But there was an implicit assumption where women were concerned. GIs were warned to “Lay off a Tommy’s girl; she may like it, but he won’t; you’re liable to get your block knocked off. Of course, if you find a single, unattached girl, that’s a different matter.”61 Thus, it was assumed that women were sexually available to American GIs unless a rival British soldier was about. Further ensuring the fraternization of soldiers and civilians, government and volunteer organizations sponsored activities and events throughout Britain, in an effort to promote positive relations between the Allies. In memoirs and interviews, many war brides recall being introduced to their husbands this way. One reason is that most British women were 59. Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards, Britain Can Take It: The British Cinema in the Second World War, 4; Tony Williams, Structures of Desire: British Cinema, 1939–1955, 23; Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 118–19. For more about American films released in Britain, see Ian Charles Jarvis, Hollywood’s Overseas Campaign: The North Atlantic Movie Trade, 1920–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 60. Larry King, Love Stories of World War II, 229. Ena King was eighteen when she met American fighter pilot Max McClure; he proposed to her in the midst of an air raid. Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, 338. 61. “For Yanks Not at Oxford,” Yank, 15 July 1942, 5. Also see Longmate, How We Lived Then, 472–73.


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members of the Women’s Voluntary Service (WVS) for Civil Defense, and as part of their war work they served as hostesses in social clubs.62 Anne Chalmers was one volunteer, hired to “dance with the men, talk and circulate.” In an unpublished memoir, she described the excitement that the clubs offered in the midst of unpredictability: “In the club, there was often a sense of unreality, away from what was going on outside, with an exciting, stimulating feeling of not knowing what was going to happen from one day to the next,” she wrote. Dances, like movies, provided an escape from the danger and drudgery of wartime. They brought “glamour into the lives of thousands of young girls,” wrote Chamberlin. A woman who regularly traveled thirty train stops each way to attend dances in London said: “My fairyland and escape route to relaxation were my almost weekly trips to the Hammersmith Palais. For the young it was a paradise shut away from the stark reality of the bitter world outside.” Soldiers looked forward to the opening of each new club, and armed services publications frequently carried stories and photographs from such events, remarking on how the Americans were teaching Brits new and modern dance steps, for example.63 There was a fundamental sexual double standard at work in all AngloAmerican encounters. “Concern was expressed for the moral status of women and for the male morale, but not male morals,” Goodman wrote. For the most part, the blame of women for sexual improprieties was “widespread and stronger” than blame of the men, according to a 1944 Home Intelligence Report. This attitude was manifested in one officer’s response to the aftermath of a party on an American base in England. An air force engineer wrote: “Some weeks afterward, several girls turned up demanding to see the CO. It appeared that they had gotten themselves impregnated by some anonymous Yanks during the party. It was all rather

62. Reynolds, Rich Relations, 159. The WVS also volunteered as seamstresses for the armed services. See, for example, “Socks Need Darning, Soldier? English Women Will Mend ‘Em,” Stars and Stripes, 7 December 1942, 1. 63. Anne Chalmers, 90/10/1, IWM; Chamberlin, Wartime Britain, 159; woman quoted in Longmate, How We Lived Then, 418; and Stars and Stripes articles Russell Jones, “Red Cross Hotel Open,” 9 May 1942, 1 (noting the first such club in Londonderry, Ireland), Bill Downs, “‘Every Man a Member,’ Slogan of Forces Club,” 16 May 1942, 5, Richard McLaughlin, “Hillbilly Hi-de-Ho Comes to Britain,” 4 February 1943, 2, “Two New Clubs Open in London,” 23 February 1943, 4.


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embarrassing because the poor girls couldn’t really remember what had happened or with whom during those happy drunken hours.” After some time, the chaplain on the base identified the men and persuaded them to marry the girls, until the commanding officer intervened by posting the men to another base. According to the engineer: “The CO said, ‘no dice, those guys were drunk and didn’t know they were going to make themselves fathers—better that they’re moved out of sight.’” The “poor girls,” one just sixteen years old, were left without information on the relocated GIs and without the army remuneration owed them as the mothers of soldiers’ dependents.64

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Mum A U.S. military concern for its soldiers on leave or training in Britain was to keep them healthy, reasonably happy, and out of trouble. Fostering good relations, or at least reducing friction, between soldiers and civilians was achieved by British and U.S. sponsorship of social events and the initiation of a hospitality program that made visits by GIs to British homes part of the overall war effort. Familiarizing these two disparate groups with one another was an important measure of wartime diplomacy. But it also encouraged Anglo-American romances by privileging the Americans over other allies and equating fraternization with British women’s important war work. When the American soldiers first arrived to Britain, certain problems were thought to be inevitable and were attributed to the Yanks’ overwhelming presence. “A lot of the irritations which come up are simply due to Americans being stationed in large numbers near towns and villages too small to accommodate so many extra men looking for a few hours of a good time,” wrote Mead. The GIs could dominate most situations by their sheer numbers. Londoners complained, for example, that out of laziness and affluence GIs monopolized the taxi service in the city. “No Amer-

64. Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 134; “British Women and U.S. Troops,” Home Intelligence Report, June 8, 1944, INF 1/292, Public Record Office, London; Bill Ong, “Infantryman,” in Hale and Turner, The Yanks Are Coming, 80.


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ican ever seemed to walk anywhere,” wrote Longmate.65 The fact that these “real” Americans did not live up to their Hollywood image was another source of disappointment. British diplomat Harold Nicolson explained in 1943 to an American documenting impressions of the GIs that civilians and enlisted men “thought that all their Hemingway he-men were soft, hating cold, shuddering in the slightest draught, and starting to limp if asked to walk more than two miles.” Further, the American tendency toward outgoingness was also problematic. The Yanks had a habit of initiating conversation while standing in queue lines or seated on trains and buses, when the British preference was to keep to oneself, for example.66 These were minor irritations, certainly. But officials at Britain’s Ministry of Information (MoI), the government agency responsible for wartime news, knew that small problems might transform into bigger problems, so they quickly moved to neutralize any hostility toward the Americans. “There is no limit to the harm that is capable of being done if relations between the American soldiers and the local inhabitants go awry,” said MoI director general Cyril Radcliffe. Thus, British officials worked with the U.S. War Department, the American Red Cross, and other organizations to promote stories in the mass media about joint projects, and to arrange formal and informal events where soldiers and civilians could come together. For its part the War Department stressed shared characteristics, in a book provided to American servicemen: The most evident truth of all is that in their major ways of life, the British and American people are much alike. They speak the same language. They both believe in representative government, in freedom of worship, in freedom of speech.67

It was not easy at first to persuade the two groups to look beyond caricatures. To the Brits, these “Yank soldiers” were noisy, boastful, and possi65. Mead, American Troops, 5; Longmate, How We Lived Then, 472. See also PanterDownes, London War Notes, 239, in which the author, a London-based New Yorker correspondent, wrote that American troops had “caused an unprecedented scarcity of taxis throughout the metropolis.” 66. Nicolson, The War Years, 289 (quote); Longmate, How We Lived Then, 476. 67. Radcliffe from a 5 June 1942 memo quoted in Reynolds, Rich Relations, 144; War Department quoted in Janet Toole, “GIs and the Race Bar in Wartime Warrington,” History Today 43 (July–December 1993): 25.


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bly lawless; to the GIs, the Brits were stuffy, unfriendly aristocrats. But little by little, stereotypes gave way as a massive publicity campaign brought soldiers and civilians together at social events such as dances and parades. On the occasion of Mothers’ Day, the British government even paired American soldiers with British mothers whose sons were serving in the Allied forces. Another program assigned American soldiers to be sponsors of British children orphaned by the war.68 It is interesting that the British government’s public relations efforts showed a preference for their American allies, which may have helped boost their standing in the minds of British women. Parades were held in honor of American soldiers, for example, but not necessarily for Polish or Canadian allies. Indeed, Longmate noticed that the Americans were treated to a measure of hospitality unheard of for other countries’ soldiers, who likely found it much more difficult to adjust to wartime Britain. “Other foreign troops, despite the language barrier, were left to find their own feet,” he wrote. The British government even relaxed its wartime restrictions on the use of central heating when it found that newly arrived American troops, who were used to warm houses, were suffering in the chilly conditions.69 In addition to a massive publicity campaign meant to cultivate positive Anglo-American relations, the MoI also initiated a home hospitality program and proffered it to Britons as a form of war work. Both endeavors were intended to “manage” encounters between military and civilian populations, to minimize trouble, and preserve the “natural Anglo-American special relationship” of which Churchill and Roosevelt often spoke.70 But by encouraging frequent and prolonged fraternization, such initiatives could also be seen as challenges to the prevailing discourse on sexuality. Women were admonished to control their sexual behavior but to make

68. Bob Arbib, Here We Are Together (London: Longmans, Green, 1946), 89–90; Reynolds, Rich Relations, 176–77; Stars and Stripes articles Tom Bernard, “U.S. Soldiers Feted in City,” 5 September 1942, 1, “British Mothers to Be ‘Adopted’ by GIs Sunday,” 7 May 1943, 1, “American Doughboy Is Their Uncle Sam,” 26 September 1942, 1. 69. Longmate, How We Lived Then, 472; Panter-Downes, London War Notes, 248. 70. Longmate, How We Lived Then, 159–60; also Clarke, Hope and Glory, 203. During the war and in his famous Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, Churchill characterized the interdependence of the United States and the Commonwealth of Nations as a “special relationship.”


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themselves available for the entertainment of American soldiers. The two governments’ sponsorship of social events and home visits encouraged and made it acceptable for British women to become involved with American GIs. And apparently, the GIs needed little encouragement where sex and romance were concerned. One paratrooper noted of militarysponsored dances, “if a girl showed the slightest sign of being willing there would be some pretty torrid scenes in the back of the trucks taking the girls back to town. . . . The paras had this virile reputation and did their best to live up to it.”71 The MoI suggested that the entertaining of Allied soldiers was part of the war effort, one way for Britons to fulfill their patriotic duty.72 For example, in the June 12, 1942, issue of the Times (London), the Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, called Americans “the most hospitable and warm-hearted people in the world” and urged civilians to reciprocate by opening their homes to the arriving troops. General Dwight Eisenhower lent his support to home visits, asserting that “if an American soldier has the opportunity of living, say for a weekend, in the home of a British family, even helping them wash the dishes, tend the garden, and be a general handy-Andy around the house, there could be developed a much greater degree of friendliness and companionship than if both are stand-offish.” At Eisenhower’s insistence, invitations were channeled through American Red Cross clubs, and according to a history of that organization, more than one hundred thousand American soldiers a month were guests in British homes during the war. Holidays yielded the greatest number of invitations.73

71. Jim Kurz, “D-Day, Arnheim,” in Hale and Turner, The Yanks Are Coming, 136. The author was based at Wollaton Park and attended dances in Nottingham. 72. For example, Waller and Vaughan-Rees, Women in Wartime, 116. The authors quote from the November 1943 issue of Woman and Beauty, which told readers: “If, as part of your war effort, you have decided to help entertain some of our allies during their leaves, you will probably find them interesting and charming, but sometimes baffling, too.” 73. “American Stand for Freedom,” Times (London), 12 June 1942, 8. See also “Hospitality to U.S.A. Forces,” Times (London), 27 June 1942, 2. Eisenhower quoted from Reynolds, Rich Relations, 162. George Korson, At His Side: The Story of the American Red Cross Overseas in World War II, 264; Stars and Stripes articles “Yanks Welcome New Year with Parties, Shows,” 1 January 1943, and “Yanks Will Be Guests in British Homes Xmas,” 24 November 1942, 1.


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British mass media circulated tips on entertaining the troops. Mollie Panter-Downes, a New Yorker correspondent in London, noted that prospective hosts are cautioned to steer clear of such tactless subjects as the tardiness of the United States to enter the war, since it has been found that the guests are likely to crack right back with something equally disconcerting to Englishmen. Motherly ladies, who might want to get out the best tea service for their uniformed visitors, are warned that most Americans do not look upon tea as a customary afternoon rite. At the same time, British householders are told that they had better not produce their previous monthly ration of whisky, as the guests are liable to knock it off blithely in one sitting, without realizing that it’s hard to come by in England nowadays.74

One incentive for the Brits to participate in the hospitality program was the shortage of produce, meats, baking goods, and dairy products. Soldiers were instructed by the army to bring rationed goods to their hosts, including hard-to-find meat and sweets. “We had been lectured many times on the problems of accepting hospitality from British households. It was a recurring problem which would often be solved by the GIs in the house suddenly appearing with substantial amounts of tea, sugar, and butter that they had raided from their own unit’s inventory,” wrote a young American lieutenant in a 1944 letter to his mother. Further, Britons were aware of the practice, as it was reported in the Times (London) after the Yanks arrived. A family in Ipswich recalled a soldier-guest bringing along a seven-pound tin of corned beef in gratitude for their hospitality. “We had not seen such a luxury for years,” one member said. The uptick in invitations to British homes during the holidays coincided with even more pronounced shortages of food items, and with the rising costs of edibles such as poultry and dried fruits.75 Some Britons were genuinely curious about the Americans, and most Yanks seemed to appreciate British hospitality regardless of the motive. A U.S. survey of thirty-seven hundred soldiers from fifteen bases indicated that eight out of ten GIs felt “most of the English civilians are friendly and 74. Panter-Downes, London War Notes, 240. 75. Reynolds, Rich Relations, 162; Longmate, How We Lived Then, 474; French, “Yanks in the Hayloft,” 58 (quote); “News in Brief,” Times (London), 19 November 1942, 2; Longmate, How We Lived Then, 475 (quote); Panter-Downes, London War Notes, 254, 303.


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seem to be trying very hard to make the American soldiers feel at home.” Half of the men surveyed had been invited into British homes and many had visited the same homes multiple times. Anne Chalmers wrote that her parents were most eager to host Americans in their Bristol home, because they were more conversational than British guests. “My parents were partial to someone who had a lot to say, rather than a person from whom one had to drag a few words and who gave monosyllabic replies,” Chalmers wrote. “Our flat could easily have become a base for all members of the services.”76 The hospitality program deserved credit for alleviating some of the tensions caused by the overwhelming American military presence but may also have conveyed a sense of entitlement to the GIs for coming to the aid of Britain. Articles in mass media about the program read more like vacation brochures than news stories and rarely criticized GI behavior toward their hosts or suggested the hardships posed to Brits by the housing of Americans. For example, an item in the September 26, 1942, issue of Stars and Stripes invited readers to visit the English city of Birmingham. “To make the visiting Yankees comfortable,” a housing committee would assign each soldier to a private home where they could expect to sleep “on a mile-deep mattress.” Activities were to include dances, lectures, and sightseeing tours. “Everywhere and always, committees promise to be short on speeches and long on entertainment,” Stars and Stripes assured its readers.77 Newspapers and women’s magazines carried advertising and editorial content that echoed the hospitality theme and emphasized women’s domestic role in wartime. An ad in the January 6, 1942, issue of the Times (London), for example, depicted a housewife serving broth to American soldiers under the heading “A warm British custom.” Stork Margarine advertised a book of Ministry of Food–approved recipes, including “practical advice about ‘Dishes for Entertaining American Soldiers.’”78 “With 76. Reynolds, Rich Relations, 169; Anne Chalmers, 90/10/1, IWM. 77. “Birmingham Invites,” Stars and Stripes, 26 September 1942, 2. Also see Stars and Stripes articles “Deep in Ancient Castle Soldiers Find—Grapes!” and Pvt. Mark Senigo, “On Leave? Here’s Fun in London,” both 5 September 1942, 4. 78. Ad for Oxo in Times (London), 6 January 1942, 3 (the first GIs landed in Belfast on January 26); ad for Stork Margarine Cookery Service, reproduced in Waller and Vaughan-Rees, Women in Wartime, 113. In a letter to the editor of the London Telegraph, a British MP wrote as a suggestion to organizations or individuals entertaining U.S. troops that “porridge is not very popular with overseas troops, nor are scrambled eggs (not fresh) or kippers.” See “Soldiers’ Porridge,” London Telegraph, 3 October 1942, 2.


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troops from so many countries stationed in Britain, the magazines saw it as their duty to advise women on how to make them feel welcome,” wrote Waller and Vaughan-Rees. Indeed, these authors note that women’s magazines wrote about Americans more often than any other group. Soldiers took notice of the attention. In August 1942, Yank reported: “English newspapers and magazines are full of articles about American soldiers, most of them going into detail as to how we should be treated.”79 By 1945 GIs had made more than a million home visits, and the armed services publications regularly invited readers to share anecdotes about British hospitality, another way to promote friendly relations. A 1942 item in Stars and Stripes related the story of a GI on a weekend pass, trying to reach the train station in a blackout. He was helped by two sisters, whose home he was invited to return to many times after that night: “It is only typical of the warm welcome and the unlimited extent many British people go to every day in order to make us feel ‘at home,’” the editorial stated. “Surely we can be proud to be united in the present struggle with a people at heart so courteous and kind.” In another issue of Stars and Stripes, an American corporal wrote, “I have been stranded in out-ofthe-way places late at night and been made a welcome guest by the first strangers I met on the street. Their home to me is an open door, and nowhere in Britain have I felt as a stranger on foreign soil.”80 No doubt at least some of the soldiers were introduced to their brides-tobe through the hospitality program. Women figure in many soldiers’ accounts of their visits, and Mead wrote in her 1944 article for Brits that some GIs might refuse an invitation if there was not a man or woman their own age in attendance. Yet with most like-aged British men off fighting, GIs happily and easily made themselves comfortable in the company of women. Articles and even religious sermons advised Britons to keep in mind that “everything is twice as much fun to these American boys if there’s a girl in it,” according to Susan Briggs. For civilian women, even married 79. Waller and Vaughan-Rees, Women in Wartime, 116 (quote), 118; “Our London Man Makes a Report,” Yank, 26 August 1942, 9. 80. Reynolds, Rich Relations, 197; Stars and Stripes articles “British Kindness,” 5 December 1942, 2, and Cpl. W. L. Blaylock, “A Yank’s Impressions of England,” 8 February 1943, 7.


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women, who were also adjusting to the absence of British men, fraternization with the Americans was a way to exercise their “single” status.81 Certainly, not all Britons were captivated by the Americans. Although diplomat Harold Nicolson eventually warmed to the GIs, he found them apathetic and unintelligent as he conducted them on a tour of the Palace of Westminster in 1943. “In they slouched, chewing gum, conscious of their inferiority in training, equipment, breeding, culture, experience, and history, determined in no circumstances to be either interested or impressed,” he wrote in his diary. In comparison to a group of Canadian soldiers being shown around simultaneously, Nicolson noted that “through the corridors [the Americans] slouched apathetically, expecting to be shown a large wet animal such as they had seen so often at the Aquarium in San Francisco.”82 Further, publicity given to some “slick characters” who had indulged in criminal behavior did not endear the GIs to Britons. In May 1944 the Provost Marshal’s Office in England reported eighteen hundred criminal convictions against GIs in Britain, ranging from petty larceny to murder. Some Brits were openly hostile toward women who dated the Americans, and more so when the GI was black, although British prejudice did not come close to rivaling U.S. racism. “A woman went out with a GI at her own peril,” wrote Goodman. “Any woman who walked out with a GI was likely to be subjected to condemnation, and great antipathy was directed at service wives who went out with them.” In a 1944 letter to his sister, who was engaged to a GI, Arthur Harris wrote, “I still cannot bring myself to approve of marriage to an Ameriwog, you always were too fond of foreigners. America is a strange country, and you might fit and you might not. I would say to think it over very, very, very carefully before you make a decision.”83

81. Mead, American Troops, 9–10; Susan Briggs, The Home Front: War Years in Britain, 1939–1945, 132; Wicks, Welcome Home, 45 (the author wrote that, after a year of their husbands’ absence, “most British women adjusted to their new, single status”). 82. Nicolson, The War Years, 275. On the other hand, after giving a lecture to American soldiers in July 1944, Nicolson said he “found them intelligent and appreciative” and noted that the American troop presence and “Eisenhower’s personal tact and charm” had cheered the British public. Ibid., 393. 83. “Malefactors Abroad,” Time, 1 May 1944, 66; Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 134–35; Arthur Harris to Pamela Harris, 13 July 1944, 96/35/1, IWM.


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In a few instances, parents were known to initiate contact between their daughters and the GIs. For example, two soldiers met a couple at a Royal Air Force base function, who invited them to dance with their daughter. The two GIs were asked to come to the family’s home for dinner the following night. “The parents questioned us rather closely about our lives,” one of the soldiers recalled. “They also informed us about their daughter’s good points and seemed quite crestfallen to find that both Lt. D. and I were married.” But most Anglo-American romances blossomed without parental help; in fact, many British families were distressed when innocent fraternization turned into something more. Marriage to a GI meant that parents might never again see their daughters once they sailed to America. Transatlantic phone calls were costly and travel even more prohibitive. One bride wrote that her parents were “visibly shaken” to learn she was going to marry an American. Another bride described her parents’ reaction when she announced she wanted to marry a GI. “Naturally, they weren’t very happy about the news,” she wrote. And in a 1946 journal entry, a bride wrote that she telephoned her family just before boarding her ship to the United States: “I talked to Mum. Olive was upset and so were the others. I was touched to hear that they were so sorry to see me go.”84 Opinion about the Americans and their presence in Britain would remain divided throughout the war and afterward. Yet by equating hospitality with patriotism, the American and British governments ensured that at least some Anglo-American relationships would develop. The absence of most British men, a dominant mass-mediated discourse that glorified marriage and motherhood, and a glamorized vision of America and the GIs ensured that some of those relationships would flourish.

84. Frank Casserly, “England 1943,” in Hale and Turner, The Yanks Are Coming, 6; Paroutaud, “Is Your Marriage Really Necessary?” 86/5/1, Doris Amsbaugh, 87/35/1, and Marie E. Boissy, 86/88/1, all in IWM.


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3 Can She Be Trusted? The War Bride in Armed Services Publications

D

“The average English girl has the uncomplaining, pioneering spirit of our grandmothers . . . the American girl is only interested in a new fur coat or expensive jewelry, obtained too often by constant nagging.” “We who have married abroad are treated not unlike moral lepers.”

B

y 1947 some seventy thousand women had left England, where they were needed for postwar reconstruction and repopulation, and had sailed to America to be reunited with their husbands and fiancés. This mass migration, or “purge” as one author called it, of British war brides to the United States during and after World War II was a newsworthy event for the mass media on both continents. British mass media helped alert brides to the departure of ships, and American reporters were often on hand to greet the brides when they arrived in New York harbors.1 The news media do more than simply chronicle events. The way they report and frame events calls attention to certain facets of a story while

1. Vera A. Cracknell Long, From Britain, with Love: World War II Pilgrim Brides Sail to America (New Market, Va.: Denecroft, 1988), 39. The epigraphs to this chapter are from Stars and Stripes articles “English Girls,” 10 October 1945, 2 (the author, a navy sailor, wrote that British women made the most desirable wives), and “B-Bag,” 3 July 1945, 2 (a letter signed by eleven American GIs). 67


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minimizing or neglecting others. “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient . . . in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described,” wrote Robert Entman. Frames are repetitive themes in the presentation of news and reflect the norms and values of a society or era, according to Gaye Tuchman et al. For example, Ingrid Bauer has noted how the mental structures and unconscious fears of Austrian postwar society were manifested in that country’s mass media coverage of war brides as whores and traitors. Mass media circulated and arbitrated public discourse, and women who fraternized with American soldiers became symbols of Austria’s military defeat and of its returning veterans’ despair and humiliation.2 News frames in coverage of the British war brides by U.S. and British mass media for the years 1942 through 1946 can fall into distinct categories: armed services publications, daily newspapers, and women’s magazines. Coverage of the war brides and issues related to marriage, sexuality, and the U.S. troop presence in Britain changed over time to reflect the evolving attitudes and needs of politicians, military officials, and the public. In U.S. armed services publications, for example, British women were first framed as predators who exploited American servicemen for their money and citizenship. In the extreme, predatory British women were carriers of disease who threatened to infect and weaken the Allied fighting forces. When efforts to curtail fraternization between soldiers and civilians failed, were evaded, or were otherwise proved ineffectual, however, military publications reframed the women as housewives-in-training, military brides preparing for a life of decent domesticity in the United States. The function of World War II–era armed services publications for the British and American forces was to communicate official policies related to servicemen and servicewomen, to convey news from the home front, to provide entertainment, and to be a sounding board for soldiers’ concerns and complaints. Stars and Stripes, the daily armed forces newspaper, was the main source of military news for soldiers stationed abroad during the war. The purpose of Yank, a weekly magazine published by and 2. Entman, “Framing,” 52; Tuchman et al., Hearth and Home, 7–9; Ingrid Bauer, “‘The GI Bride’: On the (De)Construction of an Austrian Post-War Stereotype,” 225.


