The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Prose - 59. Brian Keith “…Dear Dave…”

What an amazing letter. I’m glad you’ve posted it here. My mind reels the images by inner eye like a movie. 

1 hour ago, Parker Owens said:

What an amazing letter. I’m glad you’ve posted it here. My mind reels the images by inner eye like a movie. 

Thanks, Parker. I know One published more letters like this from men and women in uniform. I will have to go digging in their miraculously preserved archive, which is slowly being put online   

I can’t imagine the total sense of loss and grief, yet not being able to openly share it with others. 

The National WW II Museum in New Orleans used to have a few letters that could be accessed through their website, but I tried searching before commenting and couldn’t locate them. 

 

1 hour ago, 84Mags said:

I can’t imagine the total sense of loss and grief, yet not being able to openly share it with others. 

The National WW II Museum in New Orleans used to have a few letters that could be accessed through their website, but I tried searching before commenting and couldn’t locate them. 

 

Thanks, 84Mags. Gay material like this is particularly vulnerable to destruction. The historian James Gardiner bought arguably the most important 20 century archive of the life of a male couple -- completely by accident. He was visiting a resort town in the early 90s, popped in the local auction house and pulled out a box hidden under the table. There were more, all full of photographs, scrap books and letters from Ralph Hall and Monty Glover, who had been partners for 5 decades. This includes all of Hall's letters from his time in uniform and deployment during WW2. If not for James Gardiner, the archive would have been split and lost to history, as Glover's relatives had been the ones to ship everything from the men's home to the auction floor after Ralph passed in the late 80s.

Historian Lucy London has recently brought the existence of another such WW2 archive to my attention, which an English museum director found for sale, piecemeal, on ebay. That man says he bought the first lot thinking they were "normal" (his word), and repulsed once he realized who the parties were (two men in uniform). Nevertheless, he read on and found the love letters to be truly historic and began buying as many pieces of the archive as he could,* still piecemeal and no doubt scattered. This historian publicized his work, looking for a publisher, and before the pandemic was hopeful of finding one. There have been no updates on a book ...      

The good news / bad news about the Hall / Glover archive is: Gardiner has published some of the material; most (90%) remains unpublished and unaccessible for research because Gardiner has yet to settle the collection with an institution. 

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*nowadays, the ebay seller is the other side of the commercial funnel, once lots, like the kind Gardiner found, are bought at local auctions and re-sold for as much as possible online, which always means piece by piece.         

10 hours ago, AC Benus said:

Thanks, 84Mags. Gay material like this is particularly vulnerable to destruction. The historian James Gardiner bought arguably the most important 20 century archive of the life of a male couple -- completely by accident. He was visiting a resort town in the early 90s, popped in the local auction house and pulled out a box hidden under the table. There were more, all full of photographs, scrap books and letters from Ralph Hall and Monty Glover, who had been partners for 5 decades. This includes all of Hall's letters from his time in uniform and deployment during WW2. If not for James Gardiner, the archive would have been split and lost to history, as Glover's relatives had been the ones to ship everything from the men's home to the auction floor after Ralph passed in the late 80s.

Historian Lucy London has recently brought the existence of another such WW2 archive to my attention, which an English museum director found for sale, piecemeal, on ebay. That man says he bought the first lot thinking they were "normal" (his word), and repulsed once he realized who the parties were (two men in uniform). Nevertheless, he read on and found the love letters to be truly historic and began buying as many pieces of the archive as he could,* still piecemeal and no doubt scattered. This historian publicized his work, looking for a publisher, and before the pandemic was hopeful of finding one. There have been no updates on a book ...      

The good news / bad news about the Hall / Glover archive is: Gardiner has published some of the material; most (90%) remains unpublished and unaccessible for research because Gardiner has yet to settle the collection with an institution. 

 

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*nowadays, the ebay seller is the other side of the commercial funnel, once lots, like the kind Gardiner found, are bought at local auctions and re-sold for as much as possible online, which always means piece by piece.         

When I checked the National WW II Museum website and didn't readily find the letters, I also google searched and found the information you mentioned. I found, through the BBC, letters from Gilbert Bradley and Gordon Bowsher. They were purchased by an art dealer who didn't initially understand they were between two men.  More to the point of your comment, in one of the letters Gordon asked Gilbert to destroy all the letters sent to him. Prior to the Sexual Offenses Act 1967 those serving in the armed forces could have been shot for same sex relations. It is hard enough to find letters between service members and loved ones, (my husband is a retired US military officer and a few years ago we jointly decided to destroy decades of letters between us for no other reason then we didn't want to keep moving them when we relocated or have family deal with them), but to understand the gravity of keeping correspondence under the possible penalty of death is unthinkable.