re: #78 steve_davis

that word would have had a completely different context in 1940 than it does today. I’m sure there were lesbians in the military, but a woman calling someone a “girlfriend” would have been viewed in that context as “a girl who is a dear friend” rather than “a lover.” Just as my mother used to talk about someone “making love” to a gal, which in her depression-era parlance meant going through some romantic courtship ritual, like flirting with someone in conversation.

While true so far as it goes, women’s military and paramilitary organizations were a way for women who did not want to marry or otherwise deal with men to have a safe place. There is the classic story of Eisenhower (Newsweek 6/20/93):

“Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower received some unsettling news while he was in occupied Germany after World War II. There were, he was told, a significant number of lesbians in his Women’s Army Corps (WAC) command. He called in Sgt. Johnnie Phelps and ordered her to get a list of all the lesbians in the battalion. “We’ve got to get rid of them,” he barked. Phelps said she’d check into it. But, she told the general, “when you get the list back, my name’s going to be first.” Eisenhower’s secretary then interrupted. “Sir, if the general pleases, Sergeant Phelps will have to be second on the list, because mine will be first.” Dumbfounded, Ike realized he’d lose many of his key personnel if he persisted. “Forget that order,” he told Phelps.”

It was even more true of the WASPs.