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for the U.S. armed forces, was “to report as accurately as humanly possible in the soldiers’ words, the soldiers’ war,” with minimum interference from military brass.3 Two publications by the British Army Newspaper Unit, Union Jack and Crusader, served a similar function for British forces. These publications provide insight into the military’s position on foreign marriages but also reveal soldiers’ more general attitudes toward women, sex, and marriage while they were stationed abroad, as they wrote letters to the editor, for example. As official publications, armed services publications were used to maintain morale among service members, and their content is obviously influenced by that goal. Overall, British publications had less to say about war brides than the Americans—whom they described as cohorts, not competitors, in the war effort. Among the content in Union Jack and Crusader from 1942 to 1946, there was nothing to suggest that Britain’s fighting men should be worried about GIs taking their place on the home front. Indeed, as these were official army publications and concerned with soldiers’ morale, coverage was more intent on building relationships between the Allies. Another difference between British and American armed services publications was that Stars and Stripes and Yank both showed a significant change over time, as they framed British women first as predators intent on trapping GIs into marriage, and then later as suitable wives and mothers. Coverage of the war brides in the two British publications was minimal and remained static in comparison to the American counterpart. As the Americans began to arrive in the British Isles in 1942, the failure of the U.S. War Department to clarify an official position on wartime marriages is apparent in the armed services publications. Even as the New York Times reported that Canadian military authorities sought to ban marriages between their soldiers and British civilians, to “prevent the men from falling into the clutches of gold diggers,” American armed services publications, for a brief period of time, actually celebrated them. Less than six months after the GIs entered England, Stars and Stripes announced that, for the first time in this war, a U.S. Army officer had married in England. The June 13, 1942, item noted that the officer’s wife was a British actress living 3. H. Harrison Jenkins, “The Diction of Yank: Colloquial Speech of the American Soldier of World War II as Found in Yank Magazine.”


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in London. Responding to a reader seeking clarification of military policy, the editors of Yank magazine assured soldiers in the issue on June 17, 1942, that they did not require permission to marry. “You can marry whom you like, but try to do it during off-duty hours,” the editors advised; then they added a bit of encouragement: “By the way, how are the girls in Iceland?”4 Yet, only ten days later, policy abruptly changed. Stars and Stripes reported on its front page that a change in military policy effected a marriage ban for U.S. troops overseas. Ironically, the same issue included a photograph of an American sailor with his new wife, a London civilian— leaving readers to wonder just how firm this new military policy could be. By August 1942, Stars and Stripes addressed the matter again and reported a modified policy. Now, soldiers would be required to obtain their commanding officers’ permission to wed and then endure a minimum three months’ waiting period before marrying. Thus, in the earliest coverage of the American armed services in Britain, civilian women in that country were first framed as suitable brides, but only until the military policy against foreign marriages was clarified.5 British women were more commonly framed in American armed services publications in 1942 and 1943 as sexually available. Articles rated the attractiveness and friendliness of local women and made them the subject of risqué jokes.6 “Yankee Mad” British women offered easy companionship to eager GIs at Red Cross–sponsored activities and club openings, but their motives were suspect. Articles suggested they were attracted to what a soldier’s rank and pay might provide for them.7 Months later, this “predator” frame blamed British women for the outbreak of venereal disease, in spite of a report from the surgeon general that suggested U.S. troops were the carriers. A February 1943 Stars and

4. Tania Long, “Soldier Weddings Give Allies Worry,” New York Times, 13 June 1942, 12; “Is First Officer to Marry Here,” Stars and Stripes, 13 June 1942, 3; “What’s Your Problem,” Yank, 17 June 1942, 17. 5. Stars and Stripes articles “Marriage Ban on U.S. Troops,” 27 June 1942, 1, “U.S. Sailor Weds,” 27 June 1942, 8, “Change Order on Marrying,” 15 August 1942, 1. 6. For example, Yank articles “For Yanks Not at Oxford,” 15 July 1942, 5, “Army Jokes,” 30 December 1942, 22, “Between the Lines,” 24 June 1942, 7; Stars and Stripes articles “Discuss Irish Girls on BBC,” 20 June 1942, 4, “English Gals Mob Yankees,” 18 July 1942, 4, “Sergeant Gets Date with Pip in the Worst Way,” 29 August 1942, 5. 7. Stars and Stripes articles “Yankee Mad,” 15 August 1942, 2, “Hillbilly Hi-de-ho Comes to Britain,” 4 February 1943, 2; Yank articles “Skirt Patrol,” 3 February 1943, 8, “Night Problem,” 10 February 1943, 1, “Between the Lines,” 10 February 1943, 14.


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Stripes article attributed the spread of venereal disease to “teen-old girls who are attracted by the novelty of having Americans over here. That, and the professional prostitutes.” Likewise, Yank warned GIs on leave in London against associating with “frowzy dames” and “females of questionable character.” Even a Sad Sack cartoon in Yank showed the title character, an army private, donning a rubber glove before shaking hands with a busty brunette. The character had just come from watching an army film on venereal disease.8 Both British and U.S. servicemen were required to view graphic films on the symptoms of venereal disease in 1942, yet the armies also provided prophylaxis stations for treatment, suggesting how much faith they held in the abstinence campaign. “The war with its lowering of morals was a big worry to both the British authorities and our own,” wrote Bob Sheehan, a second lieutenant stationed in the English town of Shepton Mallet. “We lectured the men on the dangers of promiscuity, but it was not much use.”9 Framing British women as predators in American armed forces publications was evidence of a military concern for maintaining the health, morale, and strength of its fighting forces. It also demonstrates an unwillingness to admit responsibility for the disease rate. According to one estimate, sixty thousand of the first million U.S. Army recruits were infected with venereal disease, and it was the swell of American troops in Britain that raised the disease rate among armed forces and British civilians alike to “almost epidemic proportions.”10 But American armed services publications framed women, not men, as the ones who were infectious. Altogether missing in this mass-mediated frame was any suggestion that women might have viewed the GIs’ affluence as one way to cope with critical shortages, as explained in some of their letters and memoirs.11 By the time the Americans arrived, Britain had been devastated by 8. Roosevelt to McNutt, 18 November 1941, in Personal Letters, 2:1243; “British, U.S. Authorities Confer on Venereal Disease,” Stars and Stripes, 27 February 1943, 4; Yank articles Charles F. Kiley, “How to Stay Out of Trouble,” 2 April 1943, 3, “The Sad Sack,” 19 March 1943, 19. 9. Costello, Virtue under Fire, 88; also Richard Polenberg, War and Society, 152; Bob Sheehan, “The D-Day Buildup and After,” in Hale and Turner, The Yanks Are Coming, 157. 10. Costello, Virtue under Fire, 84–85. 11. See, for example, Doris Norley Amsbaugh, 87/35/1, IWM. The author, a British war bride, wrote that the American GI she eventually married brought her family rationed canned food from his camp.


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the German bombing blitz, which had killed some forty thousand civilians and left thousands of buildings uninhabitable. British war costs in the first five months of the 1942 financial year totaled more than 2 billion pounds sterling, already up more than 300 million pounds from the previous year and with no signs of ebbing. They may have been heartened by the British Army’s November 1942 military victory in Egypt, but civilians continued to struggle with austere living conditions. A weekly supply of milk for an entire family was rationed to two and a half pints in October 1942, for example.12 “I won’t tell you the horrors of war the English have suffered,” an American soldier wrote in a letter to his family that was also published in the London Telegraph. “You’ve read them, and the worst you have read can be no exaggeration.”13 The GIs made more than British soldiers and seemed all too eager to spend their pay, but rather than suggest that material shortages and GI affluence might be a reason for soldier-civilian romances, the American armed services publications persisted in framing British women who fraternized with the GIs as sexually voracious predators. In fact, there was little coverage in military publications to suggest that American soldiers might be the aggressors in Anglo-American liaisons, although neither did those publications deny that sex was a preoccupation for many soldiers. For example, a joke circulated by Yank in 1942 went like this: Sweet Young Thing (leaning out the window): Hey soldier, have you got the time? Eager Private: Sure lady, where’ll I park the jeep?

A reader-contributed poem in a 1943 issue of Yank identified various sorts of predatory males but explained that if a woman enjoyed a soldier’s attention then she was the real “wolf.” Stars and Stripes characterized British women the same way. Asked whether GIs noticed any difference between the kisses of American women and British women, 12. Constantine FitzGibbon, London’s Burning, 154; Keegan, Second World War, 88–102; “British War Cost Rises,” New York Times, 2 September 1942, 5; Nigel Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield: Monty’s War Years, 1942–1944, 122–40; “Barley and Oat Flour in Loaf, Milk Allowance Reduced,” London Telegraph, 21 October 1942, 3. 13. “England Isn’t Bad,” London Telegraph, 2 December 1942, 4.


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one soldier in London responded: “Over here, they all want to get married, so they kiss like a bunch of female wolves, hot and passionate.”14 In December 1943 coverage in armed services publications offered another comparison between British and American women. In an article that addressed soldiers’ concerns about unfaithful women, Stars and Stripes assured them that chaste American women waited for their return. “There is no doubt as to the loyalty of the vast majority of this group, and they are impatient to see GI Joe back home,” the reporter wrote. At the same time this article and others condoned soldiers’ promiscuity. One reader cheerfully suggested that other GIs adopt his remedy for sexual deprivation, which was to select a “War Girl” where they were stationed and maintain a “Peace Girl” back home. “My girl in the Bronx thinks it’s a fine idea, as she is a very self-sacrificing sort,” he wrote to Yank. “I recommend this treatment to any other soldiers faced with the same problem.”15 Armed services publications normalized men’s promiscuity while suggesting that foreign women were temporary companions, suited to help the men escape the drudgery of war but not for serious relationships. American women were expected to be understanding and faithful as they waited for the GIs to return home. During this same period, British armed services publications devoted little coverage to the war brides but, when they did, found them suitable companions for GIs. In fact, in December 1943, Union Jack offered to reunite a hospitalized American sergeant who had lost touch with his fiancée, a woman serving in Britain’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). “Sandra, here is Harold Osborn calling you and if you write to us your letter will be forwarded to him, and his present address sent to you,” the paper offered. While editorial content seldom condoned AngloAmerican marriages, there was none that overtly condemned them, either. British military authorities may have found it prudent to ignore the subject for the sake of its troops’ spirits and to maintain muchneeded U.S. support. As Bernard Montgomery, commander of the British 14. Yank articles “Army Jokes,” 30 December 1942, 22, and Edwin L. Brooks, “A G.I. Wolf,” 12 March 1943, 22; “Vox Pop-Off,” Stars and Stripes, 20 November 1944, 5. 15. Ned Nordness, “Gals Back Home Insist They’re Loyal to GI Heartthrobs Abroad,” Stars and Stripes, 17 December 1943, 2; “Mail Call,” Yank, 26 August 1942, 14.


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troops, wrote in a letter to one of his field marshals: “The morale factor is very important.”16 The two British armed services publications examined here, Crusader and Union Jack, acknowledged the presence of U.S. troops in Britain in 1943 but stressed cooperation rather than competition, perhaps as a way to deflect Axis propaganda that depicted American soldiers engaged in sexual relations with British women. In the face of such potent messages, meant to “divide Allied fighting men over the ownership of women,” it would have been vital for these official publications to reassure British soldiers that the home front was secure in their absence.17 By 1943 some British soldiers had been separated from their families for six years already. Montgomery recognized familial strife as a serious threat to soldiers’ morale: “You must get these men home, cost what it may,” he wrote in a March 1943 letter to his field marshal. In 1944 members of Parliament appealed for home leave, suggesting it would help preserve marriages: “When a soldier goes abroad, five years seems an infinity, and sometimes produces a sense of irresponsibility,” said one MP. “The result is seen in two ways, cases of unfaithfulness at home and of men going astray.” The suggestion that women might be unfaithful if left alone for too long appeared in the daily paper, not the armed services publications.18 British military publications emphasized that the GIs had come to fight, not steal British women, as in stories that showed how U.S. and British forces were helping one another.19 Other items showed how they were more alike than different, as in an article that showed how an American soldier had embraced the British custom of drinking tea. Further, the British armed services publications assured their readers that plenty of women waited at home for them. For example, a November 1943 Union Jack photograph of bathing beauties was accompanied by the caption, “If you feel a little ‘browned-off’ or even ‘cheesed-off,’ just take another look at 16. “Harold Osborn Calling Sandra Burley,” Union Jack, 6 December 1943, 3; Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 146. 17. See, for example, “U.S. Army Manoeuvres in England,” Union Jack, 17 November 1943, 1; “On the Yanks,” Crusader, 1 February 1943, 4; Gubar, “‘This Is My Rifle,’ ” 238–39. 18. Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 178; “Home Leave,” Manchester Guardian, 5 July 1944, 8. 19. See, for example, Bernard Brett, “Now We’re Talking,” Union Jack, 6 December 1943, 3; “On the Yanks,” Crusader, 1 February 1943, 4.


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these girls and think the same attraction awaits you back home.” An item in Crusader in April 1943 disputed rumors that England in wartime had become a gloomy place, “full of grim-faced men and trousered women.” The writer assured readers that women were mostly unchanged, neither masculinized by trousers nor shabby.20 This pattern of coverage continued in British armed services publications in 1944. Women, although engaged in war work, were still feminine and grounded in the domestic sphere. A serviceman noted upon his return from overseas in February 1944: “I was prepared to see [women] looking a little more drab, a little more austere. . . . In a phrase, your wife or your girlfriend is as smartly made up and just as good to look at as she was in 1939.” In describing the conditions at home, this Union Jack article does not mention the presence of Americans. Another 1944 issue of Union Jack asked, “How Should a Soldier’s Wife Behave?” and concluded, “Men in the services implicitly trust the wives they’ve left behind.”21 British soldiers surveyed for the article approved of their wives being accompanied to dances or other social events by men but were less keen on the idea of platonic friendships. Here again, there is no specific mention of the American troop presence, so it is unclear exactly who they thought were escorting the wives. Finally, an item in August 1944 reported that ATS women had requested training in “practical romance” in order to become “model wives.”22 Thus, there is no mention of war brides in Union Jack in 1944, but instead the content reassured readers that domesticated British women eagerly awaited the men’s return—and that the Americans were their friends, not their rivals.23 20. “Royal American Engineers,” Crusader, 1 February 1943, 4; Union Jack, 20 November 1943, 3; Alan Moorhead, “What’s Happened in the Land We Left,” Crusader, 26 April 1943, 1. 21. Union Jack articles Cyril James, “The Girls Are Still Well-Dressed,” 14 February 1944, 4, “How Should a Soldier’s Wife Behave?” 2 March 1944, 2. 22. “ATS Girls Asked to Be Trained as Model Wives,” Union Jack, 23 August 1944, 3. See also “Britain at War,” Union Jack, 7 April 1944, in which ATS girls engaged in the fabrication of table chests, knife boxes, towel rails, and bread boards considered it good training for marriage. “These girls . . . believe that you can’t get too early a start in making a home,” the reporter wrote. 23. Peter Wilson, “Portrait of a GI,” Union Jack, 31 July 1944, 2. See also Union Jack articles “U.S. Gets ‘Thanks, Buddy,’” 14 February 1944, 2, Lord Halifax, “The Future of Britain and America,” 28 March 1944, 2, and “Halifax Praises U.S. Troops in Britain,” 15 August 1944, 4.


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Certainly, a compelling reason for the British armed services publications to cover the Americans positively was the cooperative effort needed for the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the major AngloAmerican operation of the war. In a letter to Roosevelt, Churchill referred to the effort as “an achievement of the highest order.”24 General Eisenhower was named supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force to the disappointment of Britain’s Montgomery, who was eventually given operational authority. Each man doubted the other man’s ability to handle such a large-scale assault. Eisenhower thought Montgomery’s reputation as a field general overrated, and Montgomery worried that Eisenhower would make a “catastrophe” of Operation Overlord, the code name for the Normandy invasion. Montgomery wrote in a diary entry on November 23, 1943, “The Americans do not know how to fight the Germans. . . . they do not understand the great principles of surprise and concentration” despite their World War I experience.25 Yet, such a massive operation would never have been possible without the collaboration of both British and American forces. For their official publications to suggest or exacerbate any rivalries between the troops would have been imprudent. Churchill was sensitive to this, and he sought to reassure Roosevelt in a letter dated January 7, 1945: “His Majesty’s government have complete confidence in General Eisenhower and feel acutely any attacks made on him.”26 It is interesting that, while the British publications for the years 1942–1944 had very few articles related to wartime marriage or war brides, coverage of war brides in U.S. armed services publications increased over time. In 1944 the coverage not only declined sharply in frequency

24. Winston Churchill to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 12 June 1944 (C-702), in Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, part 3, The Alliance Declining, ed. Warren F. Kimball (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 183. D-Day was history’s largest amphibious invasion, which ended German domination of Western Europe and restored Anglo-American power and influence to the continent. 25. Hamilton, Master of the Battlefield, 458. Hamilton wrote that both American and British chiefs of staff had been promised leadership of the Normandy invasion, which was given to an American “for reasons of international politics.” Ibid., 458, 466, 470 (diary entry). 26. Kimball, Churchill and Roosevelt, 497–98. Churchill wrote to Roosevelt on January 7, 1945 (C-877) after Montgomery had publicly criticized Eisenhower as a poor tactician. Montgomery was then attacked in the U.S. press, and the British press in turn castigated the American generals.


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but also shifted frames, as the first “bride ships” set sail for the United States. With so many American troops awaiting deployment, the public was understandably outraged at the idea that British war brides might ship to the United States ahead of them, especially since the women had earlier been painted as opportunists. Thus, stories during this period began to clarify the brides’ status as military wives, perhaps in order to justify their preferential treatment. Stars and Stripes reported in May that a seriously wounded GI and his wife, a British Red Cross nurse, were being rushed to the United States. The article noted that, because theirs was a “special” case, military and civil regulations had been waived. “The trip did not cost them a cent,” the reporter concluded.27 During this period, another shift in news frames was from predator to “pioneer,” when referring to British women. For example, a May 1944 editorial in Stars and Stripes described the war brides as “young, pretty, full of life, and [with] a longing for adventure. They have got to have that spirit of adventure or they would not agree to leave their homeland and go to a strange place to build a new home of their own.”28 It was a frame that raised the war brides’ profile, as it evoked the romantic image of courageous women who loved their husbands enough to risk leaving a familiar setting to chance a better life in an unknown land. By adopting the pioneer frame, the media portrayed the brides less as opportunists. Nor would they be affiliated with European refugees, an immigrant group whose admission to the United States was contested throughout the postwar era.29 Certainly, the military needed to address the needs of soldiers trying to get their foreign wives and children to the United States, as well as those

27. “Blind Vet, Bride Fly Home as Officials Slash Red Tape,” Stars and Stripes, 2 May 1944, 1. See also “Navy Men Return to U.S. with Wives,” Stars and Stripes, 11 September 1944, 4. 28. “Soldiers’ Brides,” Stars and Stripes, 26 May 1944, 2. Sgt. Frank Bode, “The Life of a Yank in Newfoundland,” Yank, 11 February 1944, 8, described the home life of an army sergeant who had married a “Newfie” and pictured the couple with their young daughter. See also Yank articles “What’s Your Problem,” 21 April 1944, 16, “News from Home,” 19 May 1944, 19, “Odds and Ends Dept.,” 16 June 1944, 15, “News from Home,” 29 September 1944, 18. 29. See, for example, Rita J. Simon and Susan H. Alexander, The Ambivalent Welcome: Print Media, Public Opinion, and Immigration, 33–34; Donna R. Gabaccia, Immigration and American Diversity: A Social and Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 202–3.


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who wanted to go home to join their American families. Soldiers’ appeals to the highest levels of leadership grew more insistent with time. An April 1946 letter to Harry Truman “begs the President to take an interest” in transporting a British bride and her ill child to the States. The soldier wrote that he was twice wounded and that the worry over his family “is making him sick and disgusted.” Another correspondent wrote to the War Department on behalf of his nephew, “a patriotic citizen” who served his country “in its time of need.” As such, he surely was owed transport of his British wife to the United States. The writer took exception to the earlier passage of brides of questionable character, while his nephew’s wife was made to wait: “There are women with children being returned to this country who have broken up American homes and the American soldiers divorce their wives here and make arrangements for the illegitimate offspring to be brought into this country,” he complained.30 Military authorities now had to justify the significant cost and effort needed to transport the brides, which had already generated anger among the American public who still thought of the women as predators. Time magazine’s report on March 13, 1944, that a British woman had given birth to quadruplets was sensational news, but the details incensed readers. The father of the quads was an American GI who already had a wife in the United States. “If this is the moral code under which we will operate in the world to come, I, for one have no desire to live in that world. Aren’t there any sane, decent persons left on the earth?” asked a seventeen-year-old reader. Another reader was outraged by the army’s offer to support the children, which she considered a misappropriation of her tax dollars: “The $70 the U.S. Army proposes to donate monthly to this barmaid is MY [sic] money, and it was never intended to endow moral misalliances. I protest this procedure, together with the flaunting of the whole unsavory affair in the face of American womanhood,” she wrote. The Stars and Stripes would later report the father’s return to the United States, where his wife refused to either see him or divorce him.31 30. Bernard L. Harley to President Harry S. Truman, 8 April 1946, OF190-Z (1 of 2), HSTL; John J. Griffin to Edward F. Witsell, Major General, War Department, 10 December 1946, OF190-Z (2 of 2), HSTL. 31. “Quads and the Man,” Time, 13 March 1944, 24; “What’s Up?” Time, 3 April 1944, 11–12 (both letters); “Anglo-American Quads’ Dad Home: Wife Shuns Meeting,” Stars and Stripes, 3 July 1945, 1.


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Reframing the brides as home-builders rather than home-wreckers, as the earlier predator frame had done, was one way to generate support for the army’s financing of their passage to the United States. Moreover, it could also be seen as an effort by military authorities to legitimize marriages that had initially been considered suspect. Coverage during this period described family reunions after prolonged separations, and how the brides as housewives-in-training were eagerly preparing for their new lives. A Stars and Stripes reporter covering a fashion show for the brides wrote, “With wonder in their eyes, many of them expressed privately the belief that America was going to be a wonderful place.”32 Coverage of the war brides in American armed services publications increased considerably in 1945, as did the number of brides seeking entry to the United States. Articles and letters emphasized the difficulties and logistics for bringing foreign-born wives and children into the country.33 But the military was newly “committed to bringing foreign brides and children of servicemen to this country,” Stars and Stripes assured its impatient readers.34 The waiting wives were far from idle. Rather, they took advantage of many opportunities to prepare for life in America. For example, Stars and Stripes reported that American Red Cross classes at the Rainbow Club were intended to orient French and British brides to U.S. customs. “They even brought the kids along,” the reporter added, suggesting another way the women were home-builders and not predators. A November 1945 article in Yank pictured the brides as mothers or expectant mothers and described the homemakers’ training they received while they awaited passage to the United States. This article ended with an emphasis on the pioneer frame, quoting from a magazine’s guide to the United States that directly addressed the brides and compared them to pilgrims: “You will be welcome in America for you, 32. Claire Kerlee, “British Wives, Fiancees Cotton to Un-Hollywoodlike Cottons,” Stars and Stripes, 11 December 1944, 5. 33. Stars and Stripes articles “Fifty Thousand Brides Wait for Ships,” 10 September 1945, 2, Arthur W. White, “Commercial Shipping Out for GI Wives,” 10 October 1945, 4, also “HQ Give Wife Free Trip Data,” 17 April 1945, 4, and “GI Wives to Go ‘Home’ at Last,” 18 June 1945, 1. See also Yank articles “What’s Your Problem?” 15 June 1945, 14, “What’s Your Problem?” 10 August 1945, 14, “Strictly GI,” 21 September 1945, 19. 34. “Transport for Foreign Brides Gives Uncle Sam a Headache,” Stars and Stripes, 28 August 1945, 4 (quote); Allan Morrison, “Kid Glove Diplomacy,” Stars and Stripes, 6 October 1945, iv. The latter article appeared in a special Stars and Stripes Magazine.


