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

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You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. A brilliant piece of writing which ALSO gave me a handy shortlist of WWII fiction/memoir to continue my reading. He gives a different and very personal insight into the long established "national narrative" about World War 2. This seemingly uncomfortable fit is heightened by the emergence of lad culture in the 90s and an increasingly jingoistic exhumation of the fallen soldiers for nationalistic and increasingly far-right causes. Comparing British memory of the war with that of other countries, Turner asks why British soldiers are not remembered alongside Japanese and German men as potential perpetrators of sexual violence, despite evidence of these crimes during the Allied occupation of Germany and postwar colonial uprisings.

Armed with the knowledge of a war aficionado, Turner cements his seat at the table alongside those who might resist his queer narrative of World War II. The final 100 pages in particular beautifully synthesise personal experience and the untold queer context of the text. He refuses their dismissal from memory and offers their testimonies as evidence that many were true innocents abroad. By exploring a wartime experience that embraces sex, lust and the body as much as tactics and weaponry, Turner argues that the only way we can really understand the Second World War is to get to grips with the complexity of the lives and identities of those who fought and endured it.Windows users should also consider upgrading to Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft Edge, or switching to Firefox or Chrome. Now, as an adult who has come to terms with a masculine identity and sexuality that is often erased from dominant military narratives, he undertakes a refreshingly honest analysis of his fascination with the war. I have to admit I'm a fan of this style of social history and the unapologetic rewriting of History with a capitol H.

It’s this apparent contradiction that drives Men at War, a part-memoir, part-historical exploration of British Second World War masculinity. Sometimes the novels chosen are new, often they are from the backlist and occasionally re-issued from way back. As someone who usually focusses on tales of WWI, and who finds WWII a little off-putting (in that main due to the reasons stated above) this book allowed me a whole new entry point to the period - one that isn't uncomfortable. He goes inside the machines of war and strips away uniform cloth to discover the true depth and complexity of men of war as creatures of love, fear, hope and desire. An intensely personal examination of manliness and sexuality in WW2 by a man who comes clean about his lingering Airfix habit.

A book that asks questions and starts you thinking about people involved in war in a way I had never before.

Luke Turner is a bisexual man trying to reconcile his fascination with the machinery of WWII and his sexuality. Turner cites Derek Jarman’s film War Requiem, an adaptation of Benjamin Britten’s 1962 opera (in turn based on Wilfred Owen’s poetry) as a life-changing encounter with ‘a portrait of Britishness that was a safety net for someone trying to untangle ideas of patriotism and desire’. For a while, the Second World War provided me with an escape from my peers, with my weak body, physical ineptitude, and confused sexuality’, Turner reflects: ‘but I was starting to feel like I was nothing like this generation who were held up as heroes. In this book, Turner looks beyond the increasingly retrogressive and jingoistic ideal of a Britain that never was to discover a much richer history. With Turing, what began in the 1970s as activist attempts to reclaim queer figures in British history has, in recent years, been taken over by governmental use of his image in sanitised attempts to address historical wrongdoings against queer people.In Men at War, Turner looks beyond the increasingly retrogressive and jingoistic ideal of a Britain that never was to recognise men of war as creatures of love, fear, hope and desire. To stop romanticising war but remember these were real people with all the quirks and foibles of any person today.