Previously we have discussed CP for women in the Royal Navy during and after the Second World War. Women were not fully incorporated into the Navy until the 1957 Naval Discipline Act, but until then they had been formulated under boy cadet rules and technically, and sometimes actually, subject to corporal punishment.
This entailed anything from six-of-the-best to 30 strokes administered to the bare bottom, usually but not exclusively by a women officer. Although most accounts suggest that bare bottom canings were relatively rare by the 1950s, whilst being de rigour during the war.
What hasn’t been discussed so much is CP in other military services and in other countries.
One account has a serving British Army woman driver getting an over-the-knee spanking from her male officer after skiving off to a pub. There will be more on this another time.
Unofficial spankings and CP seems to be more common than the official kind in some services.
In WWII a mid-ranking women officer was tasked to investigating inappropriate behaviour to serving WAVS. On interviewing one woman she was told, ‘he spanked me.’
The officer replied, “Oh phooey, is that all? If I wrote up a report every time some peace time brat got a spanking in the service I would drown in paperwork.”
The woman protested, “You don’t understand,” and in a whisper added, “He spanked my bare bottom.”
The investigator shot back wearily, “Oh honey, who hasn’t been spanked on the bare bottom?”
This was according to an ex-service forum referencing some war memoirs by veterans. This exchange was allegedly from I Was a Girl Sailor. Needless to say I could not find the book so this remains apocryphal.
More directly Tom emailed me during my down time to say that his sister was caned on the bare bottom several times while serving in the Australian Navy in the 1970s. He claims that she always said it was “no biggie,” and better than getting written up for going AWOL, drunk on duty and “some other stuff that involved messing around with some weapons.”
He said that she was generally caned with other girls by a male officer in the presence of women officer. She was made to bare and bend with her hands on her knees to receive 12 strokes and once 18 strokes. For the weapons incident she was caned bending over a table and received 24 strokes. “It hurt like fucking hell,” she told him, and after she couldn’t “sit down too well that time.”
I also have some notes about Thailand and Singapore somewhere, but that is for another day.