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too, have taken your chance and embarked on a great adventure. Americans admire courage.”35 Comparisons between British and American women also appeared in coverage frames in 1945, as policymakers deliberated plans for bringing more foreign wives and fiancées to the United States. “Many a faithful lass on the home front immediately imagined horrible things to come—the life of a spinster seemed but a stone’s throw,” wrote a Stars and Stripes reporter of Washington’s plans. “But when it comes to going home and marrying . . . Joe will forget his whispered promises to the foreign femmes and make tracks for the girl back home.” Such reassurances attempted to calm the “flurry of feminine ire,” but only temporarily. A week later, Stars and Stripes reported that the postwar population of the United States would include far more women than men. “America’s abundance of beauteous and eligible young women, after melancholy months of watching the arrival in this country of overseas veterans’ British and Australian brides, got another shock,” the paper wrote of a Census Bureau report. The news was repeated in September: “About 3,000,000 American women will have to remain spinsters. Even if every man in the U.S. gets married there will still not be enough to go around.”36 If in fact British women were competing with American women for men, the armed services publications regularly framed them in 1945 as something different from—and preferable to—American women. For example, a July “survey” suggested GIs preferred the kisses of British women over those of Americans. One soldier explained: “They don’t come up for air. They’d rather die than give up. They hang on to each kiss like it was their last. And that’s good!” Another soldier claimed British women appreciated the lovemaking skills of GIs more than the girls back home did: “They seem to go in a big way for this particular variety of lend-lease which doesn’t come from the scope of the Anglo-U.S. financial talks in Washington.” In June Stars and Stripes published two flattering letters from

35. Richard Lewis, “‘Husband Pays,’ GIs’ French Brides Told,” Stars and Stripes, 17 September 1945, 8; Sgt. Jonathan Kilbourn, “Overseas Brides,” Yank, 16 November 1945, 6. 36. Stars and Stripes articles Jack Caldwell, “Weep No More . . . My Lady, the GI Heart Belongs to U.S. Girls,” 16 June 1945, i, “Outlook Dismal for Spinsters,” 22 June 1945, 4, and “Three Million Girls Face Spinsterhood,” 13 September 1945, 1.


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“London gals,” bidding farewell to departing GIs. “You’ve made a hit with our girls,” one woman wrote. “Yes, we’ll miss you sadly . . . I say, there’ll always be an England for you to come back to.” And in October 1945, just before the passage of the War Brides Act, a reader wrote that English girls “are natural, unaffected, industrious and loyal, four important virtues our American girls sadly lack. Our American girls are so spoiled . . . that actually they are hindrances instead of helpmates.”37 Although most coverage of the war brides in American armed services publications in 1945 was flattering, some content suggested a lingering resentment of the brides. Some of the criticism came from American women who still considered the brides predatory. For example, in November, a member of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) wrote Yank that she had no pity for soldiers who complained about the difficulties in bringing their wives and children into the United States. Rather, her sympathy lay with “honest and faithful” American women who had been cast aside in favor of foreign women. “Who is bringing home the brides from every country they have passed through? Who is praised for the birth of children with women other than their wives? Who was the cause of broken marriages in Australia, England, France and every other country the American soldier entered?” she challenged.38 A July item in Stars and Stripes reported that one American wife refused to either see or grant a divorce to her soldier-husband who had fathered quadruplets with a British woman, to considerable media attention. “He’s made his bed, now let him lie in it,” she said.39 Another WAC wrote to Stars and Stripes that she was disgusted by foreign wives agitating for passage to the United States: “I am just one of the thousands of WACs in the ETO who would give our

37. Stars and Stripes articles William E. Taylor, “English Kisses . . . Mild, Bitter, and Stout,” 25 July 1945, 4, “Nurse’s Wolf Plain Brings GI Howl,” 28 September 1945, 4, “From a Couple of London Gals: Benedictions for Departing Yanks,” 25 June 1945, 4, “English Girls,” 10 October 1945, 2. 38. “Abused?” Yank, 30 November 1945, 19. After a congressman voiced opposition to the transport of foreign brides, Stars and Stripes received two letters to the editor, in complaint: “B-Bag: Blow It Out Here,” 27 June 1945, 2, and “B-Bag,” 3 July 1945, 2. The latter was signed by eleven soldiers, who referred to the congressman as a “crank.” They wrote, “We who have married abroad are treated not unlike moral lepers.” 39. “Anglo-American Quads’ Dad Home: Wife Shuns Meeting,” Stars and Stripes, 3 July 1945, 1. The story of the quadruplets’ birth had been reported earlier in Time magazine. See “Quads and the Man,” Time, 13 March 1944, 24.


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right arms to go back and be with our husbands. But we are not stupid enough to blame the Army.” A similar debate had already taken place among readers of Time magazine. After Private First Class John Stevens advised readers to “send to England for a wife” and praised their “helpful and cooperative natures,” a female reader responded: “I think I speak for thousands of American girls when I say that the English women are welcome to Private Stevens. We’ll put our energy into trying to help those boys over there who feel that our country and the American girls are worth fighting for and coming home to.”40 Criticism over foreign marriages occasionally originated with men but then had more to do with priority in transportation than the merits of foreign brides. An October letter to Stars and Stripes signed by sixteen soldiers ridiculed the British war brides who organized a baby show as a form of protest over their delay in gaining entry to the United States. “My heart just bleeds for them,” the chief author noted sarcastically. “The American girls are waiting for their soldiers to return, so before we send any British brides or babies to America, let’s make sure that all the American soldiers who left their homes to fight for their country are sent home.” Another soldier agreed that shipping foreign dependents to the United States was indeed a government obligation but told Stars and Stripes: “There is a greater duty.” He wrote, “It’s one thing to take care of Harry’s new love, but it’s a greater thing not to forget all of the Toms and Dicks in the Army who have earned the right to come home first.”41 Thus, even after the armed services publications began to frame the brides in a less threatening way, as pioneers and housewives-in-training, readers’ letters and other items in the military media harked back to the earlier criticism of British women as predatory. In response to a sailor’s suggestion that English women made more desirable brides, several Hollywood stars reminded him of their reputation as gold-diggers. “Have a good time boys, but put a zipper on your pockets,” said actress Yvonne de Carlo in the October 15, 1945, issue of Stars and Stripes. A July article reported 40. “A Nurse Speaketh,” Stars and Stripes, 5 July 1945, 2; Time articles “Get an English Girl,” 22 May 1944, 4, and “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” 12 June 1944, 2. 41. Stars and Stripes articles “An Answer,” 10 October 1945, 2, and “Says GI Comes First,” 11 October 1945, 2.


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that the army was sending “100 good girls” to perform for soldiers throughout Europe. “Special Services feels that these girls, who will be working day after day with GIs, should be the ‘best influence possible with stamina and moral character,’” the paper reported. In fact, after V-E Day in 1943, military officials issued a survey to determine soldiers’ sexual habits and were surprised to learn that eight out of ten GIs had regular sexual intercourse with foreign women while stationed abroad. These “good girls,” who were allegedly neither easy nor diseased, were intended as an alternative to the foreign women with whom the GIs had been socializing.42 This backlash against foreign brides may have been related to the anticipated “man shortage” but also to the deployment of Allied troops to Germany. Beginning in late 1944, the military attempted to enforce an antifraternization policy in Germany and Japan, but with little success.43 “In the absence of their own womenfolk, it is impossible to stop the troops talking to German girls,” Stars and Stripes reported in June 1945. Military authorities admitted they were powerless against “boy-meets-girl human nature” and established medical clinics to treat venereal disease among the troops, just as they had done earlier in England. “Some soldiers will by law of averages engage in promiscuous relations with women,” an army spokesman told Stars and Stripes. German women were blamed for the high rate of venereal disease and illegitimate births, just as British women had been blamed earlier. It seems these German women, like British women, were sexually available to Occupation soldiers. Yank noted, not unfavorably, that “German girls wore thin, tight dresses and they had a pleasant technique of walking down the streets so the sun would hit them just right. . . . German girls didn’t wear petticoats.”44 42. Stars and Stripes articles “Stars Fire Broadside at Gob Who Prefers English Girls,” 13 October 1945, 2, Richard Wilbur, “One Hundred Good Girls Bound for ETO,” 5 July 1945, 2, also “‘Unspoiled Girls’ Hit Paris to Entertain the Boys,” 3 September 1945, 5; “Army Life Overseas,” U.S. Army Sex Survey-W, in Costello, Virtue under Fire, 97. The survey remained classified for forty years. 43. Stars and Stripes articles “WACs to Be Sent to Reich to Keep GI Minds GI,” 6 December 1944, 1, “U.S. Guide to Japan Bars Fraternizing,” 11 August 1945, 3. 44. Stars and Stripes articles “‘A Bit of Frat’ Is Giving Allied Ban the Works,” 7 June 1945, 3, Arthur W. White, “Would Rush GI Wives into Loveless Germany,” 6 June 1945, 4, Peter Lisagor and Pat Mitchell, “Still a Ban on Fraternizing, but Prophylaxis Is Available,” 7 June 1945, 4, “Fraternization Babies Pose Problem for U.S. in Reich,” 14 September 1945, 2, and “U.S. Gals Sore in Turn at GIs’ Frat-Ban Protest,” 12 June 1945, 4; “Fraternization,” Yank, 31 August 1945, 5.


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There was no mention of the war brides in Britain’s Union Jack in 1945. In 1946, however, this British publication noted that “service weddings are becoming fashionable again” and published wedding and engagement announcements throughout the year.45 For example, a January issue reported that a war hero had married his young typist. Only one other January announcement was related to Anglo-American unions, about the engagement of an American Army major and a prominent London divorcee.46 Crusader, interestingly enough, did not devote any coverage to the war brides in 1945 or 1946. The story was slightly different in the nation’s top newspapers.

45. Union Jack, 23 January 1946, 8. The statement was a caption beneath a wedding photograph; the bride and groom were both service members. 46. Union Jack articles “Admiral Weds His Typist,” 10 January 1946, 1, “Smiles for the Camera,” 16 January 1946, 2, also “They’ve Managed It at Last,” 30 January 1946, 2.

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4 In Newspapers, Waiting Wives and Pioneers

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“They are eager and excited to be going to a new country, especially the country from which such hope, strength and confidence were brought to a tired nation by the American Army in 1942. But they face the adventure with amazing good sense. All the heads under those high hairdo’s are not empty.” “A five-day delay in the arrival at Southampton of the Argentina has caused the departure of the first GI bride ship to be postponed from January 21 until about January 26.”

ewspapers in the United States and Britain operated under a voluntary system of censorship during wartime but were subject also to official controls by the Office of Censorship and the Ministry of Information, respectively, two organizations responsible for releasing and interpreting official news, and for maintaining public morale and confidence in the government. The coverage of the war brides in U.S. and British dailies provides the media reaction to foreign marriages, a wartime phenomenon that could significantly impact home front and battlefront morale.1 Most of the ships used to transport the brides between 1944 and 1946 arrived in New York’s harbor, and most air

N

1. See for example Winfield, FDR and the News Media; McLaine, Ministry of Morale. Epigraphs are taken from Sarah James, “Westward Ho for GI Brides,” New York Times, 15 April 1945, VI:24, and “News in Brief,” Times (London), 15 November 1946, 2. 85

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transports arrived at La Guardia, so for U.S. coverage related to the war brides, this study concentrates on the New York Times, a paper of record. For British coverage, first a similar national paper, the Times (London), was examined, but coverage relating to the war brides proved minimal so the London Telegraph, a low-cost and widely circulated daily, was added to the study. All newspapers were affected by wartime shortages.2 Yet, even with two British papers for comparison, New York Times coverage related to the war brides was approximately ten times greater. The arc of coverage in the two countries’ papers was different, too. The U.S. paper first framed marriages as generally undesirable, reflecting the military position that the demands of service conflicted with the obligations of family life.3 Later, when the U.S. immigration service was faced with tens of thousands of applications for entry to the United States, the marriages were legitimized by the newspapers’ framing of the brides as military wives and welcome additions to postwar American society. On the other hand, the British papers had enthusiastically welcomed the American troops in 1942, following a prolonged government campaign against American isolationism.4 Early coverage encouraged soldier-civilian interaction as a kind of patriotic hospitality, but later coverage at war’s end then went on to frame the brides as an “American problem.” Among the daily newspapers studied, the New York Times provided the earliest, most abundant coverage of war brides. Whereas armed services publications first celebrated Anglo-American marriages, the New York Times initial coverage in 1942 was negative. Wartime marriages were worrisome, and the brides themselves were framed as predators. For example, an item in the June 13, 1942, issue reported that British women were so “attracted by the big money the soldiers are earning” that they initiated proposals of marriage instead of waiting for the men to do so. The reporter wrote that many foreign marriages had soured, and as a result, the 2. See, for example, Editor and Publisher articles “WPB Order Based on ‘41 Tonnage,” 2 January 1943, 7, “NY Times Acts to Conserve Newsprint,” 30 January 1943, 10, “Further Cut in Paper for British Press,” 20 February 1943, 10, and “British Papers’ Newsprint Cut 83 Percent in War,” 14 April 1945, 30. 3. See Branstetter, “Military Constraints,” Military Law Review 102 (Fall 1983): 6. 4. “Great Britain,” Time, 12 January 1942, 40. Marking the new year, the reporter wrote that “above all, it promised what Britons have wanted most—powerful united action against the Axis.” See also Cull, Selling War.

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Canadian military authorities had already banned marriages without official permission. The U.S. government was considering similar restrictions but, as a first gesture, strongly discouraged soldiers from marrying on the “theory that they make better fighting men with no family burdens or responsibilities.”5 One week later, however, the New York Times reported that the War Department was “harassed by complications” resulting from AngloAmerican marriages, which had continued despite official discouragement. The War Department reissued Circular 179, an order requiring soldiers to obtain permission to marry from their commanding officers. Military sources speculated that such approval was not likely to be granted in the midst of war and thus the order really constituted a marriage ban. Military authorities had intended to give servicemen permission to marry only in those cases where pregnancy or illegitimacy might reflect poorly on the armed forces, but this policy was not uniformly applied. Some senior staff officers in the European Theater thought such a policy was “an invitation to immorality.” In fact, the intent of Circular 179 was to prevent marriages between soldiers and prostitutes, but “it became the cornerstone of a widespread policy to discourage GI marriages to British women by almost all means possible,” according to historian David Reynolds.6 In other words, foreign women seeking to marry soldiers were thought to have ulterior motives and in many instances were assumed to be prostitutes. Citizenship was thought to be one ulterior motive for the marriages, and thus, according to the New York Times, British military authorities ordered marriage registrars to discourage women from marrying soldiers by telling them they would not be granted a marriage allowance, special living arrangements, transportation, or U.S. citizenship as a result. As another deterrent, the newspaper reported in December that American soldiers who failed to get official permission to marry were subject to court-martial.7 5. Tania Long, “Soldier Weddings Give Allies Worry,” New York Times, 13 June 1942, 12. 6. “Army Order Curbs Weddings Abroad,” New York Times, 21 June 1942, 19; Reynolds, Rich Relations, 211, 210. In World War I, service members who knowingly married prostitutes could be punished for bringing discredit to the armed forces. See Branstetter, “Military Constraints,” Military Law Review 102 (Fall 1983): 7. 7. New York Times articles “British Warn Girls on Wedding Soldiers,” 16 October 1942, 5, and “Yanks Warned on Vows,” 30 December 1942, 5.

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British newspaper coverage of American GIs and war brides during this period was quite different from the New York Times coverage. In 1942 both the Times (London) and the London Telegraph were favorable in their reporting of the U.S. troops’ arrival in the British Isles. American forces were framed as “eager to fight” and “ready to learn” from the British experience in combat. The Times (London) reported that their presence “is regarded with warm pleasure and interest.”8 In fact, much of the content related to the Yanks’ arrival in Britain was devoted to demystifying the two cultures. A brief item in the Times (London) on September 24, 1942, reported that Anglo-American marriages were a topic of concern among U.S. Army chaplains, and an item in the London Telegraph of October 9, 1942, reported the U.S. Army’s rules on marriage, which required that a soldier have written consent from his senior commanding officer, who would grant permission only after “certain stringent conditions [were] satisfied.” The Times (London) noted the same on October 16.9 Neither item specified what the conditions governing marriage were, but U.S. military authorities had already notified the chaplain corps that any soldier seeking permission to marry abroad was to be counseled against it.10 But overall, the Times (London) and the London Telegraph—much as the British armed services publications—depicted American GIs as having come to fight, not consort with British civilian women. Thus, the daily newspapers answered the concern for maintaining British soldiers’ morale and the military efficiency of Allied forces. However, within a few months of the Americans’ arrival, both British newspapers reported official discussions about the rising rate of venereal 8. “U.S. Army Eager to Fight,” London Telegraph, 24 July 1942, 5. See also London Telegraph articles “Huge U.S. Army in Britain, Ready to Attack or Defend,” 6 August 1942, 5, “Attitude of U.S. Troops Praised,” 3 September 1942, 5, and “London Admires U.S. Discipline,” 3 September 1942, 5. “U.S. Troops Settling down in Ulster,” Times (London), 30 January 1942, 5. 9. See, for example, “U.S. Tells Her Soldiers: ‘The British Are Tough,’” London Telegraph, 13 July 1942, 3; “As Others See Us,” Times (London), 14 July 1942, 5; H. V. Kaltenborn, “Helping Americans to Get Britain’s Point of View,” London Telegraph, 2 September 1942, 4 (the author was a prominent NBC correspondent). “News in Brief,” Times (London), 24 September 1942, 2; “Wedding Permits Necessary,” London Telegraph, 9 October 1942, 5; “Conduct of the War,” Times (London), 12 October 1942, 8. 10. Virden, Good-bye, Piccadilly, 32–33. In 1939 chaplains were barred by the military from performing marriage ceremonies for servicemen below grade 3 without their commanding officers’ written consent.

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disease and British women’s promiscuity with soldiers, framing the women as predatory and a hindrance to the war effort. A December 9, 1942, article in the Telegraph reported an appeal to the House of Lords by the archbishop of York, for more clinics to treat the disease and the difficulties in curtailing promiscuity among “silly girls” and women “in the exercise of what they regard as sexual freedom.” Thus, in 1942, AngloAmerican liaisons were mostly absent from Times (London) and London Telegraph coverage, except in the context of the spread of venereal disease, which was blamed on the women.11 In 1943 there was little coverage of war brides in either the American or the British newspapers studied, although one historian noted that, in the same period, the Red Cross fielded a significant number of requests from GIs for financial assistance in bringing their wives to the United States. In both countries’ newspapers, wartime marriages were still framed as undesirable and discouraged “in these uncertain and anxious times, as one religious figure characterized war.”12 Other items in the New York Times suggested the status of women in wartime, such as a story that noted the continuance of a law depriving women of British citizenship when they married foreigners. British ideas about citizenry in wartime were tied to gender, that is, a woman’s status was determined by her relationship to a man, and her loyalty to the country was tested by that affiliation. Surely this was one more reason for women not to engage in Anglo-American romances, since they had already been told that marriage to Americans would not automatically confer U.S. citizenship. Marriage to a GI might literally make them “women without a country.”13 And yet, the prospect of living with prolonged severe shortages in Britain might have made emigration to the United States worth the risk. The Times (London) reported that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, speaking to a 11. London Telegraph articles “War Time Rise of Disease,” 9 December 1942, 3, and “MPs Approve Venereal Disease Regulation,” 16 December 1942, 3. 12. Virden, Good-bye, Piccadilly, 50; for example, “Warns of Danger in War Marriages,” New York Times, 28 January 1943, 24 (quote); also Times (London) articles “Ecclesiastical News,” 14 January 1943, 7, and “No Marriages by Proxy,” 24 April 1943, 8. 13. “Citizenship Law Upheld,” New York Times, 27 January 1943, 5; Virden, Goodbye, Piccadilly, 40–41. In fact, Australian women lost their citizenship upon marriage to an American and thus remained stateless until they qualified for U.S. citizenship. On the other hand, Soviet law prohibited Russian women married to foreigners from leaving their country at all. See “Ye Prisoners of the Kitchen,” Time, 9 May 1949, 22.

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women’s group, said Britons must brace for at least three more years of rationing after the war. This item was juxtaposed with a report on America’s record-breaking production of warships, suggesting a brighter future under more prosperous conditions in that country.14 Other brief items in 1943 London newspapers suggested that, as in previous conflicts, women were expected to be willing to replenish the population after war.15 By framing women’s reproductive function as a patriotic duty, newspapers suggested that women belonged to and in Britain. Thus, the prospect of mass migration of war brides to the United States would have constituted an abandonment of their proper place. Indeed, although the British birthrate peaked that year, the November 23 issue of the New York Times cited an anticipated decline in British population and suggested the government would not support postwar migration to New Zealand or Australia. “Britain’s population is not stationary and soon will be falling and there might be a shortage of workers,” the newspaper reported. “Britain would not favor a migration of millions or even of hundreds of thousands.” A New York Times article on April 12, 1943, recounted Queen Elizabeth’s radio address, in which she praised women’s contributions to the war effort yet reminded them of their postwar responsibility for “rebuilding family life.” The Queen urged women to “keep their homes together for the day when the men will return from the battlefronts.” Similarly, a New York Times article on September 19, 1943, detailed the government scheme that had successfully mobilized 90 percent of Britain’s single women and 25 percent of married women for war work. Yet, this was juxtaposed with a story about a series of lectures on the “delicate art of how to be a wife.” Thus, according to one American newspaper, British women were expected to be loyal workers and wives—in Britain. To marry a foreigner meant not just the loss of citizenship but a dereliction of her duty to country.16

14. Times (London) articles, “Post-War Rationing,” and “U.S. Shipbuilding Record,” both 6 January 1943, 3. 15. See Times (London) articles “Judge and Childless Marriages,” 23 October 1943, 2, and “Women and Marriage,” 2 November 1943, 5; “Births Too Few or Too Many?” London Telegraph, 21 July 1943, 4. 16. New York Times articles “England’s ‘43 Birth Rate Is Hitting Seventeen-Year Peak,” 13 July 1943, 9, “Briton Doubts Migration,” 23 November 1943, 8, Tania Long, “Elizabeth Speaks to British Women,” 12 April 1943, 18, Sally Reston, “All in the Draft,” 19 September 1943, II:12, and “Lectures for War Brides,” 19 September 1943.

