Brian Bertosa

Sacrifice to Eros and Homosexuality in the Spartan Army

The ancient writer Athenaeus preserves a tradition whereby Spartan soldiers on the verge of giving battle sacrificed to the god of love, Eros. This is done, he says, on the basis of the ‘friendship’ between the members of the phalanx. In this article, Athenaeus’ statement serves as the starting point of a wide-ranging discussion of Greek homosexuality in both civilian and military contexts, including important differences between the two; unique aspects of homosexuality among the Spartans; the organisation of a Spartan field force and how it relates to Athenaeus’ report; and the Spartan army’s elite unit, the 300 hippeis.

Glenn James Voelz

Images of Enemy and Self in the Age of Jefferson: The Barbary Conflict in Popular Literary Depiction

America’s protracted campaign against piracy from the Barbary quasi-states demonstrated the complex confluence of literary culture, diplomacy and war making in the early republic era. Popular writings introduced the unfamiliar adversary to public consciousness through travel logs, philosophical texts, theatrical presentations, novels and poetry. These literary depictions drew on several persistent sources of knowledge: the inherited presumptions of European philosophy, powerful subtexts of republican political ideology and a deep reservoir of domestic experience with Native American cultures. Period texts offered convincing rationalisations for military action while depicting Barbary societies as suitable objects of reform. Yet these reflections of Barbary were also decidedly self-referential, informed as much by domestic anxieties as by the realities of external threat, thus providing a unique medium for self-examination during a period of social turmoil and political division in the anxious afterglow of the Revolutionary moment.

Ashley Gould

From Taiaha to Ko: Repatriation and Land Settlement for Maori Soldiers in New Zealand after the First World War

This article is an exploratory study of an aspect of post-First World War soldier settlement in New Zealand which was seemingly not replicated in the post-war experience of other Dominions: state-assisted land settlement of returned soldiers of the indigenous races.

Thomas A. Bruscino Jr

The Analogue of Work:Memory and Motivations for America’s Second World War Soldiers

American soldiers in the Civil War and the Second World War were separated by only 80 years, but their own descriptions of why they fought were vastly different. Civil War soldiers on both sides often talked about fighting for their respective causes. American fighting men in the Second World War consistently dismissed attempts to link why they fought to larger causes. This article argues that the history and memory of soldier motivation during the Civil War and the First World War created conditions whereby, at the outbreak of the Second World War, Americans looked with scepticism at great causes. So when asked why they fought, the men who had come of age during the Great Depression ignored causes and answered in the only terms they knew: analogues of work.

Jutta Schwarzkopf

Combatant or Non-Combatant? The Ambiguous Status of Women in British Anti-Aircraft Batteries during the Second World War

This article investigates the ambiguous relationship to combat of the officially non-combatant women who formed part of anti-aircraft battery teams. It outlines the reasons for and the manner of recruitment of these women as well as analysing the uneasy relations between the male Anti-Aircraft Command and the female Auxiliary Territorial Service supplying the women required. Finally, the article charts gender relations on site, focusing on the conditions enabling women to adopt a military identity. In conclusion it is argued that, on anti-aircraft sites, demarcations of gender became blurred because of the virtually equal relationship to combat of both men and women.

George Davis
Turkey’s Engagement with Anzac Day, 1948–2000

This article examines the relationship of the Turkish nation to Anzac Day observances from the 1948 Morshead mission to Çanakkale to the millennium. Important signposts were established before and during the Second World War which set the tone of Turkish attitudes towards Anzac Day for the rest of the century. These were: Kemal Atatürk’s public statements between 1931 and 1934; policy directions indicated in the 1940 correspondence between Turkish Marshal Fevzi Çakmak and the Anzac leaders, Major-General Bernard Freyberg and Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Blamey; and Turkey’s wish to be recognised as a worthy nation in Western Europe. These elements provided a thrust for Turkey’s involvement in subsequent Anzac Day ceremonials, eventually resulting by 2000 in the establishment of Gallipoli as the world focus for the commemoration.