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Women for the soldiers

• Message 1. 

  Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 14th July 2011

  I have been reading about the pilots in Malta and a comment the author (Laddie Lucas, one of the flight lieutenants) made was that “the other sex, apart, of course, from the hard-working professionals readily available in the clip joints, night clubs and sleazy bars along Valletta’s Street called Straight... was largely out of reach for the majority of those who flew the Spitfires. Certainly , it was in much shorter supply than is deemed to be healthy or natural for sex-denied young men. Aircrew needed the mitigating company of women to preserve a balance in their testing lives.”
  
  I have been wondering once or twice just how young soldiers - not so much pilots, who seemed in the main to be the glamour boys of the forces and be based in England generally – cope with this aspect of warlife. Do they just make do with prostitutes? Written accounts don’t seem to mention homosexual behaviour or masturbation to any degree. But there must have been places where there weren’t even prostitutes easily available, weren’t there? Some fraternisation may have been possible in enemy countries but how much? It’s hard to imagine English men being able to have much to do with Japanese women. My father talked of his Italian girlfriend, but I expect this was his imagination really. My father (a widower) considered any women he spoke to was his girlfriend. Some people brought home foreign wives.
  
  Earlier accounts talk of women following the army, but I associate that more with 18th and 19th century wars. I might be wrong about that. And with wives or prostitutes, not just girls to court.
  
  What did soldiers in isolated areas do for female company? Or didn’t they bother apart from with bought sex? Were the girls in the British services in the home country their main source of women? There seemed to be lots of war brides come south, and quite a number going the other way from postings in the Antipodes.
  

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  Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Thursday, 14th July 2011

  Hi Caro,
  
  IÂŽve been to Malta on holiday just a few weeks ago. In some bookshops in Valletta, IÂŽve seen a book just recently published dealing with this topic. ItÂŽs about a certain street in Valletta youÂŽve already mentioned. As this book was none of my interest, IÂŽve just read a short description on the website of the Times of Malta.
  
  The topic youÂŽve raised here is more a wide one which can be extended to the differences during WWII on several and various places. As long as they were professional Prostitutes, well it has been business for them as usual. The more worst aspect is when, as it happened in some Concentration Camps by the Nazis, women were forced in this "business".
  
  Another thing was the attitude of women, for instance those who joined the voluntary service in the forces, who changed their partners often. IÂŽve got this from a documentary about the Royal Air Force during WWII. In this series (three parts) there was also a part dealing with these voluntary service women. A few of them even were on fighter planes, even when they werenÂŽt involved in Air battles, but they were Pilots on distribution flights.
  
  I think that in general, these times were some "fast living" times because ones girlfriend or partner might have never come back from serving during the war. This attitude can be found in many countries involved in WWII.
  
  To get back to Malta. IÂŽm currently reading a book with the title "Churchill and Malta". In this book there is a map of Malta from 1942 displaying the then air fields which were merely in areas outside villages and towns. There might have been some ways for the soldiers to get the "mitigating company of women" when they were on leave. I think that itÂŽs hardly imaginable that there were brought some "professionals" to these air fields for the certain purpose. It seems that apart from that book about VallettaÂŽs Street, there arenÂŽt some other books dealing with that topic, bearing in mind that Malta still is, a country where Catholizism has a high regard.
  
  Thomas
  
  
  
  

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 14th July 2011

  Caro
  
  Obviously this is a huge subject. Not for nothing is prostitution called "the oldest profession"..
  
  I remember being struck by a biography of Sir Eyre Coote that I read when I was about 16 at the accounts of the Indian fashion of having a huge train of hangers on following in the wake of Indian armies- including Coote's own Company one.
  
  This did not seem to feature in the same way in for example the Duke of Marlborough's Blenheim Campaign that swept brilliantly from the Cockpit of Europe to Central Germany.. But India was a world of Ancient wealth and all "the wonders of the Orient", and the majority of Coote's men were Indian sepoys from that native culture. So the unofficial service encampment was like a traditional "free market" approach to looking after all of the troops needs- drink, drugs, music, dancing etc..and no doubt sex in various forms too.
  
  There may be some scenes in Shakespeare, however, in which people like, for example, Falstaff and friends wander off into a similar service encampment that has just set up like any market in response to new demand. The crucial thing may be whether in a war of movement the "tradesmen" (and women) have time to set up.
  
  
  Of course Jane Austen, who was writing through a very long war, brought out in for example "Pride and Prejudice" just how the arrival of a regiment might impact upon the life of the local female population.
  
  Certainly as far as permanent military basis are concerned the serious threat of prostitution all around any British naval and military bases resulted in one of the controversies that really launched "Feminism".. Around 1870 the military authorities were so worried about the impact of VD upon national fighting prowess that a law called something like The Contagious Diseases Act was being considered, and it provided for the apprehension of women near these bases who were engaged in prostitution followed by a compulsory inspection to see whether they were carrying VD or not. Those who were clean would be given in effect or reality a Licence. Many of the aspects of this scheme were outrageous to mainstream Victorian opinion, and the legalisation of open prostitution remains a lively issue. Feminists argued that it unfairly targetted and stigmatised only the women.
  
