'Sex-hungry' women posed biggest danger to GIs based in North
By Alan Erwin
Wednesday May 21 2003
AMERICAN GIs faced many dangers in wartime Europe. And the most unusual emerged for the first time yesterday - sex-hungry women in Northern Ireland.
A new study reveals that the authorities in Washington went to extraordinary lengths to protect the GIs who were stationed in the North during World War II.
They urged troops to keep out of certain pubs in Belfast and Derry and vetted any women dating the soldiers on a regular basis.
Details of the vetting are revealed in a University of Ulster study.
Checks were carried out to make sure that any potential brides were suitable for marriage to Americans, according to researcher of the report, Leanne McCormick.
"Girls who were invited to events such as dances were vetted," she said. "The authorities did not want troops mixing with women who were deemed unsuitable or whose morals were in question."
At one stage GIs accounted for a fifth of the Northern Ireland population, with thousands attending regular weekend dances in search of love.
Records held in Washington revealed military chiefs feared their men keeping company with fast and loose girls.
"The concern was always about the health of the troops which led to women being controlled and regulated," said Ms McCormick.
"Troops were warned of the dangers of venereal disease."
The researcher will present her report entitled 'One Yank and They're Off' during a three-day conference at the University of Ulster Magee campus in Derry which will start on Thursday.
She discovered that women's morals were subjected to intense scrutiny during the war years.
If women complained that they had been sexually assaulted, prosecutions were dropped if there was any suspicion they had been involved in prostitution, according to the report.
Ms McCormick's investigations of the sexual history and politics of Northern Ireland also discovered there were tough regimes for working class girls whose morals were questioned or for those who fell pregnant outside marriage.
They were regularly put in homes run by the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland or the Salvation Army, Ms McCormick claimed.
"They might have been sent there by families concerned by their behaviour - or by priests or ministers," the researcher said.
"Although legislation covering issues like venereal disease was, in theory, gender neutral, in practice it was targeted mostly at women.
"Men who contracted the disease had to reveal any relationship thought to be responsible. In that way, women were in effect blamed for the spread of the disease," Ms McCormick said.
- Alan Erwin