Thanks for the Memories: Love, Sex, and World War II

Thanks for the Memories: Love, Sex, and World War II
Jane Mersky Leder
Praeger
ISBN: 0-275-98879-1
Non-Fiction, US History, WWII
Reviewed by Pamela Crossland

The title of this book brings to mind Bob Hope crooning his theme song. We associate Bob Hope with years of entertaining U.S. troops in Korea and Viet Nam; patriotism, doing something for “our boys over there.” Thanks for the Memoriesimplies sacrifice for a cause, keeping the home fires burning till those who could marched home. Musicals such asYankee Doodle Dandy and This is the Army bolstered morale and everyone did their part to make sacrifices to bring the boys home and free the world from Hitler’s evil.
There were limits to what women back home would give up however. Leder notes that while rationing sugar and gasoline were virtues, women drew the line when it came to sacrificing the rubber necessary to make that most basic of all foundation garments: the girdle. Girdles were considered an essential part of a decent woman’s attire, and vital to her long hours standing upright in war time factories.
War is not romantic. The sexual morays of World War II underwent a change that movies and music didn’t reflect. “Hygiene” films tried to scare enlisted men into chastity with titles such as “USS VD: Ship of Shame” and chaplains entreated soldiers to treat every woman as they would their mothers and sisters. A massive, but ineffective effort to close brothels or regulate them as happened in Hawaii did not put a stop to sexual intimacy. Even the oft repeated military directive “Put it (a condom) on before you put it in” did not check the rising incidence of VD. When these tactics failed, media attention turned to so called promiscuous women, portraying them as the enemy. A study made in 1943 by the Navy concluded that 80% of the cases of what we now call sexually transmitted diseases were attributed to girlfriends or pickups.
Leder has done an excellent job of exploring how the four war years changed the relationship between the sexes, how women viewed themselves in the work place and their contribution to the military, the service and hardships of gays and lesbians in military service, and the realities of this war that sowed the seeds for the sexual and feminist revolutions to come. Written with great sensitivity and skill, this book makes “the greatest generation” more real to the succeeding generations, it exposes the young men and women of that time as being both stronger and more vulnerable than either history books or overly romantic movies sketch them. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in World War II, from high school seniors to adults.