Leave Your Helmet On

Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery last week noted a new form of German sabotage. He said that German women were wearing fewer & fewer clothes, thereby undermining the U.S. and British Armies' non-fraternization policy.

G.I.s and Tommies bore out the Field Marshal's story. German girls in brief shorts and halters systematically sunned themselves in full view of U.S. engineers building a bridge over the Weser River. Sometimes the girls shed the halters.

Military policemen under orders to arrest fraternizers had their patience tried by a girl who patted her backside and whispered "verboten" every time she passed.

Summer weather and human nature presumably had something to do with the national display of legs and skin. But the effect on U.S. and British troops was exactly what the Field Marshal feared. "If you leave your hat on, and don't smile," said G.I.s, "it's not fraternization."

Occupational Semantics. Among G.I.s the word "fraternization" had acquired a meaning not included in family dictionaries. "How's fraternizing down your way?" was a standard conversational gambit. Nevertheless, many a soldier understood that the rule went beyond sex. TIME Correspondent Percival Knauth overheard two G.I.s at Wiesbaden discussing the matter in its larger aspects:

"You know," said a tall, sandy-haired youngster, "I think this non-fraternization is just plain stupid. What I mean is, it's going against human nature. . . . After all we are supposed to educate these Germans back to be normal citizens, and this way we're just raising a barrier between us and them." "Listen," said the other soldier, "you got the wrong slant. All a soldier wants is a little fun. The order doesn't seem to make sense but I can see some reason for it. ... We've got to teach these Germans that we're the boss now, and if you go around fraternizing then they have influence over you and how are you going to govern them?"

"But I ask you,"replied the first soldier, "did the French get an influence over us? Did we all get to love the French because we fraternized? Like hell we did."

The plain fact was that non-fraternization was sound in purpose, unenforceable in practice. Threats, fines ($65 for enlisted men), simply did not work.

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