Forbidden Love

by M McCann, Year 10

It was not until the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 that men aged 21 and over were legally allowed to have gay relationships. However, being openly gay in the armed forces was still not allowed until the year 2000 and until 2016 you were still legally able to be discharged from the army for ‘homosexual acts’. The fact that people in the armed forces were subject to so much prejudice is inhumane and frankly disgusting. The ban, which led to up to 200 sackings a year, was incredibly backwards. This was a time where there were more women of colour in Congress in America than there had ever been before but at the same time we were living in an unjustly homophobic society. But just because it was banned, doesn’t mean it stopped people from being gay, even if they had to keep it a secret.

Gilbert Bradley and Gordon Bowsher fell in love during WWII, a time where being homosexual was a crime that could lead to you being shot if caught while serving in the armed forces. However, when Gilbert joined the army, their relationship survived through beautifully crafted letters that the pair sent back and forth throughout the war. The letters were discovered in 2008 after Mr Bradley died. Bradley and Bowsher first met on a houseboat in the summer of 1938 in Devon when Mr Bowsher was in a relationship with Mr Bradley’s nephew. Gilbert Bradley was forced into the armed forces; he was

so reluctant that he even pretended to have epilepsy to get out of serving. However, his ploy didn’t work, and he was stationed at Park Hall Camp in Oswestry, Shropshire, to train as an anti-aircraft gunner in 1939.

This is a very rare story because in many cases like these they often destroyed any potentially incriminating evidence. In one of the letters, Mr Bowsher even urges Bradley to “do one thing for me in deadly seriousness. I want all my letters destroyed. Please darling do this for me. ‘Til then and forever I worship you.” But thanks to Gilbert Bradley the 600 plus letters survived and were found by Oswestry Town Museum curator Mark Hignett. He had been searching on eBay for items connected with the town and came across the letters for sale. Mr Bradley had moved to Brighton and when he died in 2008, a house clearance company found the letters and sold them to a dealer specialising in military mail. Hignett bought just three letters at first, thinking that they were from a girlfriend or a fiancé, but when he found more letters for sale he soon realised that ‘G’ was a boyfriend.

Although the couple wrote throughout the war, the letters stopped in 1945.

At some point, Mr Bradley was sent to Scotland on a mission to defend the Forth Bridge. This was where he met and fell in love with two other men. He wrote back and told Bowsher all about his romances but, surprisingly, Bowsher took it all very well, writing that he “understood why they fell in love with you. After all, so did I”. Even though Bradley and Bowsher didn’t end up together, it is still an inspiring story.

In one of the letters, one of them writes: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.” and now this will come true. A book is being written compiling all the letters with a potential publishing date of late 2020. There is also a plan for a movie adaptation.

These two men rebelled against the social and legal constrictions of who they could love. This is an incredibly empowering story about how historic suppression of LGBTQ+ rights has influenced many people’s lives and how important it is to fight for the people you love no matter the consequences. In this day and age we are free to love whoever we choose and I wonder, if Bradley and Bowser had been given the chance to love who they chose, how different their lives would have been.