On Anzac Day, 1982, five gay men walked up to the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. It was cold and rainy, but they marched with purpose, side by side.

By Ben Winsor

25 April 2017

They were from the Gay Ex-Services Association, and they carried a wreath dedicated to ‘all brothers and sisters who died during the wars’—but they would never get to lay it at the shrine. As they ascended the steps, a cry rang out. “Stop those men!"

Members of the Gay Ex-Services Association, left, and Bruce Ruxton, right (City Rhythm Magazine, 1982)

It was the voice of Bruce Ruxton, then head of the Victorian Returned Serviceman’s League. “I didn’t mind the poofters in the march, but they must march with their units,” he later told The Age. “We didn’t want them to lay a wreath because we didn’t want them—and they are just another start to the denigration of Anzac Day,” he said. Ruxton and the Shrine Commissionaire had a tense discussion with the five men at the top of the stairs.

The men were prevented from laying the wreath, before being escorted away by police (City Rhythm)

There was a suggestion that the group instead lay the wreath at a tree near the shrine. “Not even there,” came the response, according to City Rhythm. Days earlier Ruxton had told broadcaster Derryn Hinch that if his son was queer he would shoot him, the magazine reported. “I don’t know where all these gays and poofters have come from,” he was later famously quoted as saying, “I don’t remember a single one from World War Two.” Less well known - but far more revealing - was the angry rejoinder delivered by a fellow veteran. “As an RSL member, ex-POW and serviceman – I apparently have news for you,” the unnamed man told Outrage magazine in 1988. “There were thousands of ex-servicemen who were camp, I think I went through 300 of them myself,” he told the magazine, a copy of which is preserved by the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives. While his account can't be verified today, many of the details in his story are corroborated by other sources. He told the magazine that when his friends joined up, he joined up too. “You had to be very careful, act butch until you found the ones like you,” he said. A veteran of World War Two, the Australian soldier said he had been held in a POW camp in Greece and then in Germany. The ambulance serviceman was captured in Crete after missing the last boat of the evacuation—he had gone back to collect one last wounded soldier.

The evacuation of Australian soldiers from Crete (AWM).

Before capture, the Melbourne man said he had numerous liaisons with other servicemen, including a night-time rendezvous with his co-driver during the bombing of Athens. “We might as well be happy while we’ve the chance,” his fellow serviceman told him as they watched the bombs rain down. After being captured and transferred to a German internment camp - Stalag 383 - he helped stage performances in a barn that had been converted into a theatre. At least 16 plays and musicals were staged at the camp, with many photos showing men dressed in elaborate drag to play female parts. One of those men was Don 'Pinkie' Smith, a British POW who played the role of Yum Yum in a camp performance of The Mikado.

A Stalag 383 performance of 'The Mikado' (Raine Alexander)

Smith was remembered by several inmates as a convincing and popular Stalag 'showgirl'. "A spot of paint and powder, a few yards of curtains, and a bloke like Pinkie beats the lot for looks!" wrote one POW. When one man harassed Smith about being gay, a friend reminded him that Pinkie was a three-time featherweight boxing champion. He was soon left alone. "Aren't they bloody bastards. I know I'm queer, I don't need them to tell me," Pinkie told his Australian friend, according to his account.

Pinkie Smith was a queer 'showgirl' in the camp (Raine Alexander)

While in the camp, the Australian profiled in Outrage had an ongoing relationship with an English serviceman. “He was a beautiful bloke, a really lovely bloke,” he said. “We both helped out in the shows, so we had a chance to be together behind the curtain.” But the liberation of Stalag 383 by the Americans in April 1945 ended the pair's relationship. “They marched us out of the camp,” he said, “I knew that the English soldier and I would be separated.” “We had remembered each other’s address because we knew that would happen.”

'ANZAC Avenue' in Stalag 383 (Australian War Memorial)

The English soldier was put on transport back to England, while the Australian went to France with the Americans. “After the war he became a policeman in Birmingham, got married. We corresponded right up until his death,” the Australian veteran said, “but we never saw each other again.” Another Australian soldier's tale corroborates the account of serious relationships developing in POW camps. "We had cases of homosexuals really falling in love. In the interests of general happiness we re-arranged some room occupants and eventually got all the homos in one block," he said. Despite Ruxton's assertions, there are countless tales of LGBT+ soldiers in WWI and II. Their stories have been uncovered by dedicated historians who have sifted through thousands of newspaper reports, memoirs, letters, military documents and court records. Historians Gary Wotherspoon, Graham Willett, Ruth Ford, Shirleene Robinson, Noah Riseman and Yorick Smaal have done extensive work to ensure historic LGBT+ service is brought out of the closet. The accounts in this article are derived primarily from the documents they uncovered. Yorick Smaal at Griffith University has dedicated his expertise to WWII. “It’s downplayed in the history of the forces given the official emphasis on nation building and masculinity,” Smaal says, “but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that queer men did want to serve.” “A quarter of homosexual cases in Queensland criminal courts across the war involved airmen, seamen, pilots or others in the military,” he says.

WWI recruitment poster (Australian War Memorial)

While Australia’s official ban on gay and lesbian service was repealed in 1992, LGBT+ soldiers served long before then. “There can be little doubt there were gay soldiers [...] who manned the trenches along the Western Front,” said President Obama on America’s repeal of 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' in 2010. “Their names are etched into the walls of our memorials,” Obama said, “their headstones dot the grounds at Arlington.” But while LGBT+ soldiers have probably served in every army ever formed, their service has often been pushed deep into the closet. Before repeal, the Australian Defence Force policy was to remove gay men “sympathetically and with discretion”. According to the ADF, their service would undermine morale, create a national security risk, encourage the spread of HIV/AIDS, and risk exposing minors to “aberrant behavior”.

The Keating government repealed the ban in November 1992.