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Coverage of the war brides was negligible in the Times (London) and London Telegraph in 1944, although this was the year that the first shipload of war brides left England. One reason could be that the reporting of ship movements was prohibited under wartime censorship and the bride ships were considered military transports.17 The accounts of many journalists working in London testify to the strict controls of this kind of information. “The British maintain a formal censorship which is tough. . . . All news has to pass through the censorship mill,” wrote AP correspondent DeWitt Mackenzie in 1941. The rationing of newsprint, too, might offer another explanation for minimal reporting of AngloAmerican relationships. By March 1942, newsprint was already reduced to one-sixth of its prewar tonnage when another 10 percent reduction was ordered, and in February 1943, another 1.5 percent cut was called for. Perhaps in the scheme of things, the war brides story simply did not warrant space in the major dailies, some of which had been reduced to page lengths of six or four.18 Yet, it must also be noted that the Churchill government was acutely aware of the press’s ability to foster antiwar sentiment and lower military morale, and the British government did not hesitate to exercise its influence in censorship matters. According to Marwick, the Ministry of Information regularly issued guidance to the press as to how they should report on subjects in wartime. Churchill’s disputes with the Daily Mirror and Sunday Pictorial, two newspapers that regularly criticized British military leadership, were well-known. In 1941 he accused the paper’s editor of promoting “a spirit of hatred and malice against the government” and threatened to suppress both papers for the duration of the war. The Mirror and Pictorial narrowly avoided such a fate, as the editor abruptly changed tone. Other papers did not change and found themselves banned. Thus, it

17. Robert Desmond, Tides of War: World News Reporting, 1931–1945, 91–92. Also see “Critics of U.S. Censorship,” London Telegraph, 1 December 1942, 3, in which the author explains the code of voluntary censorship and then adds a postscript: “two sentences indicating the type of copy most commonly stopped nowadays have been deleted from my present dispatch.” 18. DeWitt Mackenzie, “Understanding the Problem of the Foreign Correspondent,” Journalism Quarterly, 18 March 1941, 24–25; also “Call for Cut in Censorship,” London Telegraph, 31 May 1945, 5. “Further Cut in Paper for British Press,” and “British Writer Hits ‘Outmoded Idea,’” both in Editor and Publisher 76 (February 1943): 10.

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could also be argued that the major daily newspapers, all of which supported the war, avoided reportage of Anglo-American romances because it would compromise home front and battlefront morale.19 In fact, the only mention of Anglo-American liaisons in the two London newspapers in 1944 is an item in the Telegraph on February 10, which noted that four “girls,” aged between eighteen and twenty, were found in an army camp. Despite the claim that they were lured to the camp by American soldiers, each woman received a brief prison sentence.20 Such coverage suggests that British women were still seen as the aggressors where GIs were concerned. The prison sentences reflect a concern with female juvenile delinquency, which was blamed on over-eager girls and negligent mothers. The minimal coverage of the war brides might reflect the fact that a greater news priority was the return of British troops, “kept for years on end from their homes and families on distant battle fronts.” As the House of Commons debated the order of release from service, a lieutenant colonel urged that service abroad not be prolonged, as it exacerbated “the estrangement of husbands, wives, and children.” By March 1946, the Times (London) noted there were thirty-nine thousand divorce cases awaiting resolution, and an army chaplain in a subsequent issue of the newspaper blamed the prolonged absence of soldier-husbands.21 In the New York Times, foreign brides continued to be framed as predatory, at least in the early months of 1944. A January 26 article, for example, reported that the American Red Cross had requested information from its Australian counterpart about the “families and backgrounds of Australian girls wishing to marry American soldiers,” in order to deter-

19. Marwick, Home Front, 105; Aaron L. Goldman, “Press Freedom in Britain during World War II,” Journalism History 22 (Winter 1997): 147, 154. The Daily Worker and the Week, two left-wing newspapers, were banned in December 1940 under Defense Regulation 2D, which gave the home secretary power to suppress any publication that systematically aroused government opposition. 20. “Girls Found in Army Camp,” London Telegraph, 10 February 1944, 3. Two of the girls, aged eighteen, were sent to prison for one month; a twenty-year-old received a two-month sentence; and the fourth girl, already on probation, received a threemonth prison term. The same article notes that fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls charged with similar offenses were “sent to an approved school.” 21. Times (London) articles “The Order of Release,” 16 November 1944, 5 (quotes), “Services Divorce Delays,” 27 March 1946, 8, and “Divorce in the Services,” 2 April 1946, 5.

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mine whether the unions were advisable. The request was denied, but it suggests that in the United States the foreign women’s motives were still considered suspect. Unlike the Australian organization, the American Red Cross was involved in marriage investigations, believing itself, along with the army, both capable of and responsible for determining the veracity of proposed marriages. A double standard prevailed, however. Whereas a soldier was made to prove merely that he was unmarried, a woman’s entire history was subject to examination.22 An article in the New York Times on March 31 suggested that alien brides complicated immigration policy, including the rare occasion when the group included “war grooms.”23 An April article reported that most wartime marriages were “headed for trouble.” The negative coverage in the New York Times coincided with readers’ angry letters to Time magazine over its story of the illegitimate birth of quadruplets born to a British woman and her beau, a married GI. A soldier had written in a follow-up letter that British women, with their hard work and cooperative natures, were more appealing than American women. “Yes, indeed, the girls back home should worry, or else learn to . . . darn socks or something else besides play bridge and sip cocktails all afternoon,” he wrote.24 Yet, after its minimal and negative coverage in early 1944, the New York Times pitch shifted, coinciding with the military’s initiation of the first bride transports to the United States. Whereas foreign alliances had originally been framed as undesirable, New York Times coverage in late 1944 celebrated the unions and now did not suggest either money or citizenship as a motivation of the women. For example, a brief item in the issue of August 27, 1944, noted that a Marine band played for seventy Londonderry women as they left Northern Ireland for the United States aboard a navy transport. The article also noted that “scores carried babies,” a suggestion 22. “Red Cross of Australia to Keep Out of Marriages,” New York Times, 26 January 1944, 5; Virden, Good-bye, Piccadilly, 38. 23. “Soldiers Are Told Status of Alien Brides: Foreign Husbands Limited in Quota Rights,” New York Times, 31 March 1944, 13. According to the article, alien husbands of Americans were accorded a different classification than alien wives, in that they were given “preferred” status under the quota system. A 1946 New York Times article mentioned war grooms again. “44,775 GI Wives Admitted to U.S. in Year: 721 Children, 61 WAC Husbands Also Here,” New York Times, 1 September 1946, 21. 24. “Seven of Ten War Marriages Held Headed for Trouble,” New York Times, 24 April 1944, 16; “Get an English Girl,” Time, 22 March 1944, 4.

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that this was a reuniting of families.25 Upon the brides’ arrival, the New York Times included several pictures of the smiling brides and children under the heading “Doughboys Weren’t Only Ones to Find Roses in Ireland.” The accompanying article described the “young, attractive war brides,” with “eyes sparkling . . . and faces cheerful with the thought of living in a bomb-free America.” The reporter noted that 92 percent of the brides were twenty-four years of age or younger and that the ship was welcomed to New York by an army band playing jazz and ragtime tunes.26 An October 23 article reported that the child of an American serviceman killed in action and his English wife, who died in childbirth, was flown to the United States to be raised by his paternal grandparents.27 These are not stories of predatory women. Instead, the New York Times now emphasized that families were being reunited and that the United States offered a safe haven for deserving women and children who had endured the war in a bomb-ravaged country. By 1944 the brides were framed in the New York Times as welcome military wives. Even more, they were heralded as pioneers, chancing it all for a new life in an unfamiliar land. In an article on November 26, 1944, for instance, a New York Times reporter wrote, “Most of the marital pioneers come here against the advice of parental and religious authority in their native lands.”28 It is telling that the article made no mention of the many obstacles posed by the military in either country. In fact, the article of September 6 reports that the brides’ transportation was paid for and provided by the U.S. Navy, without pointing out how this contradicted earlier edicts that the military would not assume the cost of transport for foreign dependents.29 Newspaper coverage did not try to explain the reason for changes in military policy but merely noted their occurrence. Per25. “Americans’ Wives Leave Ulster,” New York Times, 27 August 1944, 26. 26. “Sixty Navy Brides In from Ireland: Three Londonderry Sisters in Group,” New York Times, 6 September 1944, 21. The August 27 article reported seventy women were headed to the United States as wives of American GIs, but this article noted sixty wives and sixteen children had sailed to New York from Ulster. 27. “British-Born Baby of U.S. Hero Flies Here: Father Killed on 101st Mission, Mother Dead,” New York Times, 23 October 1943, 21. 28. Isabelle Mallet, “Marriage Banns across the Sea,” New York Times Magazine, 26 November 1944, 20. 29. “Sixty Navy Brides In from Ireland: Three Londonderry Sisters in Group,” New York Times, 6 September 1944, 21.

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haps there was a concern that to deny these women passage to the United States—particularly when nearly a third had already given birth to GIfathered children—would discredit the military. Coverage in the New York Times in 1944 suggested that now, the military was in the business of reuniting families, not keeping them apart. The change in the New York Times coverage was evident also in an article on December 20, 1944, that sought to explain why only a fraction of the fifteen thousand British women seeking entry to the States had been granted visas. The paper’s coverage in 1942 and 1943 had implied that the brides were of questionable moral character and responsible for the outbreak of venereal disease. Indeed, a requisite medical exam of the brides as they awaited ships was intended to identify communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, but many brides recalled being checked only for venereal disease.30 Now, the New York Times cautioned readers not to assume that the women denied visas had failed the required medical exam: “It is most unfair to assume that the majority who to date have not received visas have been refused for this reason,” said an embassy official to the newspaper, but he offered no alternative explanation.31 This change in coverage, now in defense of the war brides, stands out from earlier articles in the New York Times. Once the first shipload of brides was headed to America, coverage in the New York Times framed the war brides as brave pioneers and mothers or mothers-to-be, whose motives were pure and whose reputations deserved defending. In 1945, some sixty thousand British women awaited transport to the United States, and by that year the New York Times coverage of the war brides was uniformly favorable.32 As recipients of preferential treatment by the military (now offering free first-class transportation to the United States), the brides were framed by the paper as something special. The brides that had come to the country before 1945 had traveled on military 30. Shukert and Scibetta, War Brides of World War II, 52; Smith, Britain in the Second World War, 7–8. 31. “Some British Brides Fail to Win U.S. Visas,” New York Times, 20 December 1944, 26. In 1946 the London Telegraph reported that a war bride bound for the United States had been interned at Ellis Island for two months and then returned to Britain because she was found to have been infected with tuberculosis. “Intended Bride Refused by U.S.,” London Telegraph, 13 September 1945, 5. 32. Shukert and Scibetta, War Brides of World War II, 44.

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transports carrying sick or wounded GIs or had arranged for passage at their own expense. By April 1945, however, the military was outfitting ocean liners with special maternity services to accommodate the brides and their children, and subsequently, the American Red Cross established “special nurseries” to assist brides and their children as they disembarked in New York.33 The fact that the military’s transportation plan included “provision for every possible comfort” for foreign dependents might have angered Americans who awaited the return of U.S. troops after V-J Day in August 1945.34 Yet, most effective at winning sympathy for the war brides were the New York Times stories of “compassionate cases,” brides who were granted emergency passage because of serious illness of their children, husbands, or themselves. Other stories conveyed the desperation of soldiers separated from their brides and children for extended periods, such as one New York Times article about a GI who jumped from a ship and tried to swim back to Liverpool to join his wife. Another article noted that GI brides who arrived at New York’s Staten Island with returning troops on the USS Thomas H. Barry had attended wounded soldiers during the voyage: “On the way across the Atlantic the young women put in four or five hours a day helping the wounded, and in many cases, brought their children with them to visit immobilized patients, it having been found that the visits helped boost morale,” the paper reported.35 Within the same “special” frame of news coverage in 1945, the New York Times reported that the brides were recipients of unique legislation, including a change in immigration law that granted American citizenship to children under twenty-one years of age who had been born abroad to alien 33. New York Times articles “Twenty-four Thousand British Brides of GIs May Sail Here on Liner Equipped with Maternity Services,” 16 April 1945, 20, also “Booklet Guides British Brides in U.S. Ways: Twelve Thousand to Fifteen Thousand in ‘44 Sought to Come Here,” 1 January 1945, 18, and “War Brides, Babies Here on Gripsholm,” 10 October 1945, 22. 34. “Army Will Pay Way for Twenty Thousand Brides,” New York Times, 10 April 1945, 1. The article reported that the brides were “guests of the U.S. Army” and that the transportation plan provided for nurses, special diet kitchens, and facilities for babies. 35. “War Brides Due Here,” New York Times, 14 December 1945, 7; “Ex-GI Tries to Swim to Family in Britain,” New York Times, 23 December 1945, 1. The former soldier swam through icy waters until climbing atop a rock three miles offshore. A naval launch rescued him, and British authorities “regretfully deported him because he had no entrance visa.” “Ten Thousand Troops Back from Battle Area, Cheer Our Skyline,” New York Times, 30 May 1945, 1.

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wives of servicemen. The War Brides Act, passed in December 1945, eased the way for the women to enter as nonquota immigrants.36 Further, currency control laws were relaxed for them, to permit the brides to bring more money into the United States than was previously allowed. While the brides were framed as deserving of special treatment, a leading opera star told the New York Times that unfaithful American women were “the greatest criminals in the world” and to blame “for driving their men into the arms of European women.” She advocated head-shaving as public humiliation for adulterous women, the same punishment imposed on women who had collaborated with the Germans in Nazi-occupied countries.37 Throughout 1946 the New York Times continued to frame the war brides as something special. For example, trains and ocean liners were referred to as “War Bride Specials.”38 In addition, the newspaper suggested that the brides received preferential treatment, when it reported that the military accelerated the rate at which brides were being transported even while troops awaited deployment, and that Congress passed special legislation allowing alien fiancées to enter the country for marriage. Coverage in the New York Times of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to London in January 1946 may have given American readers pause, when it suggested that British women were better suited for marriage to American soldiers. Speaking to a group of brides Roosevelt said, “You will understand men who have been in the war more than many American women will.” Another 1946 article denied that the brides were “girls left behind” and offered a similar comparison. Like the GIs, “British girls have been in the war too, in a way that was physically impossible for people in the States,” a New York Times reporter wrote.39 36. New York Times articles “Soldiers’ Children Aided,” 8 May 1945, 11, “Helps Entry by Wives,” 20 December 1945, 13, and “Wives of Soldiers to Come to U.S. Free,” 30 December 1945, 13; War Brides Act, Public Law 79-271, 59 Stat 659 (1945). 37. New York Times articles “British Wives of GIs May Send Two Thousand Dollars Here,” 23 December 1945, 10, and “Faithless Wives Decried,” 28 July 1945, 9. 38. New York Times articles “Argentina, ‘War Bride Special,’ Sails to Get Veterans’ Families,” 17 January 1946, 25, Horne, “458 on ‘Bride Ship,’” 5 February 1946, 1, “New Army System on Wives’ Arrival,” 9 March 1946, 14, “Queen Mary Here with War Brides,” 2 March 1946, 15. 39. New York Times articles “War Bride Quota Raised by Army,” 3 March 1946, 10, “Bill to Let Alien Fiancées Join GIs Here Approved,” 17 May 1946, 2, “Mrs. Roosevelt Gives Counsel to GI Wives,” 25 January 1946, 3; Elizabeth Valentine, “The Girls They Didn’t Leave Behind Them,” New York Times Magazine, 10 February 1946, 17.

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Another change from earlier U.S. coverage suggested that the military was even supportive of the marriages, a theme that pervaded coverage in 1945 and 1946. Authorities now not only provided free transportation for the brides but minimized the bureaucratic demands of immigration in this special case, according to the New York Times. “The Army has taken steps to try to make marriages overseas as simple and painless as possible, realizing that, where there are lonely Yanks, pretty girls and spring, the three are apt to combine for the inevitable result,” a reporter wrote on April 29, 1945. Yet, according to many brides’ and historical accounts, the army was never in favor of the marriages and never let up in trying to discourage them.40 More likely, when confronted with tens of thousands of women seeking admission to the United States and many of them pregnant, the army had little choice but to act. The military’s reported change of position suggests that policy was being made “on the fly.” Indeed, Harry Vaughan, a military advisor to President Truman, wrote in a 1945 letter, “While I think it was a mistake to permit any of our soldiers to marry overseas, as long as the Army permitted this, they should accept the responsibility and carry through.”41 The brides exploited the influence of mass media to force a change, too, by staging a series of very public demonstrations in London. In early October 1945, some fifty-four thousand women planned a parade to protest the delay in transport to the States, but police canceled the event. A contingent of one hundred war brides from Edinburgh formed the League of Angry Wives to lobby for passage to the United States and was part of a letter-writing campaign directed at American politicians and military authorities. On October 11, 1945, a group of one thousand war brides gathered at London’s Caxton Hall shouting, “We want ships,” and then marched through London’s West End. The women paraded with signs in front of the U.S. Embassy calling, “We want our husbands” and 40. Edwin Jay Wilcox, “Red Tape Ensnares the GI Cupid,” New York Times Magazine, 29 April 1945, 14; Paroutaud, “Is Your Marriage Really Necessary?” 86/5/1, IWM. The author described a humiliating interview, required by the military before she and her husband were granted permission to marry. 41. Harry H. Vaughan to Joseph P. Ragland, November 23, 1945, OF190-Z (1 of 2), HSTL. Vaughan, a brigadier general of the U.S. Army and military aide to Truman, sought help from the American Counsel in Australia to secure passage to the United States for the foreign wife of a military police captain.

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“We want transport.” The New York Times reporter wrote on October 9 that many of the brides attended the demonstrations with their young children, as part of an emotional appeal. “Babes in arms form a potent argument in the campaign,” the reporter remarked.42 Other media publicized the protests, contributing to a public discourse over the brides’ status. Life magazine coverage of the march from Caxton Hall depicted a woman holding her baby, along with a placard that read “Who’ll Feed GI Babies?” suggesting that U.S. soldiers’ dependents were an American responsibility. Life characterized the protest march as “good natured,” but the brides by 1945 were short on money and justifiably concerned about the well-being of their children in postwar Britain. Further, they worried about the effect that prolonged time apart would have on their marriages. One bride wrote in her journal that, after a long separation, her husband did not even recognize her upon her arrival in New York. “I saw Ricky coming through the door, he looked straight at me, then walked up to the table and asked for his wife,” she wrote. Another bride wrote in 1946 that among her three roommates aboard a bride ship, none had spent more than a week with her husband; now they were joining them in the United States after a year’s separation. One American soldier described his marriage to a British woman as “five days I’ll never forget” and tried to sustain the long-distance relationship with letterwriting. When the marriage failed, he wrote in a final letter to “Stella,” in August 1945, “I’ll admit I wasn’t much of a husband, but I didn’t have much chance to be one, either.”43 In mid-October, after similar demonstrations by British war brides seeking passage to Canada, the British House of Commons appealed to the United States to expedite their transport. As far as British authorities were concerned, the transportation priority was the return of British

42. New York Times articles “London GI Wives Storm a Hall: Protest Delay in Coming to U.S.,” 12 October 1945, 25, “Ten Thousand British War Brides Will Hire a Hall to Protest Delays in Rejoining Husbands,” 9 October 1945, 15, also “Parliament to Get Problem,” 13 October 1945, 26. In two separate events, ten thousand war brides were to attend a mass demonstration and fifty-four thousand brides organized a protest parade but were stopped by police. 43. “British Brides,” Life, 19 November 1945, 45; Marie E. Boissy, 15 May 1946, 86/88/1, Avice Wilson to “Mummie,” 27 July 1946, 86/68/1, and Ted Seckle to Stella, 12 January 1945, 82/32/1, all in IWM.

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troops. “There are a vast majority of British wives in this country of soldiers who have been separated from their husbands for a far longer period,” said the Ministry of War Transport. “We must first carry out our own program of getting our own men back.”44 Thus, transportation of the war brides was made an American problem; as far as the British authorities were concerned, the women would have to wait. Another theme in the New York Times coverage of the brides, which appeared in 1945 and persisted throughout 1946, was that of domestication. Above all, the war brides were framed as eager housewives-intraining. Throughout these two years, the newspaper reported the formation of clubs or government-sponsored programs intended to help the brides with various “home arts,” such as cooking, shopping, and sewing.45 In a series of Red Cross–sponsored courses, GI brides were being taught the skills needed to “convert to normal peacetime American housewives.” Other articles referred to them as “good stock” and noted their potential as wives and mothers. Thus, U.S. newspaper coverage after 1943 was enthusiastic about the brides’ arrival and told the waiting American public what postwar roles they would assume. In the current frame, these brides were special but not necessarily threatening. Rather, they eagerly sought guidance to fit in with American culture. For example, the newspaper wrote that a British bride, “Sonia,” asked a reporter questions about New York and took notes “with a businesslike notebook.” She told the reporter she was nervous about settling in Brooklyn. “She hopes she will get along well there. She should, because she’s little and cute, and very young. And she’s out to like everybody, and learn about everything.”46

44. New York Times articles “GI Brides in Britain Demonstrate Again,” 14 October 1945, 19, and “British Call on U.S. to Transport Brides,” 16 October 1945, 8 (quote). 45. For example, New York Times articles “School for Brides Opens,” 5 April 1945, 20, “GI Wives Club Tells British Girls All about Fruit Salad and Mobsters,” 6 April 1945, 18, “Red Cross and English Speaking Union Plan Aid to Foreign-Born Brides of Soldiers,” 10 July 1945, 7, and “Fourteen British War Brides on the Queen Mary: Some Rejoin Husbands Awaiting Them Here,” 15 December 1945, 19. Newsletters from some of the bride ships promoted the Red Cross classes held on board. The Imperial War Museum holds some of these in its collection, including issues of the Holbrook Crier and Alexander’s Rattle, 123/1897, IWM. 46. New York Times articles “GI Brides Attend Red Cross Housewives School in Queens,” 26 October 1945, 13, Horne, “458 on ‘Bride Ship,’” 5 February 1946, 1, Sarah James, “Westward Ho for GI Brides,” 15 April 1945, VI:24.

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But whereas the New York Times framed the war brides as special and deserving of preferential treatment, the Times (London) paid scant attention to them. This newspaper, for example, published six brief items in 1945, all related to the delayed transportation of the brides to the United States. One item reported the planned protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in London, which the British police banned. Another short item reported that the brides demonstrated in front of Caxton Hall. Yet these announcements were brief in comparison to U.S. coverage of the same. Passage to America, and by extension the brides, was consistently framed as an American problem, not one concerning British authorities. “The transport problem is in the hands of the Army,” the Times (London) noted on October 6, 1945.47 Similarly, the Telegraph had little coverage of the war brides but did publish a series of letters in response to the October protest at the U.S. Embassy that framed them as waiting wives, a postwar nuisance.48 Most British readers took exception to the brides’ demands, although British complaints were more restrained than those in American armed services publications. One British soldier wrote, “Having been separated from my wife for over three years and with every prospect of further delay . . . I consider their complaints unjustified and I trust they will be forced to wait until all Dominion and Colonial service men have been given passage home.” Another reader wrote the Telegraph, “Their lot in no way compares with that of their mothers and sisters, many of whom have been deprived of their husbands for three, four and in some cases even five years. Added to this thousands have also been parted from their children for long periods and their homes have been destroyed.” Indeed, the demobilization of British forces had been delayed, owing to a shortage of troops in all arms of the service. Thus, to the British public, the brides were 47. Times (London) articles “March of Service Men’s Wives Banned,” 8 October 1945, 4, “Protest by U.S. Service Men’s Wives,” 12 October 1945, 2, and “British Wives of U.S. Soldiers,” 6 October 1945, 2. 48. Sir Godfrey Haggard, “U.S. ‘Invasion’ of Britain Has Been a Unique Opportunity,” London Telegraph, 21 November 1945, 4. The author, chairman of the British–American Liaison Board, reflected on the clash of cultures during the American presence in Britain. He noted, in part, “certain preconceived prejudices . . . regarded our visitors as simply one more war discomfort. The girl question, the drink question, the pay question, loomed over-large.” Another article noted the departure of American troops but makes no mention of the war brides. See “U.S. Will Move 2,500,000 Troops,” London Telegraph, 28 June 1945, 5.

