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Yorick Smaal , Sex, soldiers and the South Pacific, 1939-45: Queer identities in Australia in the Second World War , Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan , 2015, ISBN 9 7811 3736 5132 , 250 pp., A$119.95.
In the epilogue to his excellent new book, Sex, Soldiers and the South Pacific, 1939-45, Yorick Smaal quotes the late Bruce Ruxton, former president of Victoria's Returned Services League. In 1982, objecting to the inclusion of openly gay veterans at a memorial event, Ruxton argued, 'I don't know where all these gays and poofters are coming from. I don't remember a single poofter from World War II' (cited in Smaal 2015: 172). To those of us who remember Ruxton's time as a very public figure in Australia, the quote is unsurprising. Ruxton was notorious for this kind of statement. His sentiments neatly encapsulate, however, the presumptive heterosexuality of that venerated figure in our national imagination: the Aussie digger.
Smaal reveals the obvious lie behind this particular piece of Australian war mythology. In this wonderfully illuminating work of social history, he guides us through the home front of...