‘One Yank and they’re Off’

Abstract

This chapter examines Northern Irish women's encounter with American troops during the Second World War, explaining that the involvement of women in both Britain and Australia with US troops has generally been located in a wider debate surrounding changing female sexual identity and its impact on citizenship and international relation. The arrival of American troops had an important impact on female behaviour and ideas about female sexuality, and caused the established rules of courtship to be disregarded under the new, heightened wartime conditions. The women involved in these encounters were in the main lower-working-class women whose behaviour was not as closely supervised. They were the women who caused the authorities most concern and who were prosecuted in the courts for their public associations with US troops.