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not special but, rather, waiting wives whose demands were selfish and unreasonable when compared to British families waiting and willing to begin the repair of the home front.49 Certainly, the brides’ demands must have seemed gratuitous to Britons stuck with the prospect of continued and prolonged shortages. Scant coverage of the brides’ “plight” in British newspapers could be explained by paper shortages, but also by the greater significance of other wartime news. One example was the end of the Lend-Lease program, announced by President Truman just as Britain faced a financial burden twice as great as that of World War I. “Though transitional arrangements were pieced together by sympathetic American officials, the alternatives now facing Britain were desperate—to beg, borrow, or starve,” wrote Peter Clarke. Further, a surprise outcome in the 1945 general election unseated Churchill, who was defeated by Clement Attlee. “Public opinion polls showed that there had been a steady movement towards Labour during the war . . . but it was generally thought that Churchill’s great prestige as the victorious war leader would give the Conservatives a satisfactory majority,” wrote Marwick. The new government immediately busied itself creating and explaining through mass media the new welfare state, which meant continued rationing, austerity, and persistent high taxation. In addition, unlike the United States, in 1945 Britain was still in a state of war, with Siam. Thus, other stories certainly may have taken precedence over reporting the departure of war brides.50 When the British papers covered the war brides in 1946, they were again framed as waiting wives, an American concern. The Times (London) coverage was limited to brief items noting the departures of bride ships. A January item reported only that “[t]wo special trains will leave Waterloo with 711 of the first party of GI brides and babies to leave for the United States.”51 At this point, secrecy concerning ships’ movements

49. London Telegraph articles “Clamouring Wives,” 15 October 1945, 4 (quote), “Clamorous Wives,” 16 October 1945, 4 (quote), and “Rhine Army Officers’ Release Delayed,” 24 September 1945, 1. 50. Marwick, Century of Total War, 361–62; Clarke, Hope and Glory, 227; Marwick, Home Front, 166 (quote), 174; “Siam Agrees to Three British Demands,” London Telegraph, 24 September 1945, 1. 51. Times (London) articles “News in Brief,” 12 January 1946, 2 (quote), also “American Service Men’s Brides,” 5 January 1946, “News in Brief,” 28 January 1946, 2, “More Service Men’s Wives in New York,” 11 February 1946, 4.

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would not have been a justification for the negligible coverage; the war was over. Yet again, it could be said that newspaper space was needed to report more pressing matters. For example, Muslim-Hindu rioting in Bombay, which preceded India’s 1947 partition, caused mass casualties; British troops were policing that city.52 In addition, a meatpackers’ strike threatened the city’s food supply. Still, the Telegraph also carried several brief mentions of the brides’ trips to the United States and adopted the “special” frame. For example, a September 2, 1946, item pointed out that “no effort is spared on the voyage to ensure the comfort and entertainment of themselves and their babies.” Further, the Telegraph reported that the brides arrived in New York with great celebration; the Times (London) avoided such coverage entirely.53 Overall, coverage of the war brides in the two London daily newspapers represented a kind of “symbolic annihilation,” as Gaye Tuchman put it, by either ignoring or trivializing the war brides. Secrecy over ship movements might have been a justification for negligible early coverage, but not after the war had ended. Paper shortages could be another explanation, as well as stories given more import. But another compelling argument is that Anglo-American marriages represented a threat to the morale of British fighting men, many still away from Britain and thus still a concern to the agencies governing wartime mass media. In fact, the British Ministry of War Transport refused to grant passage to Londonbased American reporters on the first bride ship, the RMS Queen Mary. Only after an appeal by the U.S. State Department did the British authorities reconsider. In a February 1946 letter to Truman’s press secretary Charles Ross, a State Department representative wrote, “the barring of correspondents from the RMS Queen Mary on the grounds that it would result in undesirable reaction among British troops in the Middle East and elsewhere, has little validity and would certainly create unfavorable reactions among the American press both in the United States and in 52. London Telegraph articles “Police Open Fire Twelve Times,” 3 September 1946, 1, Colin Reid, “Bombay Riots Spread to New Areas,” 4 September 1946, 1, Colin Reid, “More Bombay Riots: Death Roll Now 146,” 5 September 1946, 1. 53. London Telegraph articles “Meat Strikers to Decide Today,” 4 September 1946, 1, “Delay in Wives’ Disembarkation,” 2 September 1946, 6 (quote), “2,754 British Wives,” 2 September 1946, 6, “British Wives in U.S.,” 28 October 1946, 8, “U.S. Welcome to Brides,” 11 February 1946, 5.

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England.” A similar appeal was published in the New York Times, addressed to Prime Minister Attlee from a representative of the Association of American Correspondents in London.54 By denying or downplaying the war brides’ experience, the Times (London) and London Telegraph suggested Anglo-American unions were neither valued nor approved. Rather, the marriages could affect the British population in negative ways. Troop morale was paramount, and this was made clear in the ways in which British armed services publications assured men that women were at home, waiting for them. The notion that British women were engaged in sexual relations with American GIs in their absence was a recurring fear among British soldiers. Publicity about the brides’ marriages or departures surely could affect soldiers’ ability to prepare for and wage combat. Further, with Britain dependent on U.S. financial and military strength in wartime, Anglo-American romances could be seen as a symbol of American domination in the postwar landscape.

54. Gaye Tuchman, “The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media,” in Tuchman et al., Hearth and Home, 8; Lincoln White to Charles Ross, 4 February 1946, OF190-Z (1 of 2), HSTL; “Newsmen Protest Ban,” New York Times, 1 February 1946, 8.

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5 In Magazines, “American Husbands Are A1”

D

“You’d be a foolish wife to ask your husband what he does with those leaves of his when he can’t get home.” “I would ask my warmhearted and responsive readers to do their best about offering friendliness in their homes whenever possible to these boys.”

C

overage of the war brides in two women’s magazines marks a departure from the mass media coverage examined so far. First, the magazines’ audiences were composed of women, for whom marriage and motherhood was an officially sanctioned goal, compared to the general audience of daily newspapers or the military and primarily male audience of armed forces publications. Second, Woman’s Home Companion (a monthly magazine published in the United States) and Woman’s Own (a weekly British magazine) had female editors. The British magazine carried more material related to war brides than its American counterpart, despite the fact that fewer issues were available for this study. And Woman’s Own had more coverage related to the war brides even when compared to the two British daily newspapers.1

1. See, for example, Nancy Walker, ed., Women’s Magazines, 1940–1960: Gender Roles and the Popular Press; Ros Ballaster et al., eds., Women’s Worlds: Ideology, Femininity, and the Woman’s Magazine (London: Macmillan, 1991). Epigraphs are from Ethel Gorham, So Your Husband’s Gone to War, 74, and “Between You and Me,” Woman’s Own, 16 January 1942, 3. 105

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Woman’s Home Companion, the American monthly, crystallized women’s aspirations this way: “Every little girl dreams that some day she’ll grow up and marry and have a baby of her own.” Hewing to this domestic agenda, the magazine focused its World War II–era content on prescriptions for maintaining the home front in the temporary absence of men. In 1942 the magazine offered its readers ideas for contributing in a meaningful way to the war effort while remaining competent mothers and wives. Editors encouraged women to do their part, to “make sure you are doing something and not running around in circles.” In other words, work for work’s sake was time wasted.2 As one example of acceptable war work, the magazine featured a military club in Richmond, Virginia, where American women could volunteer as hostesses. Volunteers were required to attend three army parties a week and “sometimes other parties whipped up for visiting British seamen in Norfolk.” Although the occasions were festive, the work was not touted as a way that married women might forge romantic relationships with American or foreign soldiers. Indeed, hostesses were encouraged to compete on the basis of their moral fortitude. A woman could win a medal and the “privilege” of wearing formal gowns if she attended parties regularly and adhered to “the high standard of social conduct.” An article on women’s factory work suggested that, although couples might be separated in wartime, wives maintained a connection to their soldierhusbands with their distinct contributions to the war effort. “Somewhere in the South Pacific a captain in the U.S. Army is leading his men into battle against the Japs,” the reporter wrote. “Thousands of miles away his wife is also fighting the Japs—with a rivet gun instead of a rifle.”3 In 1942 there is no mention of the British war brides in Woman’s Home Companion and, for that matter, very little mention of Americans in the British Isles. Some articles explained the conditions under which British women lived, such as how they were mobilized for war work or the depri2. Woman’s Home Companion articles Lucie Lyons, “School for Marriage” (March 1945): 12 (quote), Marjorie Barstow Greenbie, “Victory Jobs for Women” (March 1942): 52, “The Ways to Market in Wartime” (July 1942): 66, James Madison Wood, “Should We Draft Mothers?” (January 1944): 21, and Willa Roberts, “How to Behave in Wartime” (March 1942): 2 (quote). 3. Woman’s Home Companion articles Marjorie Barstow Greenbie, “Steps to Victory” (May 1942): 22–23, “The Key to Victory” (July 1942): 7.

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vations they endured. An item about women in the armed services noted only that American forces were in England earlier, during World War I, without describing the activities of soldiers in Britain during the current war. A November 1942 article in this American women’s magazine asked readers their opinions about marriage, including whether men should be allowed to marry in foreign countries. Responses were evenly divided, and it is interesting that most answers in support of foreign marriages came from readers aged between twenty-five and thirty-four, the women who might be expected to see British women as competition for men. Whereas the New York Times framed wartime marriages as worrisome in 1942, Woman’s Home Companion did not, perhaps because the slight number of foreign brides at that early stage of the war posed little threat to its readers. The real threats to American womanhood at this time came from germs and dowdiness, which the magazine suggested were easily defeated with a strong disinfectant and a tube of lipstick.4 In 1943 there was no coverage of the war brides in Woman’s Home Companion, and even in 1944 when a competing magazine, Collier’s, defended American women against the threat of foreign brides, Woman’s Home Companion did not. In fact, there were no articles in 1944 relating specifically to the war brides, although some articles examined conditions in Britain, such as one article that described how Britons were faring under the German flying-bomb campaign. Another feature in 1944 was a pictorial biography of Princess Elizabeth, soon to be crowned queen of England.5 Even as the U.S. military noted an alarming increase in the rate of venereal disease and blamed it on foreign women, a March 1944 article in Woman’s Home Companion attributed the increase to well-intentioned but misguided “noncommercial girls” in the United States. “With misdirected patriotic zeal she had offered herself freely to comfort the boys in

4. Woman’s Home Companion articles Patricia Strauss, “Women Are in It, Too” (June 1942): 4, “Companion Way” (March 1942): 57, “Warning, Invaders on the March,” an ad for Lysol disinfectant (November 1942), Willa Roberts, “Best Face Forward” (February 1942): 2. 5. “Our Demanding Women,” Collier’s, 1 July 1944, 70; Woman’s Home Companion articles Doris Fleeson, “Same Old Bombs, Dearie!” (September 1944): 4, Helena Huntington Smith, “When It’s Over, Over Here” (November 1944): 4, Anne Maxwell, “She’ll Be Queen of England” (April 1944): 10–11, “War Letters” (November 1944): 8.

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uniform,” the reporter wrote of an infected woman, suggesting sympathy—not condemnation—was the correct response by Companion readers. There was no reference in the magazine to fraternization by soldiers abroad, or to the escalating rate of venereal disease among British civilians since the Americans’ arrival in their country.6 Overall, Woman’s Home Companion in 1944 was infused with a certain naïveté about wartime sexuality. Mainstream magazines had published numerous articles already about GI behavior abroad, accompanied by photographs that showed soldier-civilian pairings. Time reported in August 1943 that Britons resented Yanks for getting “too fresh with the girls,” for example. In December, Time reported that GIs were getting “the lion’s share” of the women in Britain. Yet, magazine content in Woman’s Home Companion was primarily concerned with American women’s war work and its impact on the family, maintaining a home, and preparing for the soldiers’ return. In the latter example, a father cautioned his daughter that her husband would return a changed man. “He is preoccupied by events and reactions in which you cannot possibly participate on the same basis with him,” he said. “Never forget that the war means one thing to you and quite another to him.”7 In articles related to veterans’ return, Woman’s Home Companion suggested that American women would find it difficult to understand the changes in men who had experienced war firsthand. Perhaps with this, foreign women were subtly framed as being better suited for marriage to American soldiers. Since they too had firsthand experience with war, they were in a unique position to understand the changes in American men. By 1945 Woman’s Home Companion acknowledged that some men engaged in extramarital affairs while stationed abroad, but the magazine minimized the rate of promiscuity and its threat to the stability of American households. There was as yet no suggestion that the military was 6. Patricia Lochridge, “VD: Menace and Challenge,” Woman’s Home Companion (March 1944): 34; “War-Time Rise of Disease,” London Telegraph, 9 December 1942, 3. 7. Time articles “Why We Behave like Americans,” 9 August 1943, 66, “Poor Relations,” 6 December 1943, 36; Woman’s Home Companion articles Alfred Toombs, “War Babies” (April 1944): 32, J. Edgar Hoover, “Mothers . . . Our Only Hope” (January 1944): 20, Lt. Col. Malcolm J. Farrell and Marie Beynon Ray, “Will the Battle-Shocked Come Home Cured?” (April 1944): 33, “When He Comes Home” (December 1944): 38 (quote).

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poised to bring foreign wives to live in the United States, although newspapers and other popular magazines had already published stories about the war brides. For example, Newsweek reported the departure of a brides’ ship from Australia in August 1944 and noted the rate of “Yank-Aussie” marriages was ten a day. Yet, Woman’s Home Companion framed AngloAmerican romances as nothing more than wartime flings. For instance a regular magazine feature, the “Companion Marriage Clinic,” noted in 1945 that “only a small percentage of husbands did have affairs while away and most of those were on a very casual basis.” At this point the military had already seen the results of its sex survey, in which some 80 percent of soldiers admitted to engaging in regular sexual intercourse with foreign women while stationed overseas. Certainly, the fact of soldiers’ promiscuity was not unknown to American women, even if the actual rate of promiscuity was unclear. As one woman had told the U.S. armed forces publication Stars and Stripes two years earlier in 1943, “Those guys over there aren’t shy-eyed sheep in a jeep. . . . The boys aren’t sitting knee deep in mud in a foxhole if they’ve got a chance to go out with a girl.”8 But true to its genteel agenda, Woman’s Home Companion discouraged American women on the home front from trying to learn the truth of men’s foreign infidelities. “Don’t press him with questions about his own behavior while away. Show that you trusted him completely,” counseled the magazine. In a popular 1942 guide for married women, a New York fashion editor suggested what a serviceman’s wife did not know would not hurt her. “You’d be a foolish wife to ask your husband what he does with those leaves of his when he can’t get home,” wrote Ethel Gorham in So Your Husband’s Gone to War. “Don’t imagine he remains pure as the driven snow to match your own temperature. Men aren’t made that way, but they definitely expect women to be.”9 A sexual double standard was ever apparent in Woman’s Home Companion. GIs bragged endlessly in armed forces publications about their own

8. “Brides Should Know,” Newsweek, 28 August 1944, 44; Clifford R. Adams, “The Companion Marriage Clinic,” Woman’s Home Companion (December 1945): 38; Richard Malkin, Marriage, Morals, and War, 205; Ned Nordness, “Gals Back Home Insist They’re Loyal to GI Heartthrobs Abroad,” Stars and Stripes, 17 December 1943, 2. 9. Clifford R. Adams, “The Companion Marriage Clinic,” Woman’s Home Companion (December 1945): 38; Gorham, So Your Husband’s Gone to War, 74.

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sexual prowess, yet women on the home front were to remain faithful. In the “Companion Marriage Clinic,” a counselor responded to a reader’s question about whether soldiers’ wives should date while their husbands were away. “I have been unable to find any reason that can justify it, no matter how innocent the date,” he wrote. Instead, women should “keep busy. Plan for the future. Think about the kind of home you want after the war.” If the loyalty of a wife or girlfriend was questioned by a returned soldier, the magazine told her she should do the utmost to prove she had been chaste in his absence. “Build up his battered ego by telling him how much you missed him, how wonderful he is,” the magazine urged readers in 1945. “Speak critically of women he may have heard of who were disloyal to their fighting mates.”10 Naturally, it was prudent for the editors of the magazine to counsel readers in strategies that cultivated marital harmony rather than behaviors that might induce marital strife. Keeping women convinced of the importance of home and family in the postwar period was one way that Woman’s Home Companion could preserve its readership. As another way to keep readers fixated on domesticity, the magazine downplayed the threat of foreign women, even as the military vetted an unprecedented number of marriage requests and soldiers were posted to more exotic locales. A February 1945 article, for example, reported that “South Sea Island belles” were unattractive, clad not in grass skirts but “cotton house dresses, ill-fitting and ragged.” The reporter added that “even the girls who start out with a fine figure by American standards inevitably spread under their steady diet of starchy vegetables.” The article followed a widely publicized September 1944 fraternization ban on Allied forces in Germany. In response, Woman’s Home Companion, like the American armed services publications, framed foreign women as soldiers’ temporary companions—simply being in the same place at the same time, nothing more. In fact, the article on soldiers in the Pacific insisted that the men preferred to spend time with the island’s wild dogs rather than with native women. A photograph of a GI distributing rations 10. Clifford R. Adams, “The Companion Marriage Clinic,” Woman’s Home Companion (May 1945): 35, 38.

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to a young native woman noted she was “no beauty and she doesn’t even understand his language.”11 Eventually, however, the sexual threat of German women had to be addressed directly, even in Woman’s Home Companion, following the blatant and highly publicized violations of the army’s fraternization ban on Allied forces in that country. In 1944 a ban on fraternization between Allied soldiers and German civilian women had been issued and restated, with little effect. By June 1945 the army had taken to offering soldiers discreet treatment for venereal disease, as it had earlier done in other European countries. Finally, in 1946, in a last-ditch effort to curb fraternization, the army offered transportation and housing to soldiers’ American families who wanted to join the men in Europe. The wife of a colonel accepted the military’s offer and wondered if her husband was one of the offenders. “I heard too much about this fraternization,” she told a Woman’s Home Companion reporter who accompanied the army transport. “I decided I had to come over myself to see what my husband was up to.”12 Woman’s Home Companion was similarly slow to acknowledge the impending arrival of the British war brides. When it finally did, in 1946, the magazine adopted the housewives-in-training frame as seen in other American mass media. For example, a 1946 editorial noted that the magazine supplied pamphlets on homemaking to brides awaiting transport, at the request of the American Red Cross. “You would be optimistic about them as future wives and American mothers, could you see how they seize upon anything which may help them to better understand the ways and manners of this really strange new land to which they are going,” the 11. Patricia Lochridge, “What Do You Know about Our Men in the Pacific?” Woman’s Home Companion (February 1945): 36 (quotes); “No Fraternization with Germans,” Times (London), 25 September 1944, 4; also Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945–1949, 45. 12. “No Fraternization with Germans,” Times (London), 25 September 1944, 4; Stars and Stripes articles “A ‘Bit of Frat’ Is Giving Allied Ban the Works,” 7 June 1945, 3, Peter Lisagor and Pat Mitchell, “Still a Ban on Fraternizing, but Prophylaxis Is Available,” 7 June 1945, 4; London Telegraph articles “BAOR Families in Cuxhaven,” 2 September 1946, 5, “BAOR Wives Will Be Short of Cots,” 6 September 1946, 5 (the acronym BAOR is for British Army of the Rhine); “Operation: Homemaking,” Woman’s Home Companion (July 1946): 116 (quotes).

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editorial stated.13 Even if they had been in competition for American men, Woman’s Home Companion erased the threat by suggesting that these British brides admired and aspired to be like American women. Thus, American women—with their homemaking expertise—were allowed a degree of superiority to the British women. Still, portraying the war brides in positive ways was a means for Woman’s Home Companion to cultivate this substantial new audience of readers of the magazine. Issues of Woman’s Own, a British weekly magazine, were examined for two years only, 1942 and 1946, because of its limited availability. These issues provide a mass-mediated glimpse of British women upon the Americans’ arrival and at the war’s end. Although the sample included fewer issues than the American Woman’s Home Companion, and although it was plagued by paper shortages throughout wartime, this British magazine devoted more attention to the war brides during these two bookend years.14 Further, the weekly offered a more candid discussion of women’s wartime sexuality than the other magazine. Woman’s Own also provides an interesting comparison to the British armed services publications, which suggested that women on the home front were occupied only with war work and with preparing for the soldiers’ return. According to Woman’s Own, they were busy with those things and more. Marriage was the typical experience for British women throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the editorial agenda of Woman’s Own insisted “the perfect wife is the perfect housewife.”15 Like many women’s magazines of the era, Woman’s Own supported the war effort by encouraging its readers to plant vegetable gardens, recycle scrap paper, and “make do and mend.”16 Woman’s Own also acknowledged the wartime demand for women’s labor but assured readers that new skills need not supplant their domestic focus. Rather, women could acquire a range of expertise. For example, a woman could operate anti-aircraft 13. “Companionably Yours,” Woman’s Home Companion (March 1946): 12. 14. Brian Braithwaite, Women’s Magazines: The First Three Hundred Years, 60. 15. Ibid., 73 (quote); Lewis, Women in England, 3, 73. The author notes that the rate of adult females who married or had been married between 1871 and 1951 never fell below 60 percent. 16. See, for example, Woman’s Own articles “Overheard in the Office,” 23 January 1942, 7, “In and Out of the Garden,” 30 January 1942, 21, “Bigger than Some,” 30 January 1942, 12.

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machinery and learn to do home repairs with little trouble, feed her children generously under the rationing scheme, and still provide them with the proper spiritual guidance. In fact, cultivating the right kind of home was one of the magazine’s antidotes to war. “We can all sow the seeds for a world at peace by making our homes calm refuges for our husbands and children. If all the homes of all the countries in the world emanated a feeling of quietness and love there could be no more wars,” wrote Nan Gordon in a January 1942 issue.17 Although readers of Woman’s Own shared a common domestic goal, the magazine in 1942 did not necessarily condone wartime marriages, even if the idea was hastened by sexual desire or pregnancy. Rosita Forbes, a United States–based correspondent, thought such unions foolhardy and counseled her British readers in 1942 to “be sure your ‘Let’s get married’ isn’t just a desire for excitement, a very natural longing to have something new and different in a life that’s all work.” Even as the war concluded, a Woman’s Own reader commented: “It is disturbing to reflect that, in the present uncertain state of things, young people seem to think that early marriage is the primary concern of life.” The magazine encouraged women to think of themselves in ways other than strictly wife and parent, even if only temporarily. One article noted that before the war, young women “hoped for marriage and looked upon their job as a marking-time, [yet] for modern girls and women that way of thinking is not good enough.” To the already-marrieds who made up a significant portion of the magazine’s readership, Woman’s Own assured them that every marital difficulty could be overcome; every difficult spouse could be forgiven and reformed. The magazine certainly did not advocate divorce, which was a messy and expensive ordeal to avoid.18 Woman’s Own was more candid than the American monthly in addressing war’s effect on sexuality. Indeed, editors acknowledged the shedding 17. Woman’s Own articles “Winning Jobs,” 16 January 1942, 16, “Running Repairs,” 16 January 1942, 16, “Savoury Meat Puddings,” 23 January 1942, 15, “Don’t You Think Your Children Need God?” 23 January 1942, 5, Nan Gordon, “Where Are You Going?” 16 January 1942, 9. 18. Janice Winship, Inside Women’s Magazines, 85; Woman’s Own articles “Rosita Forbes’ Weekly Letter,” 9 January 1942, 21, “Readers Say,” 7 January 1946, 15 (reader), Nan Gordon, “Where Are You Going?” 16 January 1942, 9 (quote), “Life and You,” 30 January 1942, 22, Mary Grant, “Divorce,” 8 February 1946, 6.

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of certain sexual inhibitions by women that accompanied war but suggested that women train their energies in more productive ways; work was a cure for temptation. A reader asked, for example, “Now that so many women are working in factories, wives feel they may as well go out, too, and play the same game as their husbands. . . . Do you advise me to go to work and play up with men as [my husband] must be doing with women?” For Woman’s Own, Leonora Eyles replied, “I advise you to work, then you won’t have time for imaginary complaints. . . . Do you think a man earns his living and incidentally turns out munitions to keep you safe, by making love to women workers? Your mind wants a good spring-cleaning, my dear, and your body a job of work.” Another reader asked whether she ought to consent to sex with a departing serviceman. “Do you think there is ever any justification for a woman ‘sowing wild oats’ so to speak,” she asked. Eyles advised, “For a woman, ‘wild oats’ only brings remorse. . . . The opportunities for women your age now are immense . . . get into the ATS, or one of the other Services—but please not the way you suggest.” Thus, readers were not encouraged by Woman’s Own advice columnists to be promiscuous, but on the other hand, readers who had indulged in extramarital affairs and sought advice were told to forgive and forget. In comparison to the American Woman’s Home Companion, this British magazine encouraged its readers’ moral virtue but did not presume it.19 Whereas the British armed services publications Union Jack and Crusader as well as the American women’s magazine Woman’s Home Companion, by their negligible coverage, would have had their readers believe there were no Allied soldiers in London, Woman’s Own noted their presence, particularly in later issues. In a 1946 short story, one character remarked, “Heaps of girls meet soldiers in town, some every week, some oftener.” Romantic entanglements between young British women and foreign soldiers were acknowledged and accepted, though not always encouraged if the woman involved was young. For example, a sixteenyear-old girl in love with an American soldier wrote for advice when her parents refused to consent to their marriage. Mary Grant told her, “Write to each other and see how you feel when he has gone back. I think it 19. Woman’s Own articles “Life and You,” 9 January 1942, 22 (quotes), “Mary Grant’s Problem Page,” 22 February 1946, 18, and 27 September 1946, 22.

