Love Letters vs. Letters Carved in Stone: Gender, Memory and the Forces Sweethearts Exhibition

The 'Forces Sweethearts' exhibition put on by the Imperial War Museum in 1993 commemorated a very different war experience from that of the outsize guns and mottled tanks that loom in the museum's central gallery. It invited us to peep into heart-shaped cases at mannequins in Great War wedding dresses; the scarlet sequinned strapless of a Marilyn Monroe pinup; a tumble of trinkets and bouquet upon bouquet of faded letters. Charting wartime romance from the First World War to the Gulf, the exhibition was about the flip side of battle, the home life, dreams and fantasies of those in the services. It was a recognition of 'private' life, which to a large extent is also where those in the services 'escaped' from war. It also put women in the forefront. The exhibition thus potentially waded into interesting and radical waters. Yet, as I show through a close reading of the exhibition's design and imagery, the museum's attempt to hold together pinup and reality in one narrative, that of the 'forces sweetheart', is part of a wider confusion between a celebration of romance and a representation of women's war histories.