Langhamer identified mid-twentieth-century English courtship as ‘an important rite of passage’ in which young women ‘exercised real, if bounded, agency’, and through which they could try out new roles and negotiate future status and identity. 113 Langhamer drew attention to
female desire to remake the self and seek a partner who allows for this transformation. This study suggests that, by choosing a relationship which allowed, and even demanded, more independent agency, young women who aligned themselves with a former enemy set themselves more independently apart than their peers with more socially acceptable
boyfriends. By demonstrating determination to pursue their own sexual desires to the extent of rebelling against authority, and positioning themselves at odds with their familial and social milieu, they reinforced an independent identity.
Additionally, the relationship encouraged the subversion of normal courting rules and rituals. The tradition of boyfriend ‘treating’ girlfriend, by paying the expenses incurred in their courtship activities, appears to have evolved from the commercialization of youth leisure pursuits and the disparity in earnings between the sexes. The young woman would spend her (lesser) earnings on looking passively decorative at her boyfriend’s side, while he negotiated the ticket transaction, bought bus fares, drinks at the bar, ice creams from the usherette, summoned the waiter, ordered the meal, called for and settled the bill.
Allowing herself to be ‘treated’ presented as a bargain not without danger: the boyfriend who paid expected some sort of ‘return’ for his financial outlay, possibly extending to more than just the pleasure of her company.114 Referencing Jephcott’s studies, Langhamer points out
113 Langhamer, ‘Love’, p. 173.
114 Elizabeth Alice Clement, Love for Sale: Courting, Treating and Prostitution in New York City 1900-
167 postwar young women’s increasing willingness and ‘determination to self-finance courtship practices reflected a desire to control male expectations and behaviour.’115 Those questioned
in Jephcott’s wartime study were conscious of the dangers of being treated, in terms of sexual favours young men might expect in return.116 However, Jephcott’s postwar study suggested
that, during the war at least, a boyfriend offered ‘a marvellous time for nothing’, representing ‘a definite financial as well as social asset’. Some girls preferred to pay their own way on a date, ‘“then [boys] don’t expect anything of you”’, but this applied more to casual dating rather than serious courting. Parents judged a boyfriend’s eligibility by the ‘material pledges’ he made. In return, the girl was expected to accumulate items for their future home together, in a real or metaphorical ‘bottom drawer’.117 Leonard concurred that, when seriously courting,
unless both were students, the man paid ‘all the major expenses‘. She also pointed out, in more general terms, that ‘Men have the right and obligation [my italics] to ask women out, to pay for outings and press for sexual “favours” in return.’118
Wartime relationships with American GIs temporarily stationed in the UK had exaggerated the disparity of earnings between the sexes. The phenomenon of better-dressed and better-paid American soldiers, bearing nylons and ham from the PX store and buying their way into the homes and hearts of rationing-starved, bare-legged British women, appears to have had more substance than just a caricature portrayed by disgruntled absent or less successful British suitors.119 Several sources for this study mentioned former associations with GIs, emphasizing
the material advantages: rich fruit cake, ‘butter… chocolate, stockings… cigarettes. We all did very well.’ In addition to the ‘lovely food’ one source remembered being given to take home from US camp dances, Americans also had transport. They arrived in jeeps to collect the girls,
115 Langhamer, ‘Love’ (2007), pp. 187-88. 116 Jephcott, Girls, p. 136.
117 Jephcott, Rising, pp. 74-75. 118 Leonard, pp. 83, 107.
119 Reynolds, pp. xxiv, 263, 264-65; Claire Langhamer, ‘A public house is for all classes, men and women
alike’: Women, Leisure and Drink in Second World War England’, Women’s History Review, 12, iii (2003), 423-43 (p. 424).
168 and ferried them home again. ‘Of course my brother didn’t have that, and [my POW
boyfriend] didn’t have a car!’120
German prisoners could not even travel by bus; nor, for much of their period as prisoners, did they (legitimately) have money.121 From June 1947, those who worked were allowed up to
fifteen shillings a week, of which they received three shillings and sixpence in sterling, a similar amount paid in tokens redeemable in their camp canteens, and the remainder held back for payment on repatriation.122 For the first time they were permitted to purchase items in shops,
prompting some shopkeepers to display notices that Germans would not be served.123 After
the ban on using buses or entering commercial premises was lifted, some proprietors still refused entry to German prisoners, and conductors barred them from boarding buses.