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quite likely that you will meet some English boy and settle down in this country, which would be nicer for you and your parents.” A nineteenyear-old woman in the same situation was advised to reconsider. Mary Grant wrote, “Nineteen is very young to marry; and it is very young to go so far away to start life in a new country.” Unlike the American mass media examined in this study, Woman’s Own did not laud these women for their pioneering spirit, though perhaps their young ages might be a reason why.20 In some cases, desperate readers confessed to illegitimate pregnancies by American soldiers and sought advice from Woman’s Own. The illegitimacy rate among civilian British women and GIs ran into the tens of thousands, according to one historian, and if a GI acknowledged paternity, the woman was owed an allowance by the U.S. Army. Yet, Woman’s Own told these readers not to marry unless they were “truly in love.” To one inquiry Mary Grant responded, “There is no hope of happiness with the baby’s father if you do not love him. . . . Send me your address and I will put you in touch with people who will help you in the coming months.” Grant presumably referred the woman to an adoption agency or clergy member. Although abortions did take place, the procedure was illegal in Britain at the time.21 Some readers wondered what kind of romantic future they had with the German or Italian prisoners of war who were put to work on British farms, at times side by side with the Women’s Land Army. A seventeenyear-old reader in love with a prisoner of war was told by a Woman’s Own advice writer, “The association is no deeper than romantic sympathy on your side and gratitude on his. It is a very dangerous situation that might bring you great unhappiness.”22 Some of the war brides’ recollections 20. Woman’s Own articles Dorothy Linsley, “I’m Going to See You Today,” 13 January 1946, 6, “Mary Grant’s Problem Page,” 13 January 1946, 22, and 19 January 1946, 22. 21. “Mary Grant’s Problem Page,” Woman’s Own, 1 March 1946, 18; Longmate, The GIs, 287, 286. 22. See, for example, “Mary Grant’s Problem Page,” Woman’s Own, 4 October 1946, 18 (quote), and 29 November 1946, 22; Longmate, How We Lived Then, 480–81; also Bob Moore, The British Empire and Its Italian Prisoners of War, 1940–1947 (New York: Palgrave, 2002); Matthew Barry Sullivan, Thresholds of Peace: Four Hundred Thousand German Prisoners and the People of Britain (London: H. Hamilton, 2002). For a contemporary article on the phenomenon, see Lynne Kelleher, “Lovetwaffe: Two Captured Second World War Pilots Fall in Love and Marry Irish,” London Mirror, 28 March 2004, 16.

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mention sexual relations between British women and the German or Italian POWs who provided labor at Tidworth Station and on board the bride ships.23 It could be argued that the British weekly discouraged only its youngest readers from foreign marriages, but upon closer examination it appears the tone of the advice hinged on the intended groom’s nationality. For example, a twenty-two-year-old reader was cautioned against marriage to a Polish soldier. Mary Grant told her, “If you really love the Pole, love him enough to go to a strange country and give up your own nationality, then you should marry him. But are you certain it is not the fascination of a foreign accent and a different outlook that attracts you?” Other readers were cautioned about foreign marriages with the information that British citizenship for Polish husbands was unlikely. On the other hand, Canadian soldiers, as part of the British Empire, were an exception. Content in Woman’s Own in 1942 and 1946 made several references to real and imagined civilian romances with Canadian soldiers, who had arrived in the British Isles ahead of the Americans. In the fiction series “Spinster’s Progress,” for example, the main character regrets having turned down a marriage proposal from Slim Hanson, a Canadian World War I veteran. In the suspense story “Escape from Love,” a British woman is romanced by a Canadian on leave in London. A February 1946 advice column item encouraged a woman married to a Canadian airman to overcome her trepidation and join him in Canada.24 And a June 1946 item about going abroad noted there were already “thousands of dependents of Canadian servicemen” awaiting passage.25 Thus, the magazine showed a preference for certain Allies over 23. For example, Shukert and Scibetta, War Brides of World War II, 42, 53. For another perspective, see Carl Von Ossietzky, “Forbidden Company: Romantic Relationships between Germans and Foreigners, 1939 to 1945,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 (April 2002): 201–23. The author considers relationships between Germans and foreign laborers or POWs in that country. 24. Woman’s Own articles “Mary Grant’s Problem Page,” 22 March 1946, 18, and 31 March 1946, 22 (quote), Berta Ruck, “Spinster’s Progress, Part IV,” 23 January 1942, 10, Margaret Pulsford, “Escape from Love,” 1 November 1946, 7, “Mary Grant’s Problem Page,” 8 February 1946, 22. 25. Victoria Stevenson, “Women at Work Overseas,” Woman’s Own, 7 June 1946, 8. In World War II, 48,000 British women married Canadian soldiers. Joyce Hibbert, ed., The War Brides. In August 1946, there were 60,324 Canadian dependents in Britain awaiting transport. Peggy O’Hara, From Romance to Reality: Stories of Canadian WWII War Brides (Ontario: Cobalt Book Shop, 1983), 311.

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others. It should be noted that, in 1947, the British government encouraged emigration to Canada as a means to relieve domestic shortages.26 Coverage of the United States and Americans in Woman’s Own for the years 1942 and 1946 showed a preference, too. The magazine encouraged Anglo-American romances with its flattering coverage of everything American. Like the Times (London) of the same period, the editor of Woman’s Own in 1942 supported the hospitality program and suggested that readers open their homes to Allied servicemen: “I would ask my warmhearted and responsive readers to do their best about offering friendliness in their homes whenever possible to these boys, somebody’s son, husbands or sweethearts—who feel pretty homesick. . . . just an invitation to a cup of tea at a friendly fireside now and again would make a difference.” Woman’s Own repeatedly emphasized that the United States and Britain were engaged in a mutual struggle against a shared enemy. The British needed U.S. support, and the magazine encouraged partnerships, stressing what the two countries had in common and what they could learn from each other. Suggestions included cooperation between American and British women’s organizations and the launch of women’s support groups based on an American model. In her weekly column in 1942 Rosita Forbes wrote that Britain and the United States were “completely united” and “shared a future.” In 1946 she wrote that any differences were gone; there were “no foreigners anymore.” And as a Woman’s Own correspondent sailed to America with a contingent of war brides, the writer noted that the fortunes of the two countries “were bound up in a life or death link.” By constructing U.S.-British relations as a shared struggle toward a common future, the magazine ultimately encouraged and made it “safe” for British women to fraternize with and marry U.S. soldiers.27 26. J. B. Priestley, “A Briton’s Faith in Britain’s Future,” New York Times Magazine, 31 August 1947, 6. The article includes a photo of a storefront with an overhead banner, “Emigrate by Air Now to Ontario, Canada.” Another photo shows a crowded government agency where young people are applying for visas to emigrate to the dominions. See also Brinley Thomas, “Must Britain Plan Mass Emigration?” Foreign Affairs 27 (April 1949): 475–85. The Royal Commission on Population was established in 1944 to consider the ways that emigration would affect British population and the local economy. 27. Woman’s Own articles “Between You and Me,” 16 January 1942, 3 (quote), and 23 January 1942, 3, “What Women Are Doing and Saying,” 9 January 1942, 16, “It’s Rosita Forbes’ Weekly Letter,” 30 January 1942, 9, Rosita Forbes, “One World or No World?” 14 July 1946, 13, Victoria Stevenson, “With the Brides to America,” 22 March 1946, 8.

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Even more directly, the magazine reminded readers of the shortage of British men. “Nine of ten men are away,” the editor wrote in 1942 and told women that to isolate themselves in wartime by denying themselves the company of others was unhealthy. “You cannot grow much as a person if you shut yourself away from men and women who badly need the friendship of happy people,” she wrote, just as the Americans began to arrive. Yet, perhaps the most blatant encouragement of Anglo-American marriages appeared in the January 16, 1942, issue of Woman’s Own, just as the GIs arrived in the United Kingdom. Rosita Forbes wrote, “American husbands are A1,” adding that she was envious of their wives. In comparison to British men, American husbands were more companionable, more helpful at home with cooking and cleaning, and more romantic, Forbes told British readers.28 Other content in the British weekly demystified and glamorized the United States, such as the romantic fiction piece “Wall Street Galahad,” set in New York, and by the war’s end a “Letter from Hollywood,” which promised “glimpses into the lives of men and women whose names are known to millions of filmgoers all over the world.” In April 1946, Woman’s Own published a lengthy article about New York City, “a fantastic world . . . the very air is full of vitality and yet you feel braced and confident.” The correspondent described the “kindness and generosity of Americans,” the range of foreigners in their midst, and the contentedness of immigrants-turned-citizens. She cited a higher standard of living compared to England and, specifically, the abundance of everything Britain was short of: restaurants, women’s clothes, cosmetics, and “the greatest variety of food I have ever seen.” To British women still wanting for basic items, a November 1946 editorial proclaimed the United States a land of plenty, where “American women can buy anything they please.”29 By comparison, the postwar rationing in Britain was “worse than the war itself,” according to a February 1946 Time article. The news magazine noted,

28. Woman’s Own articles “Between You and Us,” 30 January 1942, 2, “Rosita Forbes’ Weekly Letter,” 16 January 1942, 17. 29. Woman’s Own articles Maysie Greig, “Wall Street Galahad,” 30 January 1942, 5, Sheilah Graham, “Letter from Hollywood,” 27 December 1946, 10, also Walter Weir, “Hollywood Stand-In,” 23 August 1946, 7, Victoria Stevenson, “New York,” 5 April 1946, 5, “Between Friends,” 15 November 1946, 18.

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“there is no guarantee that the situation would not get worse.” British housewives shopping for food, “their patience and their feet exhausted,” were still made to queue in endless lines daily. In fact, the food shortages were so severe that the government offered free ammunition to Britons who wanted to shoot squirrels for sustenance.30 Indeed, to the readers of Woman’s Own, the United States in 1946 must have sounded like a paradise. The war brides who sailed into New York harbors were recipients of America’s bounty. New York “must be a very rich state, there is so much of everything,” Avice Wilson observed. Another GI bride described her idyllic life in a May 1946 item in Woman’s Own. According to the editor, she had written to say “how happily she is settling down in her new life. A ‘sweet mother in law’ comes into her vivid and entertaining letter.” Thus, any fear a British woman might have had about marrying an American and going to the United States was allayed by descriptions of that country’s prosperity, particularly when it was juxtaposed with Britain’s postwar prospects.31 In March 1946 a Woman’s Own correspondent accompanied a group of two thousand war brides and their six hundred children bound for New York on the RMS Queen Mary. In her description of the journey, the reporter framed the brides as housewives-in-training, as Woman’s Home Companion did. Victoria Stevenson noted that the women attended “Preparation for Marriage” classes and lectures on cooking and American customs. But she also admired the “pluck and spirit of adventure of the old pioneers” and suggested the brides were part of a tradition of heroic immigrants. By describing the courtesies extended to the brides before and during the voyage, the article also framed them as special, just as the New York Times had done. Stevenson wrote, “Even the Immigration Officer made a special trip so that brides could be processed aboard ship in comfort and thus avoid a long wait in dealing with the Immigration 30. “Great Britain,” Time, 18 February 1946, 29; “Lining up for Food Assailed in Britain,” New York Times, 10 July 1945, 7; “Great Britain, Tarnished Grandeur,” Time, 4 March 1946, 27. 31. Avice R. Wilson to “Mummie,” 10 August 1946, 86/68/1, IWM; “Between Friends,” Woman’s Own, 3 May 1946, 3. Wilson sailed from Southampton on the SS General W. Goethals to New York, with three hundred brides, forty-five children, and forty-three GIs and navy personnel returning home. She and her husband made their home in New Jersey.

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Authorities ashore.” She added that the ship’s staff had been “handpicked for their kindness and understanding. Indeed, many stewardesses had been specially recalled for this trip.”32 Thus, marriage to American men accorded British women special privileges that were in contrast to any difficulties they might have endured during the war. Anglo-American marriages were sanctioned, and it is important to note that there was no consideration in Woman’s Own of the effect the brides’ departure might have on the morale of returning British troops. Coverage of the war brides in Woman’s Own was the most complimentary among the mass media studied. The magazine emphasized repeatedly that the United States and Britain were locked in a shared present and future. While advice columnists frowned on wartime marriages in general, and marriages to Poles and Germans specifically, it did not disparage relationships with American men. Indeed, Woman’s Own encouraged women, in the absence of “nine out of ten” British men and the reality of a postwar shortage of eligible men, to seek out relationships with these allied strangers.33 Further, articles that depicted the United States as a land of plenty must have contributed to British women’s desire to travel or emigrate to America after enduring the hardships of wartime life. Even if marriage had been delayed in wartime, for readers of Woman’s Own, it remained a goal—and American men offered these women the brighter future.

32. Victoria Stevenson, “With the Brides to America,” Woman’s Own, 22 March 1946, 9. 33. Marwick, Century of Total War, 257. The author cites the number of British military deaths at three hundred thousand.

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“The pretty sisters of some of my friends became American brides and each Christmas sent sad letters and bits of shiny Americana to their families. . . . The rest of us boys were deeply jealous and wished we had pretty sisters.” “A few complaints about these marriages have come from parents and American girls. But anyone interested in international good will favors them enthusiastically.”

onditions in Britain were at their bleakest by the time American troops arrived in 1942. The country had been at war with the Axis powers for nearly three years. London was devastated by the German blitz, in which scores of men, women, and children had been killed. Some families had already been separated for years: wives from soldierhusbands who were rarely accorded home leave, mothers from their young children who were evacuated to safer locales, at least that was the hope. On the home front, severe rationing and shortages had rendered the British diet both unappetizing and inadequate.1 But as foreign uniforms began to crowd the city streets and spill over into Britain’s rural towns, things began to look up, even if temporarily. Allied military victories in Africa and France buoyed the British morale. The civilian casualty rate throughout Britain fell significantly, from about 20,000 in 1941 to 3,000 in 1942. In London alone, there were 27 civilian

C

1. Epigraphs are from Michael Foreman, After the War Was Over, 88, and Kent, “Brides from Overseas,” 98. 121

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deaths in 1942 compared to 6,487 the previous year. Military bases began to resonate with the sounds of music and laughter, as foreign soldiers and local women danced the night away. Britons opened their homes to the new arrivals, motivated by curiosity, government appeals, and quite probably, their guests’ generosity with rationed goods.2 For many American soldiers who were young, naïve, and far away from home for the first time in their lives, war-era Britain proved an exhilarating experience. The uncertainty of war inspired a carefree, “live for today, tomorrow we die” attitude that manifested itself in sexual promiscuity, as Fred Huston, a soldier, explained. An army survey later showed that many GIs freely indulged their sexual impulses. Indeed, a woman needed only to show “the slightest sign of being willing” for a soldier to pursue her.3 As if they required any further encouragement, soldiers could look to the armed services publications, Yank and Stars and Stripes, which framed British women as sexually available and eager. Whereas the U.S. military had long exercised concern over its soldiers’ private lives, now, inconsistent messages about the military’s stance on venereal disease and marriages abroad left soldiers unsure of—and perhaps indifferent to— the rules on fraternization with British civilian women. Dating practices were transformed, as the GIs replaced the politesse of British courtship with a casual style that suited the transience of wartime. “A date . . . exists for itself, just an evening in time, in which two people dance or go to the cinema, enjoy soft-drinks together while they talk to each other in a gay, wise-cracking style,” Margaret Mead explained in an effort to help Britons better understand the Americans in their country.4 Many British women happily adopted this style of dating, not only because it offered a change from British men, but also because it fit well with their own newfound social and sexual freedoms. As the first group to be conscripted for war work, young single women were highly visible in public spaces when the GIs arrived. Some women had been relocated for work and thus enjoyed an unprecedented degree of independence. Further, voluntary war work included providing entertainment for the foreign sol2. Goralski, World War II Almanac, 429. 3. Fred Huston, “My Battle from Britain,” in Hale and Turner, The Yanks Are Coming, 102; Jim Kurz, “D-Day, Arnheim,” ibid., 136 (quote). 4. Mead, American Troops, 10.

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diers, at Red Cross–sponsored dances, for example. Some of the brides’ journals reflect the ease with which they and their friends picked up Allied soldiers for a night of dancing, movies, and perhaps something more. Many of these romantic relationships developed into marriage, prompting seventy thousand women to emigrate to the United States. British women were the largest single group of war brides to come to America after World War II. Across the country, transatlantic “bride clubs” were formed and continue to meet even now, sixty years after the end of the war. The American presence in wartime Britain had a historical legacy. More than one million troops had passed through Britain during World War I, and in that war too they had left with foreign brides, mostly French and German. But the Anglo-American encounter in that conflict was brief. In 1914 most soldiers were passing through on their way to France. In World War II, when France was occupied by Germany, Britain became the Allied forces’ front line.5 This time, the concentration of American troops in Britain was greater and more intense, and the number of Anglo-American marriages reflected that. Newspapers and magazines had a hand in discouraging and encouraging those relationships, too. The research undertaken for this study into how wartime mass media framed these relationships between 1942 and 1946 shows that American armed services publications hewed closely to military policy, evidence of official control over their content. But so too did the New York Times, which suggests that the wartime government exercised control over this privately owned daily newspaper as well. When the military banned marriages abroad, these publications collectively framed British women as sexual threats, “frowzy dames” looking to separate a GI from his paycheck. Media coverage adopted a more positive frame only when authorities could no longer deny the marriages and begrudgingly arranged the brides’ transport to the States, a complex and expensive undertaking. The mass media generated early concerns among their audiences over the kind of women soldiers were fraternizing with, but these concerns were mitigated when the New York Times and armed services publications 5. American soldiers married about eight thousand foreign women and brought them to the United States in 1918. Kent, “Brides from Overseas,” 97.

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reframed the brides as good wives and mothers, a strategy almost certainly intended to help the U.S. military save face. After all, how would readers react to the news that military authorities were funding transportation for the same “frowzy dames” they had warned soldiers to avoid? Further, legitimizing Anglo-American romances may have worked to lessen criticism concerning the thousands of illegitimate children left behind, including more than five hundred children of black soldiers and white mothers many of whom became public wards after their mothers were ostracized by families and neighbors. At least the military could show it was doing the honorable thing with regard to some families. Framing the brides as wives and mothers also helped to justify their preferential treatment as passengers to the United States on military ships and planes, often ahead of demobilized soldiers.6 If the mass media represent by their coverage what is accepted and valued, as Gaye Tuchman has written, then the war brides were characterized by neither of those qualities in Britain. In comparison to the U.S. publications, British mass media, with few exceptions, preferred to ignore the war brides. Wartime paper shortages were significant and might be one reason for that choice in the midst of other pressing news, but this is not the entire explanation. What minimal coverage the Times (London) and London Telegraph did provide framed the brides as an “American problem,” particularly when they protested in the London streets for passage to the States. Further, British armed services publications neglected altogether any substantive discussion of the GI presence in London, although civilians insisted “they were everywhere.” Instead, the armed services publications emphasized how the Americans were supporting British forces and even solicited pleasant anecdotes from readers about how the two countries’ troops were getting along or what they were learning from one another. Wartime censorship did not preclude Union Jack, or for that matter the Times (London), from acknowledging that U.S. troops had arrived in Britain for training. But with the emphasis on maintaining troop morale coming from top commanders such as General Bernard Montgomery, Union Jack and Crusader assured their military audience that American troops had come to fight, not to 6. “The Babies They Left behind Them,” Life, 23 August 1943, 41.

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seduce civilian women. This was an important message when British military authorities were also contending with enemy propaganda that tried to undermine Allied collaboration by exploiting soldiers’ fears over women’s infidelity with foreign soldiers. There was an exception among British mass media, though. A women’s magazine, Woman’s Own, framed American men as ideal spouses and framed emigration to the United States as a grand adventure. As espoused by mass media, gendered ideas concerning women’s roles in wartime often conflicted with their lived realities. Woman’s Own was a traditional publication that skillfully negotiated this fracture. In fact, it was the only media examined in this study to do that. Woman’s Own held to the accepted wartime discourse that women should be workers but, above all, wives and mothers. Yet the magazine was candid about how those roles could realistically be fulfilled in World War II–era Britain. Among the many contradictions recognized by the magazine was that the mobilization of women for work gave them unprecedented financial and social freedom, but that this was a shift occurring in the absence of most eligible British men and in the overwhelming presence of American soldiers. An official expectation was that women would remain chaste and focused on marriage and motherhood, yet the government also told them it was their patriotic duty to entertain and, in some cases, also house foreign soldiers. In editorials, advice columns, and romantic fiction, Woman’s Own encouraged its readers to seize the opportunities that war made available to them. If romance with an American soldier was one of them, then its readers need not demur. While coverage in the British daily newspapers practiced a form of “symbolic annihilation” by trivializing the war brides, Woman’s Own told its readers that marriage to an American not only was safe and acceptable but could produce a union more satisfying than with British men, whom it noted were less helpful and affectionate by comparison. Was Woman’s Own a subversive publication? In some ways it was, and still the magazine had its limits. A goal of British propaganda and, by extension, British mass media was to foster self-sufficiency on the home front. So, while the magazine acknowledged the appeal of American men, it stopped short of suggesting that women might rely on AngloAmerican romances for financial relief of wartime conditions, although some brides’ diaries suggest this was just what they did. Like Woman’s

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Home Companion (its American counterpart), Woman’s Own was a magazine whose readers were united in the traditional domestic pursuits of marriage and family, and so, editorial content was obliged to follow certain gendered conventions. Editors could support women’s temporary war work but were less encouraging if this work meant leaving children in the care of others, for example. At the foundation of its support for Anglo-American relationships was the editorial conviction that domesticity was a woman’s true calling in peacetime; war had simply changed the landscape of available partners. But the magazine did not support all foreign marriages, which suggests that Woman’s Own responded to something more than just editorial conventions or the wartime availability of eligible men. It did not encourage readers to pursue relationships with Polish soldiers, for example, although they were allies, or Axis prisoners of war who, by some accounts, were friendly and loyal to the British families they met and worked for. Rather, the magazine showed a preference for American husbands (followed by men from commonwealth nations such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), reflecting the continued British dependence on postwar assistance from North America. When the Truman administration abruptly terminated lend-lease aid to Britain, as required by law, the United States extended a 3,750 million dollar loan to help Britain’s troubled postwar economy; Canada offered 1,250 million dollars.7 In this way and others, the countries would maintain a political and economic relationship for years to come. Woman’s Own, by identifying acceptable and unacceptable partners for its readers, also manifested the hierarchy of post–World War II power. America and American husbands were “A1.” The United States certainly experienced its own postwar difficulties, such as providing adequate housing and employment for its veterans, but it escaped the devastation suffered by the European countries. In fact, Michael Elliot wrote, “The war was something of a savior of the American economy. It brought new demand for products after the long Depression and it turned farmboys and city girls into skilled industrial workers.”8 Woman’s

7. Bentley B. Gilbert, Britain since 1918, 157. 8. Michael Elliott, The Day before Yesterday: Reconsidering America’s Past, Rediscovering the Present, 49.

