“If we're to have a true picture of the masculinity of the war years, then as now, we cannot sweep the more unpleasant aspects of it out of sight in favour of idealised heroes. To deny men their raucous sexuality, however much it might have offended polite society then and a very different moral spectrum now, is to omit a huge part of themselves. Perhaps just like the boy who cannot resist picking up a twig to pretend it is a gun, they are a part of the uncomfortable truth of what it can be to be a man.”