Compared with the casual, free-spending generosity of the Americans, German POWs’ gifts were modest, old-fashioned and, arguably, more romantically meaningful while less sexually coercive – impromptu gifts of wild flowers, as, in early 1945, the snowdrops Peter R. picked for his future wife, Margaret; or simple but painstakingly handmade presents – BW06’s POW lover made her a string bag; Muriel Webster’s boyfriend proposed with jewellery he had fashioned from nails: a ring and three tiny handpainted flowers.124
The German prisoners seemed more emotionally needy, more talkative than other young men. A woman who had been a teenager in the 1940s reminisced that British soldiers would take you for a drink and either bore you talking about cars or sport or abandon you to talk to their ‘mates’ for the evening.125 German prisoners, however, were escaping the tedium of male
120 Laura F., interview; Sylvia L., interview; Olive K., interview; BW29, interview.
121 Some POWs earned small amounts illicitly. See Sullivan, pp. 330-32; Kochan, p. 117; Appendix 5.,
‘German POW Working Camp permanent walking out pass’.
122 Faulk, p. 42.
123 ‘POWs Spend £2 Month ‘Outside’: Some Shops Say “No Germans”’, photocopy of unnamed
newspaper cutting, 27-7-1947, p. 3.
124 Peter R., interview notes; BW06, correspondence; Mae, p. 66.
125 Norman Longmate, The G.I.s: The Americans in Britain 1942-1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1975), p.
169 communal life: ‘Many of them were just thirsting to talk to a female.’126 The restrictions of
meeting tended to intensify the relationship. Fear of being seen together, and the ban on POWs entering conventional commercial courting arenas, meant most couples passed the time alone, walking and talking in the countryside. One source wrote how, unable to go to the cinema, they exchanged confidences about their families, and through this intimacy developed a deep love.127 Lorna H.’s previous dates with boyfriends had been ‘fun’, but with H. she
‘couldn’t […] go to a dance or do the normal things… and I suppose for the first time in my life I was a bit serious-minded.’ Phyllis H., formerly ‘picture-mad’ and keen on rollerskating, spent Saturday nights with her POW boyfriend ‘walking round and round’. Others, like Lorna H. who had previously been ‘dance-mad’, also described their dates with POWs as ‘just walking’.128
When Joan Z. met her POW boyfriend after work: ‘All we could do was go for walks… We couldn’t be seen in the town or at the pictures… Cafes were also out because everyone stared… and made us feel uncomfortable. People always looked at them with suspicion.’129
Lorna H. explained she and her POW boyfriend got to know one another ‘so well’ because ‘all we did was talk all the time’, adding that he was lonely, ‘it was good for him’ and a novelty for herself.130
In the mid-twentieth century, respectable young women would not normally enter pubs unescorted.131 WW2 appeared to have, however, broken down some barriers in this respect,
and in 1947, Olive K.’s father sent her down to the village pub every night to fetch him a pint of beer.132 A group of German POWs regularly stood outside all evening, ‘drawing on their
126 BW03, correspondence. 127 BW01, correspondence.
128 Lorna H., interview; Kathleen S., Edna S., Joan Z., Sylvia L. 129 Joan Z., correspondence.
130 Lorna H., interview.
131 Leonard, pp. 76, 79, referring to the late 1960s: ‘young women will only go into a pub when
accompanied [… and…] are dependent upon drinks being bought for them.’
132 For fuller discussion of young women in pubs in the 1940s, see Langhamer ‘A Public’; David W.
Gutzke, Women Drinking Out in Britain Since the Early Twentieth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), pp. 54-59.
