The United States and the Second World War: New Perspectives on Diplomacy, War, and the Home Front

4. Allotment Annies and Other Wayward Wives: Wartime Concerns About Female Disloyalty and the Problem of the Returned Veteran

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . c h a p t e r f o u r ........................................................... allotment annies and other wayward wives: wartime concerns about female disloyalty and the problem of the returned veteran Ann Pfau In June 1943, the Senate Committee on Military Affairs held hearings to examine several proposals to increase the allotment paid to enlisted men’s families.1 Although the legislation’s intent was to soothe soldiers’ worries about the welfare of dependent wives, children, siblings, and parents, Senator Edwin C. Johnson (D–Colorado) urged Army administrators present at the hearings to use this opportunity to address ‘‘the problem of immoral women marrying soldiers.’’ General Miller G. White, Assistant Chief of Staff, Army Personnel, dodged the issue by charging that any policy designed to punish unfaithful wives might unfairly penalize innocent women, because charges of immorality were often based on hearsay.2 However , the question of whether to punish sexual disloyalty was unavoidable; it resurfaced at House hearings on the same legislation three months later. This time, cuckolded soldiers found a more aggressive advocate in Representative John J. Sparkman (D–Alabama), who proposed to allow servicemen to terminate dependency allotments ‘‘upon showing good cause.’’3 Army administrators were well armed with arguments against such a measure. General Jay L. Benedict of the Joint Army Navy Legislative Board testified that although he had ‘‘no quarrel whatever with the principle’’ of punishing wayward wives, he worried that it would be ‘‘impracticable to determine the merits’’ of soldiers’ marital complaints. In addition to the hardships that the proposed legislation might impose on loyal wives, Benedict condemned it for the harm that it would do to individual soldiers. Comparing the measure with enemy propaganda, he contended that it would demoralize servicemen by prompting them to distrust faithful wives. Similarly, General H. N. Gilbert, Director of the War Department’s Office of Dependency Benefits, argued that it would be better policy to allow a few bad women to profit from deception than to investigate soldiers ’ often-unfounded complaints against their wives. Catering to soldiers ’ suspicions, Army officials insisted, would damage military morale and produce administrative chaos.4 The Army’s arguments won the day in Congress; Sparkman’s proposal for moral investigations did not appear in the final version of the bill, yet widespread doubts about the sexual morality of soldiers’ wives continued unabated.5 The groundswell of public concern about the fidelity of service wives arose, in part, out of a more generalized anxiety that wartime conditions had fostered sexual immorality and threatened to undermine family stability . Public officials and the popular press bemoaned a perceived decline in sexual morals and blamed young women for the increased incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, illegitimate pregnancies, and juvenile delinquency . So-called ‘‘victory girls,’’ purportedly motivated by the patriotic impulse to give the soldiers ‘‘all they want,’’ posed the greatest public health threat. In their misguided zeal to support the troops, these young women unintentionally weakened the nation’s fighting forces by infecting servicemen with syphilis and gonorrhea. Female soldiers were subject to similar suspicions. Living on Army bases beyond the oversight of family and home community, members of the WAACs (Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps) fit the wartime profile of feminine promiscuity. Indeed, the women who volunteered for service with the U.S. Army were commonly dismissed as government-issue whores.6 While victory girls and female soldiers seemed to threaten public morals and military health, wayward service wives posed an even greater threat to the nation at war. In political speeches and the popular press, these wanton women were accused of driving servicemen to suicide or draining men of the will to fight. Still, marital infidelity was not simply a problem of wartime motivation and morale; more troubling, many civilians worried that unfaithful service wives would derail the rehabilitation of veterans. For as much as they sympathized with soldiers, civilians also feared the 100 : Wartime Concerns About Female Disloyalty servicemen’s return, worrying that wartime traumas would translate into postwar social ills. By easing the transition from soldier to civilian, devoted wives could prevent this catastrophe and ensure postwar domestic tranquility , but many Americans—civilian and soldier alike—questioned whether the nation’s women were up to the task. Concerns about war’s effect on wifely fidelity are at least as old as Homer ’s Odyssey, but during World War II, these concerns turned into an...