Barrack Buddies and Soldier Lovers: Dialogues with Gay Young Men in the U.S. Military

This book is a collection of transcribed conversations. Like the works to which it is most likely to be compared, Mary Ann Humphrey's "My Country, My Right to Serve" and Randy Shilts's "Conduct Unbecoming," Zeeland provides ample biographical material. Yet the book's greatest worth is not in the narratives it contains of individual lives. It is the connections, relationships, and social patterns described incidentally by the interviewees that make it a unique and eminently useful contribution to gay and lesbian studies. The dialogues chronicle what has long been known to exist but few before have actually described in depth, the far-ranging and pervasive gay networks within the United States Army and Air Force. One of the back-cover blurbs accurately proclaims that the book challenges stereotypes and assumptions. A considerable body of research in the recent past encourages the belief that danger and misery characterize life for gays in the military. This was not true for the soldier-lovers who told their stories to Zeeland. Most claimed their sexual orientation created little difficulty. Several complained of minor harassment and insisted gays endured more frustations in the military than heterosexuals, but others claimed that life was no more unpleasant for gays than for anyone else in the service. The interviewees rarely expressed the morbid fears or self-doubts that allegedly result from continuous efforts at concealment and public denial. "The purpose of this book," Zeeland explains, "is to promote queer GI visibility." In this he has been successful, and in the process has given readers a revealing glimpse of gay community life in the United States Army and Air Force.

This book not only lets you see the lives of REAL gay men in the military, it's also a look at this whole network of young soldiers. It's amazing how different these GIs are from each other, all they really have in common is that they like men. Except some of them are more "bi-curious" I guess. It's a whole different world from the gay scene. And I couldnt believe how blunt and open these guys are! Oh yeah, it's damn sexy reading too.