As many people wait (and wait) for the Obama administration to follow up on its promises of lifting Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, what better time to release an explosive anthology of military erotica?
From World War II to Vietnam to the present day, these soldiers fall in love with each other and sometimes sleep with the enemy forces. In the hothouse, hormone- and sweat-drenched all-male environment of these battlefields, even the men who were previously straight start to see each other with a new, urgent lust. All of these connections are, of course, secret, which makes the tension that much more palpable.
The stories are generally either glowing, romantic and passionate, or else extremely rough and violent. Many of them are so violent that there’s a fine line between consent and not, as you’d expect with this many edgy interrogations and gangbangs. In Lew Bull’s “6-21-3-11‒ 2-21-4-4-25”, a German soldier interrogates an American G.I. who can hardly contain his lust (and admiration for the sharp German uniform).
In “Wild Blue Yonder” by Jack Fritscher, the first of many stories set in World War II, the pilot Big Boyd Grymkowski names his plane after his copilot “Booger,” who tells the story of their intense friendship and even more passionate, wholesome fucking. The sex is hot, and the danger in anyone finding out is intense, as Boyd and Jack agree to make “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me,” the code for their connection. I couldn’t help thinking that any soldiers who fell for each other today would have a similar anxiety over being discovered and discharged.
The erotic potential of the military power hierarchy is explored in “Between Shots Fired” by Jay Starre. An American sergeant and private have a furious hookup in the temporary quiet after a skirmish. The brief privacy on the battlefield is taken advantage of again in “The Foxhole” by Dakota Rebel, as one soldier with a broken ankle is slowly, sensually fucked by his troopmate ‒ knowing they must soon return to the other guys giving nothing away.
In E. Robertson’s “Lili Marleen,” also set during WWI, a young, pillow-lipped blond soldier wanders into an American platoon which protects him from battle. Two of the soldiers share him (or take turns watching, while the other fucks him) and nickname him “Lili,” after the song that all the soldiers of the time love so much that they stop fighting when it's played on the radio.
Another WWII story, “In a Flash” by Rob Rosen, flashes back to an Italian farmer and American soldier. They fall in love and fuck each other as an building, abandoned by the Germans, literally falls down around them during a bombing.
The only story set in the Civil War, “Sarvis” by Jeff Mann, is narrated by a Rebel soldier. A Yankee soldier is captured and tortured by a Rebel officer who is deeply resentful of the Yankees. The story features a searingly hot singletail scene inflicted by the officer on the captured Yankee. It’s rare for a piece of erotica to really grab the crackling tension in a BDSM scene, let alone a good singletail scene, and everything rings authentic in this story, from the lash of the officer’s whip to the way the musclebound Yankee rises to his toes when taking the punishment.
The tension is just as thick in “Rohan” by Annabella Usher, in which an American has been captured by an enemy soldier and is about to be shot. Instead, they fuck ‒ as the enemy holds hands with the dead friend over whom he had been weeping. When the helicopters come, the enemy kills himself with his dead friend’s gun. At this point, there had been so much violence and use of blood as lube that there wasn’t much shock value left in this story.
Fortunately, Simon Sheppard was there to blow off the top of my brain, as usual. In “Stockholm Syndrome,” a POW has fantasies about his interrogator. “It was all just a dream” is a well-worn cliché, but the Wizard of Oz holds nothing on this story, which is just as hot as it is disturbing.
Equally rough treatment is in “Good-bye Saigon” by Jack Fritscher, as a former hippie remembers in glowing terms his first encounter with another man ‒ a Vietnam vet who beat him up and then fucked him mercilessly. “Field of Battle” by Richard Michael features an equally brutal all-soldier gangbang.
This collection isn’t for the faint of heart. Still, it’s full of passionate, invigorating sex from the battlefield to the interrogation room. Read it and immerse yourself in the terror and desire between men drawn to each other on the frontlines.