Page 59 - Fyne summer 2014 low res v2

homosexual tendencies.
It would seem obvious that with a lot of men
in a confined place and no sight of a woman
for weeks and weeks, situational homosexuality
would be common. But in fact, by all accounts,
it was not. Trench warfare offered little private
space to carry out such acts. Combined with
this the sheer logistics of removing wet, muddy
clothing with bullets flying around your head,
it is not surprising that there wasn’t a lot of sex
going on.
But there was a greater effect. Men spent years
with their colleagues in terrible circumstances.
Daily, they would wake up in the knowledge
that there was a high chance they would meet a
horrific death that day. In this world, a strange
thing happened, men began to deeply love
each other. It wasn’t sexual, but it was physical
and deeply felt. Men would hold a wounded
comrade close to them while waiting for help
and it became quite common to offer a last kiss
to the dying . Many soldiers carried a photo or
a keepsake of a beloved comrade who had died
in action and there were many notably close
friendships that were, to all purposes, like a
marriage.
In the environment of the trench, men touched
each other more than ever before. Whether it
was a gentle hand on a shoulder in passing or
a lingering hug after a last breath, men were
suddenly allowed to love and touch each other.
After the war, soldiers tried to adapt back to
‘real life’ and although many still held deep
affections for the people they fought alongside,
both alive and dead, the ability to openly love
another man was gone. The hands-off male
approach to friendship returned and although
affections in the next war were still strong,
men did not live together for many years in
the domestic situation of a trench. As weapons
improved, so warfare became a more distant,
transient affair and the last kisses of the Great
War were no longer a part of military life.
www.fyne.co.uk
59