170 cigarettes and staring in.’ Olive, free to enter where these men could not, sometimes bought them a pint.133
In a relationship with a German prisoner, the ‘norm’ for a young woman of being a ‘treated’, passive appendage, became subverted: she gave gifts – of food, or clothing, to disguise her boyfriend; she bought and paid for the cinema tickets while he hung back in the shadows. BW27 confessed to spending all her savings on her POW boyfriend. One woman took her POW boyfriend, wearing her brother’s clothes, to London art galleries, paying for everything;
another took hers, in her brother-in-law’s coat, to the cinema, after dark: ‘I had to get the tickets and pay and treat him. Soldiers always paid for us. I liked him enough, I wanted to pay for him.’134 Kathleen G. had met a German POW in spring 1946. She sometimes took him to
the cinema, dressed in her brother’s suit. ‘I paid and we sat at the back after going in when the film had started.’135
Normally, young men were allowed much greater freedoms than young women, who often had a curfew imposed by parents, a time they were expected home. It was accepted that your boyfriend would walk you home, then get home much later himself.136 Jillian R. railed against
always having to be home by 9.30pm, when dances were only just warming up, but she was allowed out later than German POWs. Joyce W. recalled how, from December 1946, POWs were allowed to walk outside their camps or accept invitations into private houses, ‘as long as they were back in camp before lighting-up time.’137 When June K. was courting Gerhard, he
‘was still in the POW camp and had to be back at 8pm.’ Joyce S. described how, even on their
133 Olive K., interview.
134 BW20, interview, BW29, interview; see also Mae, p. 27; Dorothy H., correspondence; BW01,
correspondence; Nora R., correspondence; Joyce S., correspondence; Phyllis H., interview; Lorna H., interview; Fay S., correspondence; Kathleen W., interview; Margaret J., interview.
135 Kathleen G., correspondence.
136 Dennis, pp. 37-38: ‘The Air Force boy followed the accepted ritual of “clicking or picking up”; “Can I
see you home?”…And then Harry walked home six miles’. Also Leonard, pp. 76, 107, referring to the 1960s/70s: ‘Young women cannot go to certain places or walk home alone at night.’
171 wedding day: ‘At 8.30pm we walked to the town […] for [the POWs] to return to camp. The 9pm bus took them all back (my husband included).’138
POWs had to be present in camp for evening roll call. Several women described escorting POW boyfriends as near as they dared go to the gates, then walking home themselves. ‘Girls who had boyfriends there used to take them home at night [...]. Then we would all walk home together.’139 Several women portrayed themselves as ‘protective’ of their POW boyfriends,
whom they described as ‘sensitive’ or shy.140 Others traced the origins of their relationship in
having felt sorry for him. Olive K. had noticed her future husband hanging around looking lost outside the cinema, and taken him in to see the film.141 Such accounts exude a sense of female
empowerment, of picking up on the POWs’ emotional neediness, rather than their own. ‘Their position was so stupid. They were all desperately lonely and unhappy and needing girlfriends like anything.’142
Most sources described organizing illicit outings, disguising their boyfriends with borrowed civilian clothes.143 Some who ultimately married described themselves as ‘sharing costs’, as
neither party had much money. For Joyce S. ‘it seemed normal for me to pay the marriage licence. I earned money, my [fiancé] had no money.’ He earned a small amount making slippers out of potato sacks (which Joyce sold, illicitly, to family and workmates), and saved up six guineas to pay for their wedding rings. ‘So I felt we were sharing the cost of the important
138 Joyce W., Joyce S., correspondence. 139 Joan Z., correspondence.
140 Jillian R.; BW20; Joan Z. 141 Olive K., interview. 142 Joyce W., taped response.
143 From February 1947, HO Circular 38/1947 announced that German prisoners’ diamond-patched
clothing was to be gradually replaced by plain brown battledress, HO 45/23086. This uniform relaxation appears to have been slow being implemented, ‘owing to the shortage of cloth.’ ‘Clothing
172 […] things.’144 For one young woman, arranging the wedding and paying for her wedding ring
formed part of the empowering fun of subverting conventional roles.145
Delight in turning convention on its head is also reflected in Joyce W.’s narrative of the event that led to meeting her future husband. Her younger sister, aged eighteen, was out walking with a friend when two German POWs approached them. The POWs
had practised a few sentences they wanted to say if they met somebody nice. They stopped these two girls and one of them announced ‘If you invite me, I can come to tea.’146…which the two girls thought very amusing, and my sister’s friend said ‘OK, you
can come to tea with us on Saturday.’147
Joyce did not explain exactly what the two girls found so amusing about this opening gambit: possibly the clumsy transparency of such an approach, or its novelty. Tea with a girl’s parents would not normally figure as a chat-up line; a boy would typically ask a girl out, shying away from being vetted by her parents. Equally, the incongruous prospect of inviting for tea not just a complete stranger, but a former enemy suggests a mischievously appealing subversion of the convention of bringing a boyfriend home as an indication of committed courtship, into the setting where one was normally only introduced to ‘suitable’ young men.148