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Own editors did not downplay the fact that 1946 America was a far more prosperous setting than Britain. British women had endured dreadful conditions and severe shortages throughout the war, while by comparison their American counterparts had made very few material sacrifices. The magazine’s stories about U.S. cities, along with its references to American affluence, made emigration by marriage an acceptable and tempting prospect for readers, despite the military’s early insistence that foreign brides and fiancées would not be assured transportation or citizenship. It is the case that wartime mass media spoke to discrete audiences in distinct ways. If marriage and motherhood were to remain the typical experience for British women, then mass media targeting that group would show them how to attain those things. Similarly, if the military eschewed marriage but recognized soldiers’ sexual “needs,” then armed services publications would identify the most suitable temporary companions. Yet, this present study has also shown the ways that gender, as a system of relationships, was manifested in all the news frames, regardless of their source. Woman’s Own, for example, acknowledged the complex demands on women’s wartime lives but still promoted a heterosexual norm of marriage and family. Armed services publications, although intended to serve the military community, spoke almost exclusively to servicemen, not women. Moreover, these publications spoke to men about women and framed them primarily as sexual objects available to men—or, in the latter part of the war, as good candidates for marriage and motherhood. Daily newspapers, such as the New York Times, followed a similar line. Regardless of the audience, men and women were framed in a way that did not encourage them to cross proscribed gendered boundaries. A man was a soldier who belonged at the battlefront, a woman the custodian of the home front. If, as Margaret Higonnet has argued, war ritually marks the gender of all participants, then wartime mass media similarly imprint gender on the issues and events they cover. These gendered news frames were persistent, and they carried over into peacetime, when official controls of information were discontinued and mass media on both sides of the Atlantic were free to report the war brides’ story with new or different frames. In 1946 the quantity of news items mentioning the war brides increased in the London papers as the number of bride ships increased. But the items were brief, as before. The

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New York Times continued its 1945 frame and described the brides in 1946 as wives and mothers, intent on becoming Americanized. Thus, a wartime insistence that women hold to prescribed roles was perpetuated after war’s end, regardless of how women had actually experienced the war. Gender frames may have had less to do with the war itself than with mass media’s custom of following conventions instead of forging new ways of coverage. Had U.S. and British mass media expanded their frames or adopted new ones after 1945, the brides’ story might have looked very different. This finding of persistent gender frames underscores the importance of personal writing as a means to fill in gaps of information left by mass media. The brides’ letters and diaries provide a way to clarify how they understood official expectations and how they lived their wartime lives. Some brides provided descriptions of how they met their husbands, showing that the government’s call for civilian hospitality to the foreign troops was a starting point for many marriages. Other letters describe family reactions to Anglo-American marriages, a personal dimension to the war brides’ experience that was rarely found in mass media coverage. Still other journals and letters contradict mass media accounts of the bride ships as comfortable and the processing of their documents for travel as smooth and efficient. In studies of gender, we consider power relations and how they organize social institutions and individuals’ lives. The brides’ personal writing suggests that material shortages created one incentive for AngloAmerican liaisons, a connection not described in mass media other than in the context of prostitution. British civilian women’s personal writing describes the importance of the GIs’ relative wealth in the midst of Britain’s wartime shortages. The burden of Britain’s austerity program fell squarely on the shoulders of the women, who endured lengthy queues to purchase the minimum of household goods and were required to make do without many basic consumer items. At the peak of rationing, an adult was allowed just two pints of milk per week, and a woman was expected to prepare a week’s worth of meals from the quantity of food previously reserved for a single dinner. Clothing shortages were significant under the government directive to “make do and mend.” An elaborate points system limited men and women to one complete outfit a year.

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Some women complained that their inability to purchase decent clothes and cosmetics had turned all the country gray and reduced Britons to “a common level of dowdiness.”9 By comparison the Americans had easy access to an endless supply of rationed goods, and many women’s wartime accounts note this as an advantage to befriending the troops. This was the impetus for some Anglo-American relationships, yet the American armed forces publications and the New York Times characterized all of it as predatory on the women’s part. Perhaps the women were indeed opportunistic, but as this study notes, one British woman defended her choice to date Americans as one that was mutually beneficial. She wrote in a letter home that, as long as she was hungry and the Americans were paying, she was glad to keep them company. It is curious that some soldiers were oblivious to the practical impact shortages had, or even to how resourceful British women could be. Asked to procure a blanket for a young woman, one soldier could not understand why she made it into a coat; he thought it purely a fashion statement. The fact was that an American soldier made sixty dollars to a British soldier’s twelve dollars, and family allowances were similarly disparate. Writing to his British wife, one newly married GI told her to expect an allotment check for one hundred dollars, about twenty-two pounds sterling, then fifty dollars a month thereafter. By no means was that a windfall, but in 1943 the wife of a British serviceman could expect a family allowance of only about five dollars a week. The basic rate for a British woman working full-time in engineering was just one pound sterling a week in 1941. That the armed services publications would characterize British women who pursued relationships with GIs as predatory or, worse, “Yankee Mad” denied the reality of their lives under the wartime austerity program and ignored the power that American men wielded in the gendered system of war.10 Another troubling theme in the coverage of British brides or brides-tobe was that women were to blame for the spread of venereal disease. This research asked if there might be a historic constancy in coverage of the 9. Marwick, Home Front, 89. 10. Henry Stevens, “The Slapton Sands Affair,” in Hale and Turner, The Yanks Are Coming, 130; Ted Seckle to Stella, 27 January 1945 (also 12 January 1945), 82/32/1, IWM; Reynolds, Rich Relations, 270; Goodman, Women, Sexuality, and War, 46.

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war brides, and this frame was in fact a continuation of the World War I–era discourse on women’s sexuality. As in that earlier conflict, the rate of infection spiked upon the American troops’ arrival in Britain. In fact, the rate of syphilis had increased among British men and women between 1939 and 1942 but then leveled off among civilian men. However, it continued to increase among civilian women in 1942, and the rate had tripled by 1943 among U.S. Army personnel in Britain. The dramatic increase prompted a large-scale awareness campaign by the British government, which also suggested “easy girlfriends” were the cause.11 With the exception of British armed services publications, which did not address the issue of venereal disease, the mass media in this study were consistent in their denunciation of women as carriers. Making women and girls responsible for the high rates of venereal disease and prostitution shifted blame from the GIs, who were both emboldened by armed services publications to pursue local women and then accorded discreet treatment upon infection. That mass media distinguished the women as “amateurs” only encouraged the public to view them as misguided, or charity cases for reform. Further, working mothers were blamed for not providing enough supervision of their daughters, a fact that affirmed a woman’s place in the domestic sphere and punished women who fulfilled official expectations by taking on wartime work in the public sphere. Petra Goedde showed in her work that there was far more to the relationships between Allied soldiers and German women than “a little bit of frat,” and this study argues the same for Anglo-American relationships. While some writers insist on romanticizing them, the relationships deserve to be understood within their larger context. Goedde wrote that Allied soldiers entering Germany at the end of World War II confronted a “feminized” population in that it was weak, submissive, and disproportionately female. Because these Germans were such a dramatic contrast to the government’s image of a militant and monolithic people, soldiers were reluctant to enforce the harsh occupation policy. Moreover, the saddened state of postwar Germany and the people’s eager desire for peace 11. Minns, Bombers and Mash, 179–90. The author cites Ministry of Health statistics for syphilis and gonorrhea infection rates.

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encouraged the development of friendships with German civilians, mostly women, even in violation of the army’s fraternization ban. Goedde argues that fraternization was further encouraged by a hypocritical army policy. For example, soldiers were warned against any association with German civilians but were still issued a language guide that provided the vocabulary necessary for casual conversation. Too, soldiers were prohibited from marrying German women, but the same guide explained how immigration policy affected foreign brides.12 Similar contradictions can be seen in the British war brides’ experience. The U.S. Army discouraged fraternization between soldiers and British civilians and briefly imposed a marriage ban, though for reasons other than those invoked in Germany. Military forces were joining in a massive war effort and few GIs had combat experience; their minds needed to be focused on preparing for battle and their bodies kept healthy. Yet, armed services publications for a brief ten days framed British women as suitable wives. When Yank and Stars and Stripes went on to discourage soldier-civilian romances, they remained preoccupied with sex and still framed the women as sexually available. Further, in mass-mediated campaigns, the British government urged women into public spaces and promoted a hospitality campaign that encouraged women to entertain Allied troops as a patriotic gesture. Both measures were bound to launch at least some Anglo-American romances, particularly since they were imposed in the absence of most eligible British men. The British government broke with official policy when it required that wives of British servicemen serving overseas billet American soldiers. It was a practice that invited adulterous relationships, although the army threatened cheating wives with the loss of their family allowances. A similar hypocrisy suffused descriptions of British women as predators while mass media continued to glorify marriage and motherhood. In wartime, women have historically been made symbols of the nation in propaganda and political rhetoric. A woman’s proper place as a custodian of the home front is pervasive in wartime mass media; she and her children become the ideal for which soldiers are fighting. Thus, in this construct, both motherhood and a woman’s “waiting state” are essential. 12. Goedde, GIs and Germans, 44, 50.

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Her celibacy is a measure of victory and her infidelity is a sign of defeat. Yet this idealized and heterocentric representation did not square with the reality of British women’s daily lives. The shared terror and exhilaration of wartime Britain undoubtedly led to sexual intimacy between some civilian women and foreign soldiers. Further, if a woman sought marriage and motherhood as the government encouraged, she did so in the absence of most British men and the overwhelming presence of foreign soldiers. Woman’s Own was the only publication to recognize this fact in its editorial content. Jean Bethke Elshtain has described war as a circle, surrounded by everwidening circles. Throughout history, women have traditionally been identified as noncombatants because they are far removed from the innermost circle where strategies are plotted and battles are waged. Yet, “women still encircle, they are needed to keep the whole thing going,” Elshtain wrote.13 Studies of women and war, then, help us to understand better what goes on at the midpoint of the war circle and why. Moreover, they reveal the social construction of women’s noncombatant status. That is, irrespective of whether women take up arms, they are integral to war, always required to support the nation-state in ways prescribed by gender. These boundaries are described and reinforced in mass media. In World War II–era Britain, women were expected to maintain the home front, join the workforce, and take on additional war work as ambulance drivers or fire watchers, for example. The government constructed civilian hospitality as a patriotic duty, so women were also expected to entertain, and in some instances house, the arriving foreign troops. Thus, the experiences of the British war brides make up one of those concentric rings, perhaps not a part of the inner circle as Elshtain described it, but still a part of the war. Like the double helix Margaret and Patrice Higonnet have used to explain women’s status in war, Elshtain’s war circle provides a way to plot the progress and regress of women’s standing and their representation in wartime. Both configurations remind us that “women’s history” is not the study of women alone but an analysis of a complex system of processes, identities, and institutions. Mass media are part of that system, and yet 13. Elshtain, Women and War, 183.

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their importance is often neglected or underestimated in historical inquiries of women and war. By explaining political objectives and military strategies, identifying leaders and policymakers, and articulating what is expected of civilians, the mass media convey ideas and ideals about gender roles. As this research shows, the boundaries of the war circle are mapped and reinforced when mass media suggest something about the proper location of men and women in wartime. Mass media coverage of the British war brides elucidates the close relationship between mass media and politics in wartime, as news frames shifted, sometimes rapid-fire, to reflect changing military policies about fraternization, for example, or to make the passage and presence of foreign war brides agreeable to an American audience. The difference between the British and American mass media framing of the war brides demonstrates that the publications responded in distinct ways to the needs of their audiences yet unanimously imposed gendered boundaries on their subjects and readers. This fact underscores the importance of placing mass media coverage into its proper context. As Christine Gledhill and Gillian Swanson wrote, social policies and cultural representations reflect and reinforce each other.14 Or (returning to Elshtain’s war circle), social, political, and military conditions are among the rings that radiate outward from the core yet ever encircle it. Earlier published work has rendered Anglo-American wartime marriages as nostalgic accounts of love affairs carried out in the upheaval of war. In a recent incarnation, the war brides’ story is even told as a musical revue.15 Scholarly work has depicted the war brides’ experience as being more closely linked to immigration history than military or journalism history, yet in fact it belongs to all of these disciplines. This study expands research that recognizes and challenges the primacy of masculinity in war, joining with other studies that consider the impact of war on civilian women a vital counterweight to male-centered narratives. The study recognizes, too, the constancy of the war-bride experience. Two 14. Christine Gledhill and Gillian Swanson, eds., Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and the British Cinema in the Second World War, 8. 15. Gary Smith, “‘War Brides’ Tells of Life and Love,” Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator, 23 September 2002, E1. The reviewer wrote that the musical was “bursting with life and love.”

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current wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, are an opportunity to assess contemporary mass media coverage of outsiders and marriage by emigration. A November 2003 newspaper article about an Iraqi war bride suggests that 1940s-era coverage of war brides as predators has, unfortunately, persisted. The bride, a French-trained Iraqi doctor who worked alongside the U.S. military, was suspected of using marriage as a “one way ticket out of Baghdad.” Soldiers had been warned not to fraternize with civilians. The groom’s military commander, who refused permission to marry, was concerned that foreign marriages would distract soldiers and compromise their safety.16 Different war, same argument. This book argues above all for a broader interpretation of what constitutes war and wartime experience. Wars affect societies, not a select group of soldiers and politicians. Indeed, when Winston Churchill invoked a “People’s War,” he meant to enlist the contributions of all Britons, regardless of race, age, gender, or class. Without the compliance of civilians on the home front, the Allied war effort would surely have had a different outcome. Thus, each concentric ring of the war circle represents a necessary part of the larger history, the events or “noncombatant” experiences that have been trivialized or condemned. The work of history scholarship is to show how those concentric rings relate to the center of war and how they are arranged. Mass media are the instruments that map its boundaries. The British war brides have been called an aftereffect of war, yet they represent a phenomenon that was provoked by war and fostered in wartime mass media coverage. Their story radiates from war and in turn, back toward its center.

16. Tom Zucco, “For War Bride, No Wedded Bliss Yet,” St. Petersburg Times, 12 November 2003, 1B.

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Selected Bibliography

D

Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum, London, England (IWM), private papers. Doris Norley Amsbaugh Pauline Arnold Marie E. Boissy Anne Chalmers Irene Corry Doris Farrell Arthur S. Harris to Pamela Harris Phyllis Marian Higgins to Stephen Higgins Joan Kirby Official Papers Relating to a G.I. Bride Margaret Paroutaud Ted Seckle to Stella Seckle Avice R. Wilson War Bride Operation ETO, Hazel Braugh Record Center and Archives, American Red Cross, Falls Church, Virginia. Schueller, Kay, to Charlotte Johnson. Winston Churchill Memorial and Library, Fulton, Missouri. Swallow, Betty, to Helen Bradley.

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Manuscripts Nash, Philleo. Staff Member and Office Files, Harry S. Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, Independence, Missouri (HSTL). Truman, Harry S. Bill file, White House Records Office Files, HSTL. ———. Official File (OF), Presidential Papers, White House Central Files, HSTL.

Reports File Reports. Mass-Observation Archives (M-OA), University of Sussex Library, Sussex, England. Home Intelligence Reports. Public Record Office, National Archives, Kew, London, England. Wartime Social Survey. Special Collections, M-OA.

Magazines, Newspapers, and Newsletters Alexander’s Rattle. Newsletter of the USS E. B. Alexander. Private papers, 1946. IWM. Christian Science Monitor. 1942–1946. Collier’s. 1942–1946. Crusader. 1942–1946. British Military History Collection, British Library, London, England. Editor and Publisher. 1942–1946. Holbrook Crier. Newsletter of the USS Holbrook. Private papers, 1946. IWM. Ladies’ Home Journal. 1942–1946. Life. 1942–1946. London Telegraph. 1942–1946. New York Times. 1942–1946. Reader’s Digest. 1942–1946. Stars and Stripes. 1942–1946.


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Time magazine. 1942–1946. Times (London). 1942–1946. Union Jack. 1942–1946. British Military History Collection, British Library, London, England. Woman’s Home Companion. 1942–1946. Woman’s Own. 1942, 1946. Newspaper Collection, British Library, London, England; Special Collections, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Yank. 1942–1946.

Pamphlets and Military Guides “A Bride’s Guide to the U.S.A.” London: Good Housekeeping and the U.S. Office of War Information, 1946. The Officer’s Guide. Harrisburg, PA: Military Service, 1944. “Welcome, Wives of U.S. Servicemen.” January 1946. Washington, DC: Hazel Braugh Record Center and Archives, American Red Cross, Falls Church, Virginia.

Books Aldgate, Anthony, and Jeffrey Richards. Britain Can Take It: The British Cinema in the Second World War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986. Banta, Martha. Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Bauer, Ingrid. “‘ The GI Bride’: On the (De)Construction of an Austrian Post-War Stereotype.” In When the War Was Over: Women, War, and Peace in Europe, 1940–1945, ed. Claire Duchen and Irene BandhauerSchöffmann, 222–32. London: Leicester University Press, 2000. Biddle, Margaret. The Women of England. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941. Boxer, Marilyn J., and Jean H. Quataert, eds. Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World, 1500 to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.


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Braithwaite, Brian. Women’s Magazines: The First Three Hundred Years. London: Peter Owen, 1995. Briggs, Susan. The Home Front: War Years in Britain, 1939–1945. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975. Broad, Lewis. Anthony Eden: Chronicle of a Career. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1957. Calder, Angus. The People’s War: Britain, 1939–1945. London: Jonathon Cape, 1969. Chamberlin, E. R. Life in Wartime Britain. London: B. T. Batsford, 1972. Churchill, Winston. Memoirs of the Second World War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959. Clarke, Peter. Hope and Glory: Britain, 1900–1990. London: Penguin, 1996. Cooke, Miriam, and Angela Woolcott, eds. Gendering War Talk. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Costello, John. Love, Sex, and War: Changing Values, 1939–1945. London: Pan, 1985. ———. Virtue under Fire: How World War II Changed Our Social and Sexual Attitudes. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985. Cull, Nicholas John. Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign against American “Neutrality” in World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Darrow, Margaret H. French Women and the First World War: War Stories of the Home Front. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Davis, Kenneth S. FDR: The War President, 1940–1943. New York: Random House, 2000. Desmond, Robert. Tides of War: World News Reporting, 1931–1945. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1984. Elliott, Michael. The Day before Yesterday: Reconsidering America’s Past, Rediscovering the Present. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Women and War. New York: Basic Books, 1987. Enloe, Cynthia. Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives. Boston: South End, 1983. Evans, Sara M. Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. New York: Free Press, 1989.


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Ferguson, Marjorie. Forever Feminine: Women’s Magazines and the Cult of Femininity. London: Heinemann, 1983. Ferguson, Sheila, and Hilde Fitzgerald. Studies in the Social Services. London: HMSO, 1978. FitzGibbon, Constantine. London’s Burning. New York: Ballantine, 1970. Foreman, Michael. When the War Was Over. New York: Arcade, 1995. French, William B. “Yanks in the Hayloft.” In Hale and Turner, The Yanks Are Coming, 55–58. Fussell, Paul. Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Gabaccia, Donna. From the Other Side: Women, Gender, and Immigration Life in the U.S. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. ———. Immigration and American Diversity: A Social and Cultural History. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Gilbert, Bentley B. Britain since 1918. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980. Gledhill, Christine, and Gillian Swanson, eds. Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and the British Cinema in the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Goedde, Petra. GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945–1949. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Goldstein, Joshua S. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Goodman, Philomena. Women, Sexuality, and War. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002. Goralski, Robert. World War II Almanac, 1931–1945: A Political and Military Record. New York: Putnam, 1981. Gorham, Ethel. So Your Husband’s Gone to War. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1942. Grant De Pauw, Linda. Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Grayzel, Susan R. “The Enemy Within: The Problem of British Women’s Sexuality during the First World War.” In Women and War in the Twentieth Century: Enlisted with or without Consent, ed. Nicole Dombrowski, 72–89. New York: Garland, 1999.


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———. “‘The Mothers of Our Soldiers’ Children’: Motherhood, Morality, and the War Baby Scandal, 1914–1918.” In Maternal Instincts: Visions of Motherhood and Sexuality in Britain, 1875–1925, ed. Claudia Nelson and Ann Sumner Holmes, 122–40. London: Macmillan, 1997. ———. Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Green, Benny. Britain at War. Surrey: CLB International, 1996. Griffiths, Dennis, ed. The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422–1992. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Gubar, Susan. “‘This Is My Rifle, This Is My Gun’: World War II and the Blitz on Women.” In Higonnet et al., Behind the Lines, 227–59. Hale, Edwin R. W., and John Frayn Turner, eds. The Yanks Are Coming. Kent, OH: Midas, 1983. Hamilton, Nigel. Master of the Battlefield: Monty’s War Years, 1942–1944. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983. Haste, Cate. Rules of Desire: Sex in Britain, World War I to the Present. London: Chatto and Windus, 1992. Hayes, Nick, and Jeff Hill, eds. Millions Like Us? British Culture in the Second World War. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999. Hibbert, Joyce, ed. The War Brides. Toronto: PMA Books, 1978. Higonnet, Margaret Randolph, et al., eds. Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Hirschfeld, Magnus. The Sexual History of the World War. New York: Cadillac, 1941. Hohn, Maria. GIs and Fräuleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950s West Germany. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Honey, Maureen. Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999. Horton, Gerd. Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during World War II. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002. Ingersoll, Ralph. Report on England, November 1940. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940. Janeway, Eliot. The Struggle for Survival: A Chronicle of Economic Mobilization in World War II. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951.


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Jowett, Garth S., and Victoria O’Donnell. Propaganda and Persuasion. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999. Keegan, John. A History of Warfare. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. ———. The Second World War. New York: Penguin, 1989. Kiernan, Kathleen, et al. Lone Motherhood in Twentieth-Century Britain: From Footnote to Front Page. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Kimball, Warren F. Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. King, Larry. Love Stories of World War II. New York: Crown, 2001. Koppes, Clayton R., and Gregory D. Black. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profit, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies. New York: Free Press, 1987. Korson, George. At His Side: The Story of the American Red Cross Overseas in World War II. New York: Coward-McCann, 1945. Lake, Marilyn. “Female Desires: The Meaning of World War II.” In Feminism and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott, 429–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Lavine, Harold, and James Wechsler. War Propaganda and the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940. Lee, Helene R. Bittersweet Decision: The War Brides Forty Years Later. Lockport, NY: Roselee, 1985. Lewis, Jane. Women in England, 1870–1950: Sexual Divisions and Social Changes. Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books, 1984. Lewis, P. A. A People’s War. London: Methuen, 1986. List, Karen. “The Media and the Depiction of Women.” In The Significance of the Media: An American History, ed. James D. Startt and David Sloan, 106–28. Northport, AL: Vision Press, 1994. Longmate, Norman. The GIs: The Americans in Britain, 1942–1945. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975. ———. How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life during the Second World War. London: Hutchinson, 1971. Malkin, Richard. Marriage, Morals, and War. New York: Arden, 1943. Marwick, Arthur. Britain in the Century of Total War: War, Peace, and Social Change, 1900–1967. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968. ———. The Home Front: The British and the Second World War. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976.


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McDonald, J. Fred. Don’t Touch That Dial: Radio Programming in American Life, 1920–1960. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979. McLaine, Ian. Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II. London: Allen and Unwin, 1979. Mead, Margaret. The American Troops and the British Community: An Examination of the Relationship between the American Troops and the British. London: Hutchinson, 1944. Morgan, Ted. FDR: A Biography. London: Grafton, 1985. Minns, Raynes. Bombers and Mash: The Domestic Front, 1939–1945. London: Virago, 1980. Nicholson, Mavis. What Did You Do in the War, Mummy? Women in World War II. London: Chatto and Windus, 1995. Nicolson, Nigel, ed. Harold Nicolson: The War Years, 1939–1945. Vol. 2 of Diaries and Letters. New York: Atheneum, 1967. Noakes, Lucy. War and the British: Gender and National Identity. London: I. B. Tauris, 1998. Norris, Pippa, et al., eds. Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government, and the Public. New York: Routledge, 2003. Pankhurst, E. Sylvia. The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England during the World War. London: Hutchinson, 1932. Panter-Downes, Mollie. London War Notes, 1939–1945. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. Polenberg, Richard. War and Society: The United States, 1941–1945. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1972. Reese, Stephen D., et al., eds. Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001. Reynolds, David. Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942–1945. London: Phoenix Press, 2000. Rhodes, Anthony. Propaganda, the Art of Persuasion: World War II. Secaucus, NJ: Wellfleet Press, 1987. Riley, Denise. “Does Sex Have a History?” In Feminism and History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott, 17–33. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. ———. “Some Peculiarities of Social Policy concerning Women in Wartime and Postwar Britain.” In Higonnet et al., Behind the Lines, 260–71.


