15. Acting “Strange” – Which in WWII Meant Acting Gay – to Get Out of the Military
Lenny Bruce’s combat experiences aboard the USS Brooklyn included the Torch landings in North Africa, the invasion of Sicily, the Anzio landing, and Operation Dragoon, the Allied landings in southern France. However, as the war drew to a close, Lenny grew bored with the Navy. Having lied to get in, he lied to get out. A slapstick performance in which Lenny had dressed in drag had upset his officers, and got him thinking. So after 30 months of service, he checked into the Brooklyn’s sickbay to report that he was feeling gay.
In a handwritten letter, Lenny wrote that he had been normal when he joined the Navy, but then his shipmates gave him “abnormal attention”. Such attentions included feeling his body and kissing him – so much that after fifteen months aboard ship, he became attracted to some of his comrades. The strange scheme worked. The medical officer reported to the captain that the by-then-nineteen-year-old Lenny was suppressing homosexual tendencies, but the desire and temptation were getting stronger. The Navy sent him for a psychiatric evaluation, because he had “a tremendous amount of homosexual drive“.
