WOMEN AND MEN IN ARMS

Andrew Gimson compares and contrasts German army policy on sex with that of UK and US forces

Berlin THE GERMAN government has ruled that male and female German soldiers are allowed to have sex with each other when serving abroad, but no special accommo- dation will be provided for the purpose.

The announcement followed an incident at the German field hospital at Trogir, on the Croatian coast, when a male and a female NCO made love in a prefabricated hut, out of sight but within earshot of two other women who were also billeted there. The two other women refused to accept this as one of the hardships inseparable from military life. They complained to the company commander who, with the agree- ment of the presiding judge in the relevant military court, imposed seven days' jail on the lovers and sent them back to Germany to serve it. But the lovers lodged an official complaint against the sentence, which was thereupon suspended. They are now charged with breach of duty for offending against 'the respect and trust' demanded of them as soldiers, and also against the 'duty of comradeship'.

Meanwhile the government has respond- ed to a written parliamentary question put down by the Green Party by declaring that 'sexual relationships between members of the Bundeswehr are a private matter and cannot in principle be subject to judgment by the government or by military superi- ors'. Even when German troops serve abroad, their right of 'sexual self-determi- nation' is protected under German law, but it does not follow that the government is obliged to provide 'special facilities for sexual activity'.

Otfried Nassauer, director of the Berlin Information Centre for Transatlantic Security and author of an authoritative study of German land-mines, became almost speechless with laughter on hearing of the case, but drew this analysis: 'The question should have been whether the military authorities intended to imprison the two lovers in one cell. They probably didn't. Otherwise the couple wouldn't have complained.'

A British colonel remarked to a col- league from the Bundeswehr, 'You're damned lucky it wasn't a couple of chaps.' But the Hardthehe — the German min- istry of defence — explained with a certain asperity that the sex of the lovers was immaterial (though the Germans do still oppose the promotion of known homosex- uals to senior levels), and if only the lovers had gone to a hotel, or into the woods, no problem would have arisen. But using the hut, in the presence of two other soldiers, had turned it into 'a quite normal disci- plinary case'.

There is something painful, as well as funny, in the explicitness with which all this has to be gone into. As with the sex scenes in a modern novel, one wishes per- haps that a subtler characterisation had been attempted. But before we mock the German authorities too cruelly for the crassness with which they try to cope with female soldiers, we should remember that the British, though inclined as a society to be more liberal about the role of women, are in at least as much difficulty about them as soldiers.

Officers in Continental armies some- times express envy of their British counter- parts for being able to treat soldiers as soldiers, not as civil servants. The British, by contrast, fear this martial tradition is fast being destroyed by troublemakers demanding equal treatment for women, homosexuals, even the physically infirm. The Germans have about 3,100 women in their armed forces, mostly serving as medics, with a few musicians. We already have over 13,000 in a much wider range of fields, including air crew (17 pilots and 20 navigators), at sea (700 women on 41 ships, though none in submarines) and in many parts of the army, including posts of great danger, though not, in theory, in the front line.

The official British view is that every- thing is going pretty well, added to which 'there is no doubt that women do have a civilising effect on the men'. Privately, however, British officers admit that a number of clearly foreseeable problems, such as the tendency of women to have children and to need time to look after them, were not thought through in advance. The Ministry of Defence got itself into an appalling mess when soldiers were sacked for becoming pregnant, and had to be paid large sums in compensation.

As Antony Beevor, author of Inside the British Army and at work on a book about Stalingrad, observes, 'The British Army is going through a period when it's trying to establish honking rules. That's what the generals call them. It's a very difficult one. They've got to prepare the ground for the possible acceptance of homosexuals in the forces.

'But with so many mixed headquarters nowadays, the general rule about hetero- sexual sex has to be the 11th command- ment: don't get found out. There was a case recently on Salisbury Plain when a male and female soldier were had up for having sex during a Territorial Army exer- cise, but it turned out they were married.

'There was also the famous occasion when a British general was being shown round an American camp, and was amazed to see men and women coming out of the same tent. He asked one of the women what it was like having to share a tent with the men and she replied, "Well, I guess it just means we get laid more often." ' An American army spokesman in Ger- many says in a laid-back tone that about 70 American soldiers in Bosnia 'have been returned to their home stations in Ger- many due to medical profiles associated with becoming pregnant'. That is about 4.6 per cent of American women serving there: broadly comparable to the 5.2 per cent pregnancy rate among female American soldiers during the Gulf war deployment.

The Americans do not prohibit hetero- sexual relationships among consenting sin- gle soldiers, but when a soldier becomes pregnant, 'she will receive a medical profile prohibiting the wearing of load-bearing equipment', which obliges her to return home.

No official figures seem to be available for the number of British soldiers who have got pregnant in Bosnia. But, as Mr Beevor says, 'the sands have shifted under the army's feet' when it comes to maintaining the traditional moral and social constraints against unmarried couples living together, and against children born out of wedlock. There is already at least one female officer who is a lone parent.

'Any stand taken,' Mr Beevor observes, 'any line drawn, must be defensible purely on the grounds of military or economic necessity. Equal rights groups and the tabloid press would be only too happy to portray generals as Cromwellian moralists and put the army in the stocks.'

From a pragmatic point of view, he is right. Not only traditional morality but the mysterious world of the spirit must be set aside in favour of a purely utilitarian approach to women. Yet this is surely as bad, in its way, and as limited, as writers who don't get beyond women's anatomy.

Andrew Gimson is German correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.