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Dicken Garcia, Hazel. “Letters Tell the News (Not ‘Fit to Print’?) about the Kentucky Frontier.” Journalism History 7 (Summer 1980): 49–53. Entman, Robert M. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43 (Autumn 1993): 51–58. Goldman, Aaron L. “Press Freedom in Britain during World War II.” Journalism History 22 (Winter 1997): 146–55. Horne, George. “458 on ‘Bride Ship’ from Britain Arrive Here to Join GI Husbands.” New York Times, 5 February 1946, 1. Kahn, Kim Fridkin. “Does Gender Make a Difference: An Experimental Examination of Sex Stereotypes and Press Patterns in Statewide Campaigns.” American Journal of Political Science 38 (February 1994): 162–95. Kelleher, Lynne. “Lovetwaffe: Two Captured Second World War Pilots Fall in Love and Marry Irish.” London Mirror, 28 March 2004, 16. Kent, George. “Brides from Overseas.” Reader’s Digest (September 1945), 97–98. Kitch, Carolyn. “Changing Theoretical Perspectives on Women’s Media Images: The Emergence of Patterns in a New Area of Historical Scholarship.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 74 (Autumn 1997): 477–89. Nelson, Thomas, et al. “Media Framing in a Civil Liberties Conflict and Its Effect on Tolerance.” American Political Science Review 91 (September 1997): 567–80. Price, Byron. “Nation Has Complied with Censorship Code.” Journalism Quarterly 20 (December 1943): 318–19. Scrivo, Karen Lee. “Battling for Benefits.” National Journal, 9 December 2000, 3810. Sengupta, Somini. “All Sides in Liberian Conflict Make Women Spoils of War.” New York Times, 20 November 2003, A3. Smith, Gary. “‘War Brides’ Tells of Life and Love.” Hamilton Spectator, 23 September 2002, E1. Thomas, Brinley. “Must Britain Plan Mass Emigration?” Foreign Affairs 27 (April 1949): 475–85. Wright, Andree. “The Women’s Weekly: Depression and War Years, Romance and Reality.” Refractory Girl 3 (Winter 1973): 12–20.


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Zucco, Tom. “For War Bride, No Wedded Bliss Yet.” St. Petersburg Times, 12 November 2003, 1B.

Theses, Dissertations, and Papers Greenfield, Gill, and Chris Reid. “Women’s Magazines and the Commercial Orchestration of Femininity in the 1930s: Evidence from Woman’s Own.” Unpublished paper, October 1996. Jenkins, H. Harrison. “The Diction of Yank: Colloquial Speech of the American Soldier of World War II as Found in Yank Magazine.” Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 1957. Kay, Audrey. “Wythenshawe, circa 1932–1955: The Making of a Community?” Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, England, 1993. Street, Betty Eulalia. “The Adjustment of Some Foreign War Brides.” Master’s thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1948.

080 Friedman Index (147-154)

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D

African American women, 9 Alien Fiancées and Fiancés Act of 1946 (U.S.), 28–29 Amsbaugh, Doris Norley, 71n11 Anstruther, Joyce, 20n18 Appearance: effects of rationing on, 128–29; women expected to maintain, 3, 38–39, 75 Armed forces publications: functions of, 68–69 —British: on brides, 68–84, 124; on fidelity of wives, 75; on GIs, 6, 74–76, 124–25; slight coverage of brides in, 69, 73, 75, 84; trying to maintain morale, 69, 73–75, 124–25 —U.S.: on British hospitality, 56, 63–64; coverage of war brides in, 68–84, 127; on eagerness of British women, 54–56, 70–71, 80–81; on fidelity of wives and girlfriends, 47, 73; on foreign marriages, 36, 51, 69–70, 123–24; on foreign women, 54–56, 70, 110; framing of brides in, 68–84; framing of brides as pioneers in, 77, 79–80; framing of brides as predators in, 71–73, 79, 81–83, 129; framing of brides changing in, 6, 69–70, 77–80; mixed messages on sexuality and marriage, 4, 122, 131; not discouraging promiscuity, 4, 73, 130; on

sexuality, 83, 109–10, 127, 130; on U.S. vs. foreign women, 2, 72–73, 80–82 Army, British, 73–75; auxiliary services to, 23; discouraging marriages, 87, 94; number of men serving in, 18–19; trying to maintain morale, 73–75; women’s sexuality in, 40–41. See also Soldiers, British Army, Canadian: banning marriages, 69, 86–87 Army, U.S., 52; ambiguity on foreign marriages, 36, 69–70; banning fraternizing in Germany, 83, 111, 130–31; on British hospitality, 18; dependents’ allowances from, 27, 58, 78, 115; discouraging marriages, 14, 26–28, 51, 58, 70, 86–88, 93–94; on fraternization with British, 51, 122, 131; response to venereal disease, 25–26; supporting marriages, 98. See also Armed forces publications, U.S.; GIs Arnold, Pauline, 53 Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, 41 Attlee, Clement, 102, 104 Australia, 89n13, 90, 109 Austria, 68 Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), 23, 40–41

147


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Bauer, Ingrid, 68 Bevin, Ernest, 21–22 Biddle, Margaret, 23 Bombing, of England: casualties from, 121–22; effects of, 17–18, 48–49 Boxer, Marilyn, 22 Bracken, Brendan, 61 Brides: and armed forces publications, 68–84; British, 88, 90–92, 112, 124; coverage of, 101, 108–9, 127–28; demographics of, 32–34, 38, 94; media framing of, 123–24; meeting GIs, 23–24, 32–34, 36, 56–57; motives attributed to, 70, 86–87, 93, 113, 115; numbers of, 2, 123n5; and U.S. newspapers, 86–87, 94–96. See also Homemakers; Marriages; Pioneers; Predators Bride ships, 6, 13; arrival of, 31–34, 85–86; from Australia, 109; bureaucracy around, 29–31; coverage of, 76–77, 91, 93–94; gender ratios on, 4; journalists and, 103–4, 119–20; life aboard, 31–33; women waiting for, 95–96, 101–2 Briggs, Susan, 64 Britain. See Government, British; U.S./British relations Britain at War (Green), 55 Canada, 99–100; banning foreign marriages, 69, 86–87; brides of, 116–17; British relations with, 116–17, 126 Casualties: from blitz, 49, 121; British man shortage and, 19, 120n33; civilian, 121–22; gender differences in, 10; marriages for fear of, 45–46 Censorship, of newspapers, 15, 91, 124 Chalmers, Anne, 57, 63 Chamberlin, E. R., 19, 52, 55 Chaplin, Charlie, 15 Charters, May, 19–20 Children, 22; on bride ships, 30, 96, 102; call for increased birthrate,

50–51, 90; evacuation of, 20, 49; illegitimate, 37, 51, 57–58, 78, 81, 115, 124; of war brides and GIs, 29, 93–95, 99. See also Motherhood Churchill, Winston: on civilians, 49–50, 134; defeat of, 102; on GIs, 25, 34; newspapers and, 14–15, 91–92; on relations with U.S., 15–16, 34, 60, 76 Citizenship: linked to wartime service, 3, 22; U.S., as motive for marriage, 87, 89, 127; women threatened with loss of British, 89–90 Civilians: casualties, 121–22; as crucial in war effort, 11, 134; effects of war on, 10, 17–18; morale of, 49 Clarke, Peter, 102 Corry, Irene, 54 Cowey, Joan, 41 Cox, M. D., 22 Cullis, Winifred C, 21 Culture, U.S. vs. British, 53 Darrow, Margaret, 10 De Carlo, Yvonne, 82 Delinquency, 42–43, 92 Diaries, information from, 7–8 Divorce: British, 92, 113; U.S., 78–79; of wartime marriages, 93, 99 Domesticity: brides as symbol of, 3; idealized in media, 131–32 E. B. Alexander, USS (bride ship), 32–33 Economy: benefits of relations with GIs, 50, 53–54, 70–71, 125, 128–29; British, 71–72, 102, 126; British vs. U.S. army wages, 53–54, 72, 129; family allowances and, 27, 45, 50, 58, 78, 87, 115; postwar, 89–90, 99, 102, 117; U.S. vs. British, 17–18, 89–90, 102, 118–19, 126–27; women accused of seduction for, 2, 70, 72, 86–87 Eisenhower, Dwight, 61, 65n82, 76


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Index Elizabeth, Queen, 90 Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 9–10, 132 Emigration: brides’ fear of, 20, 31; brides framed as pioneers for, 77–80, 94, 119; as British loss, 67, 90; to the dominions, 117 Entman, Robert, 68 Evacuation, of children, 20, 49 Eyles, Leonora, 46, 114 Families: British soldiers returning to, 92, 101–2; British women coming to U.S. as, 94–95; invited to Germany, 111; seen as interfering with fighting, 26–27, 86–87, 89, 131, 134; women expected to maintain home front for, 74, 90, 112–13. See also Children; Marriage; Motherhood Farmers, 22–23, 52, 115 Fidelity: of American wives, 73, 81, 97; of British wives, 74–75, 104, 131; double standard in, 109–10; of GIs, 108–9; GIs’ lack of, 78, 80–81 Films: popularity of, 55; U.S. and GIs glamorized in, 36, 55–56, 59; U.S./British cooperation in, 15, 55–56; VD, 71 Food. See Rationing Forbes, Rosita, 113, 117 France, 25 Fussell, Paul, 25–26, 47–48 Garcia, Hazel Dicken, 7 Gender: citizenship related to, 3, 89; media frames of, 8–9, 127–28; power relations and, 128; sexual double standard and, 5, 47, 57–58, 73, 109–10; wage disparities based on, 24, 38, 129; weighting of war experiences of, 9–11 Gender roles: brides as homemakers, 100, 111–13; conflict among wartime, 4, 36, 43, 46–47, 125, 130; effects of women’s war work

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on, 9, 21–22, 24, 38–39, 126; increasing freedom for British women, 36–37, 53, 64–65, 122–23, 125; media on, 38, 126–28, 133; in propaganda, 44–45; support for traditional, 39–40, 126; in wartime, 3, 37–38, 90, 132; women maintaining femininity, 38–40, 43–44, 75 General W. Goethals, USS (bride ship), 13, 31–32 Germany: efforts to reduce fraternization in, 40, 111; GIs fraternizing in, 83, 110–11, 130–31 GIs: arrival in Britain, 24–25, 37n7, 52–54, 86, 121–22; benefits of relations with, 49–50, 66, 71–72, 125, 128–29; British hospitality toward, 18, 22, 34, 59–64; British media on, 74–76, 88, 124–25; British response to, 58–60, 61n72, 63, 65; British soldiers’ worry about wives around, 47–48, 50; British women meeting, 23–24, 32–34, 36, 56–57; comparing U.S. and foreign women, 2, 93, 97; eagerness of British women for, 54–56, 70–71, 80–81; fraternizing in Germany, 83, 110–11, 130–31; glamorized by films, 36, 59; number in Britain, 48, 52, 123; presence in media, 114, 124; response to British, 60, 62–63; sexuality of, 81, 83, 107–8, 122; transportation home for, 3, 30, 77–78, 81–82, 97, 124 Goedde, Petra, 130–31 Goldstein, Joshua, 44 Good-bye, Piccadilly (Virden), 38 Goodman, Philomena, 35, 38, 65; on gender in propaganda, 44–45; on sexual double standard, 57–58 Gordon, Nan, 113 Government: control of newspapers by, 85, 91–92


150

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—British: after Churchill’s defeat, 102; on hospitality as patriotism, 66, 131–32; on hostility toward GIs, 59–60; on morale, 91–92; support for increased birthrate by, 50–51; women recruited to war work by, 21–24, 39, 90; on women’s morality and sexuality, 35, 37, 41, 89; on women’s roles, 36, 131–32 —U.S.: arranging for brides’ transportation, 77–79, 81–82, 94–97, 123–24; brides demonstrating for transportation by, 98–99, 101; discouraging marriages, 26, 86–88; hospitality equated with patriotism by, 66; legislation related to brides, 28–29, 97; transportation not promised to brides, 127 Grant, Mary, 114–16 Grant De Pauw, Linda, 11 Grayzel, Susan, 36–37 Green, Benny, 55 Harris, Arthur, 65 Harrisson, Tom, 17n10 Hartle, Russell, 2 Hemingway, Mary Welsh, 15 Higonnet, Margaret and Patrice, 44, 132 Holbrook, USS (bride ship), 30, 33 Home Guard, English, 16n8 Homemakers: brides framed as, 100, 111–13 Honey, Maureen, 9 Hospitality, toward GIs, 58, 117; equated with patriotism, 34, 66, 131–32; events promoting, 56–57, 60–61; GIs’ response to, 62–63; as wartime service, 22, 34, 60–61, 106, 131 Immigration, of war brides, 26, 95; bureaucracy around, 29, 119–20; and grooms, 93; legislation changed

for, 2, 10, 28–29, 96–97, 133; refugees vs., 77 Ingersoll, Ralph, 11 Iraq, 133–34 Jacobson, Annie, 33 Jameson, Margaret Storm, 46 Janeway, Eliot, 11 Japan, 83 Kay, Audrey, 48 Keegan, John, 11 Kirby, Joan, 54 Kirkpatrick, Helen, 14–15 Korea, 10 Lang, Fritz, 15 League of Decency and Honor, 37 Lend-Lease Act, 14, 102, 126 Letters, information from, 7–8 Lewis, Jane, 46 Longmate, Norman, 16n8, 32, 53; on British relations with GIs, 25, 58–60 Mackenzie, DeWitt, 91 Man shortage, British, 18–19, 118, 132; attractiveness of GIs and, 1; war casualties and, 45–46, 120n33; women’s war work and, 21–22 Man shortage, U.S., 80–81, 83 Marriage: media glorifying, 4, 36, 44–47, 106, 127, 131–33; war hastening, 45–46; as women’s goal, 120 Marriages, British: ban on proxy, 4, 36; effects of long absences on, 74–75 Marriages, Canadian: ban on foreign, 69, 86–87; war brides of, 116–17 Marriages, of GIs to foreign women: in armed forces publications, 69, 73, 123; to Australians, 109; background investigations before, 92–93; British newspapers on, 6,


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Index 86, 88, 101–3; British women’s magazines on, 113–15, 117–20, 126; contributing factors to, 66; effects of, 89, 91–92, 103–4; to Germans, 131; interracial, 26–27, 51; media framing of, 77–79, 86, 123; motives for, 70, 86–87, 93, 113, 115; number of, 2, 23; parents’ fears about, 66; viability of, 65, 86–87, 93, 99; war grooms ignored, 4 —U.S. military on: banning, 4, 51, 70; discouraging, 2, 9, 14, 26–28, 51, 58; mixed messages from, 36, 69; supporting, 98 Marriages, U.S.: breakups of, 78–79, 97 Marwick, Arthur, 6, 48, 50, 102 McNutt, Paul V., 26n35 Mead, Margaret, 53, 58–59, 64, 122 Media: coverage of bride ships in, 32, 67, 103–4, 119–20; framing by, 5–6, 67–68, 127–28; framing of war brides, 2, 3–4, 9, 93–94, 111–13, 133; on gender roles, 7, 38, 46–47; glorifying marriage and motherhood, 36, 131–32; influence of, 14–15, 19, 133; personal writing vs., 7–8, 127–28; tips for entertaining GIs in, 62–64; women’s sexuality in, 35, 37, 129–30. See also Armed forces publications; Newspapers; Women’s magazines Memoirs: information from, 7–8 Men, British vs. American, 1, 53, 118, 125 Military: using women’s sexuality, 40; women’s service in, 11, 40–41. See also Army, British; Army, U.S. Minns, Raynes, 1 Money. See Economy Montgomery, Bernard, 73–74, 76, 124 Morale: armed forces publications trying to maintain, 69, 73–75, 88; of British soldiers, 120; of civilians, 36,

151

49, 91–92; concerns for, 6, 43–44, 74–75, 124–25; effects of women’s fraternization on, 2, 25, 88; government efforts to maintain, 36, 85, 91–92; maintenance of home front for, 43–44, 46–47; marriages as threat to, 103–4; marriages’ effects on, 91–92; U.S., 26 Morality, 2, 107–8; concern about GIs’, 82–83; concerns about teen sex, 42–43; of military women, 41; soldiers expected to be promiscuous, 71–73; wartime anxiety about, 35; in WWI, 36–37 Motherhood: call for increased birthrate, 50–51, 90; glorified in media, 4, 36, 44–47, 106, 127, 131–32; as “patriotic femininity,” 43–44; women accused of neglecting, 43, 92, 130. See also Children Murrow, Edward R., 14–15 Newspapers: censorship of, 15, 85, 91, 124; coverage of brides, 127–28; glorifying marriage and motherhood, 127; influence of, 6, 91; personal writing vs., 7–8, 127–28 —British: ban of left-wing, 92n19; on brides waiting for transportation, 101–2; coverage of war brides in, 84, 89; lacking coverage of brides, 91, 101–3, 124; on marriages, 86, 88; paper shortages for, 124; on women as predators, 88–89 —U.S.: on brides, 94–96, 98–99, 108, 123–24; on brides as predators, 86–87, 92–93, 129; coverage of war brides in, 89; homemaking tips for brides in, 100; on marriages, 86, 93–94 Nicolson, Harold, 16, 49, 65 Noakes, Lucy, 3 Normandy invasion, 76 Office of War Information, 15


152

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Index

Panter-Downes, Mollie, 16, 62 Parents: fears about marriages, 31, 66 Parkhurst, Sylvia, 37 Paroutand, Margaret, 32–33 Patriotism: hospitality equated with, 22, 66, 131; reproduction as, 90 Pioneers: brides framed as, 77–80, 94, 119 Predators: British women framed as, 2, 69–73, 77–79, 88–89; war brides framed as, 81–83, 86–87, 92–93, 123, 129, 131–32, 134 Pregnancy: among military women, 41; among war brides, 96, 98; as motive for marriage, 113, 115 Prisoners of war: and British women, 115–16, 126 Promiscuity. See Sexuality Propaganda: British, 14, 16, 40; gender in, 44–45; German, 47–48, 49, 74, 125; U.S., 15, 55–56 Prostitutes: blamed for VD increase, 70–71; concerns about, 41–42; military discouraging marriages to, 27, 87 Public Morality Council, 42 Public/private spheres, 35, 37 Quataert, Jean, 22 Race and racism: concerns about interracial dating, 42, 65; illegitimate biracial children and, 51, 124; interracial marriages and, 26–27 Radcliffe, Cyril, 59 Rationing, 31; appeal of GIs and, 53–54, 71–72, 128–29; in England, 62, 91, 102; in England vs. U.S., 18, 89–90; postwar, 89–90, 102, 118–19 Red Cross: background investigations by, 92–93; bride ships and, 30–31, 96; homemaking tips for brides and, 111–12; hospitality programs and, 61, 70 Reese, Stephen, 8

Reproduction: as patriotism, 90. See also Children; Motherhood Reynolds, David, 27, 87 Roberts, Myra, 24 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 89–90, 97 Roosevelt, Franklin, 14, 60 Ross, Charles, 103–4 Russia, 89n13 Sexuality: double standard in, 47, 57–58, 73, 109–10; of GIs, 4, 83, 107–9, 122, 131; military using women’s, 39; of military women, 40–41; promiscuity and, 4–5, 42–43, 71–73, 122; of teens, 42–43, 92; wartime anxiety about, 35 —British women’s, 51; blamed for venereal disease, 36, 41–42, 129–30; effects on morale, 36–37; in magazines, 107–8, 112–15; media framing of, 70, 72–73, 122, 127; mixed reactions to sexual freedom, 5–7; promiscuity of, 54–55, 70–71, 80–81, 88–89, 92; rising rates of VD and, 41–42; urged to control, 60–61 Sheehan, Bob, 71 Shortages. See Economy; Rationing Soldiers: Canadian, 60, 99–100, 116; Canadian vs. U.S., 65; Polish, 52–53, 60, 116, 126; shown VD films, 71; supporting through war work, 106; tips to entertaining, 64; women warned about effects of war on, 108 Soldiers, British: concerns about fidelity of wives, 47–48, 50, 74–75, 104, 125; family allowances for, 48, 50, 129; fraternization by, 25, 47; morale of, 120; returning to families, 92, 99–101; wives adjusting to absence of, 64–65 Soldiers, British vs. U.S.: dependents’ allowances, 45, 50; wages, 53–54, 72, 129


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Index Soldiers, U.S. See GIs Stevens, John, 82 Stevenson, Victoria, 119–20 Struggle for Survival (Janeway), 11 Struther, Jan, 20n18 Summerfield, Penny, 19 Summerfield, Winifred C., 21, 51 Summerskill, Edith, 24, 41n20, 42 Swallow, Betty, 17–18 Thom, Deborah, 8–9 Transportation to U.S., for brides: bureaucracy around, 29–31; demonstrating for, 98–99, 101; government arranging for, 3, 28–29, 77–79, 81–82; waiting for, 101–2, 116n25 Truman, Harry, 102, 126 Tuchman, Gaye, 68, 124 United States, 14, 25, 126; brides learning about life in, 79, 100, 119; British propaganda wooing, 14–15; glamorized in media, 56, 117–19; joining war, 15–16. See also Army, U.S.; Economy; GIs; Government, U.S. U.S./British relations: hospitality programs promoting, 56–57, 60–64, 117; media on, 35–36, 47–48, 55–56, 74–76; problems in, 14, 47–48, 59, 104; propaganda wooing, 14–15; as special, 2, 60, 126; symbolism of war brides, 2, 104 Vaughan, Harry, 28–29, 98 Vaughan-Rees, Michael, 52–53, 64 Venereal disease: among military women vs. civilian, 41n20; brides checked for, 95; British women blamed for, 39, 70–71, 88–89, 107–8, 129–30; in Germany and Japan, 83, 111; rising rates of, 25–26, 41–42, 88–89; in WWI, 36 Veterans, 108, 126

153

Virden, Jenel, 38 Vote, for British women, 37 Wages: British vs. U.S. army, 53–54, 72, 129; gender disparities in, 24, 38, 129; of GIs, 86 Waller, Jane, 52–53, 64 War Brides Act of 1945, U.S., 28, 97 War work: British women recruited to, 20–22, 37–39; conflicting with domestic roles, 4, 36, 43, 46–47, 50–51, 125, 130; effects on gender roles, 9, 21–22, 24, 38–39, 126; fears about effects of, 9, 20–21, 36, 44, 46–47; hospitality programs as, 22, 34, 57, 60–61, 106, 131; limits on women’s options in, 39–40; media on, 106, 112–13; in propaganda, 44; U.S., 9; women’s discounted, 11 Williams, Tony, 55 Wilson, Avice, 13, 19, 31–33 Women, British, 6, 75; increasing freedom for, 122–23, 125 Women, during wartime: experiences discounted, 9–11; as noncombatants, 10, 132; as property, 44 Women, U.S. and foreign, 2–3 Women, U.S. vs. British, 93, 97; armed forces’ publications on, 2, 72–73, 80–82; in women’s magazines, 108, 112 Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), 23, 41 Women’s Land Army, 22–23, 39, 115–16 Women’s magazines: on brides as homemakers, 111–13; coverage of war brides, 105–7 —British: on hospitality programs, 63–64; on marriages, 113–15, 117–20, 125, 126; on U.S., 117–19; on women’s roles, 6–7, 46–47, 112–15, 125–26 —U.S., 3, 7, 106–11; on war brides, 105; on women’s roles, 106


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154 Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), 23 Women’s Voluntary Service for Civil Defense, 57 World War I, 50, 87n6; effects on women’s marriage chances, 19,

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Index 45–46; fears of women’s independence in, 36–37 Yuh, Ji-Yeon, 10 Zebulon Vance, SS (bride ship), 30

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