From the department of: did everyone know this but me?
Apparently Vera Brittain's brother Edward was under investigation for homosexuality when he was killed in 1918...
Published in August 1933, her autobiography quickly became a best-seller, acclaimed as the woman's book of the war. However in the summer of 1934, almost a year after the book's appearance, Vera Brittain received a letter from Edward's commanding officer, informing her that certain facts of a "personal" nature surrounding Edward's death had been withheld from her. On further questioning, the officer revealed that shortly before the action in which Edward was killed, he had learned that Edward was being investigated by the military police. Letters written to Edward by another officer, while on leave, had been censored at the base. From these it was apparently plain that Edward had been involved in homosexual relations with men in his company. The commanding officer had given Edward a warning of the investigation, and, the following day, Edward had been killed.
There were some strange discrepancies in the reports of Edward's death: some described him as being shot by the enemy in full view of his men while others claimed that Edward had insisted on going ahead of the rest of his company, and that his body had only been found later, after the fighting, with a bullet through his head. Faced with the prospect of a court-martial when the battalion came out of the line, not to mention imprisonment and subsequent disgrace, had Edward shot himself, or deliberately courted death by presenting himself as an easy target for the sniper's bullet?
Mark Bostridge in the Independent: Historical Notes: Hero of the Somme fatally outed
From another article: "Appalled, she told her mother, who said that Edward had been in the same kind of trouble at school."
From a letter of the previous year from Vera to Edward:
You and I are not only aesthetic but ascetic - at any rate in regard to sex. Or perhaps, since "ascetic" implies rather a lack of emotion, it would be more correct to say exclusive - Geoffrey is very much this, and Victor, and Roland was. What I mean by this is, that so many people are attracted by the opposite sex simply because it is the opposite sex - the average officer and the average "nice girl" demand, I am sure, little but this. But where you and I are concerned, sex by itself doesn't interest us unless it is united with brains and personality; in fact we rather think of the latter first, and the person's sex afterwards... I think very probably that older women will appeal to you much more than younger ones, as they do me. This means that you will probably have to wait a good many years before you find anyone you could wish to marry, but I don't think this need worry you, for there is plenty of time, and very often people who wait get something well worth waiting for. (20th February, 1917)
This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/556933.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Published in August 1933, her autobiography quickly became a best-seller, acclaimed as the woman's book of the war. However in the summer of 1934, almost a year after the book's appearance, Vera Brittain received a letter from Edward's commanding officer, informing her that certain facts of a "personal" nature surrounding Edward's death had been withheld from her. On further questioning, the officer revealed that shortly before the action in which Edward was killed, he had learned that Edward was being investigated by the military police. Letters written to Edward by another officer, while on leave, had been censored at the base. From these it was apparently plain that Edward had been involved in homosexual relations with men in his company. The commanding officer had given Edward a warning of the investigation, and, the following day, Edward had been killed.
There were some strange discrepancies in the reports of Edward's death: some described him as being shot by the enemy in full view of his men while others claimed that Edward had insisted on going ahead of the rest of his company, and that his body had only been found later, after the fighting, with a bullet through his head. Faced with the prospect of a court-martial when the battalion came out of the line, not to mention imprisonment and subsequent disgrace, had Edward shot himself, or deliberately courted death by presenting himself as an easy target for the sniper's bullet?
Mark Bostridge in the Independent: Historical Notes: Hero of the Somme fatally outed
From another article: "Appalled, she told her mother, who said that Edward had been in the same kind of trouble at school."
From a letter of the previous year from Vera to Edward:
You and I are not only aesthetic but ascetic - at any rate in regard to sex. Or perhaps, since "ascetic" implies rather a lack of emotion, it would be more correct to say exclusive - Geoffrey is very much this, and Victor, and Roland was. What I mean by this is, that so many people are attracted by the opposite sex simply because it is the opposite sex - the average officer and the average "nice girl" demand, I am sure, little but this. But where you and I are concerned, sex by itself doesn't interest us unless it is united with brains and personality; in fact we rather think of the latter first, and the person's sex afterwards... I think very probably that older women will appeal to you much more than younger ones, as they do me. This means that you will probably have to wait a good many years before you find anyone you could wish to marry, but I don't think this need worry you, for there is plenty of time, and very often people who wait get something well worth waiting for. (20th February, 1917)
This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/556933.html. Please comment there using OpenID.