  My last teaching school was situated near a London Common not far from where there had been a military barracks in Victorian times, and the tradition of associating the region with prostitution still endured.
  
  Of course Henry Mayhew researched Prostitution in his great mid-Victorian investigation into London life, and brought out figures to show that the majority of the women arrested for prostitution were not full-time prostitutes. And he gave a list of the various trades or professions that they claimed in court. Given the fact that it was usually an activity for the evenings and nights there seems little reason to question that.
  
  But there seems quite clear evidence that war time has been historically associated with a heightened sexual activity. The gathering together of large numbers of men, being subjected to intense physical training and or physical trauma accompanied by a heightened awareness of living every moment along the tenous borders between life and death, seems to act as some kind of aphrodisiac in many. Interestingly this would appear to be in keeping with the plant world in which flowering and going to seed, or nuts, is often associated with a real sense of imminent death.
  
  I recall a TV feature on the Bull Runs of Pamplona (?) in which an American tourist was interviewed. This man came every year and totally enjoyed the adrenalin of dicing with death.. He added that afterwards you can have the best sex ever in your life... Of course for many soldiers and sailors it was also true that in moments of leave they had more spending money, more time for idle pursuits, and more energy than at any time in their life, while suddenly going from a totally disciplined situation into seemingly almost total freedom.
  
  If I may presume to speak for your sex,Caro, the evidence suggests that many of these things make such fit young men very attractive to women..
  
  Another Palmerston 18c anecdote " A young woman who had given way to the demands of her lover on the grounds that he would die if she refused him, was later heard exclaiming "You wretch. Did I not save your life?"
  
  Of course in war rape no doubt happened. Some years ago a middle-aged French lady sitting quietly next to me reading by a quiet stream one summer, remarked that it was her birthday. And then went on to recount how on her 13 birthday in 1940 the Germans marched into her home- town that day; and , as they marched in ,she had to go to the toilet. There she was horrified to find that she was bleeding. [In 1940 girls were not taught about such things]
  
  She burst out of the toilet screaming for her Mother who calmly said "Oh. It's nothing. It's just the English disembarking".. At which the girl replied. "But I thought it was the Germans marching in."
  
  Years later I was told by a Portugues lady that they have exactly the same saying in Portugal- only they say "The Moors".
  
  And the "English" were certainly very active sexually in France during the 14-18 war. Virginia Woolf , though a pacifist, decided to "do her bit". She habitually gave lectures at the working mens' college and decided to give a lecture to working women, with so many many off in the war, chosing the subject of VD as a danger on the Western Front..
  
  Afterwards she noted that some of her audience walked past her speaking loud enough for her to hear, saying that it was really quite shameful that she had gone into so much detail about all the challenges their "poor lads" were confronting, as if they did not have enough to worry about.
  
  Of course one of the things that the British authorities did was to issue condoms to all the men, who only spent limited periods in the very front line trenches and had regular breaks, when they could repair to French towns and villages not too far from the front..
  
  Because the condoms were wrapped in little envelopes in my youth condoms were still "French letters" and for the French "lettres anglaises".
  
  As for activities between the men actually in the front line, I remember seeing some film (somehow related to Freud) which spelled out how in the German army men who were pederasts were liable to be taken by their colleagues and dealt with in a way that I will spare you the description. As until recently homosexuals had to be very discreet.
  
  I was, however, rather amazed at a French description of life in the trenches written by "Celine" in his novel "Nord" that was heavily autobiographical. He described how during the IWW around his French units the local women would emerge at nightfall and just stand near the trenches with their long skirts pulled right up over their heads, and totally naked from the waste downwards. The men never saw who they had sex with, and vice versa, and Celine, who later became a doctor, attempted no explanation of just why the women did this, since there seemed from his description to be absolutely nothing but simple sex.
  
  This does leave open two possible- and possibly related factors-
  
  (a) having sex in such circumstances is the best sex ever.. which would be consistent with some of these "refined" or contrived" combinations of sex with near-death experience that sometimes go wrong these days
  
  (b) the feminine instinct attracts women to those men who it seems will give their offspring and themselves the very best genes in order to survive. For women of the land healthy and robust children of whatever father were still an asset.. Casual encounters with "bits of rough" are often seen as a good option. And this applies now to some Lesbians and lesbian couples.
  
  Cass
  
  

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  Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Thursday, 14th July 2011

  Thank you both for that. Thomas, this book said that the girls of Malta were kept well controlled by their families, and I didn't get the impression that ordinary young women were available for sexual activity though they were to some degree there for social times. (But that was partly because the writer was higher up the social scale than some of his colleagues - others probably didn't get those opportunities of going to dinner etc at all.)
  
  I am thinking of situations as well where I imagine there were no women, or very few. Perhaps somewhere like Iwo Jima, or some of these out-of-the-way places in Egypt. Did the boys just put up with no sex? Did the adrenaline of war activities make up for its lack?
  
  Out of your long post, Cass, I probably shouldn't just respond with the personal, but it wasn't just the 40s that girls didn't know these things. In the early 60s I didn't. I wasn't 11 and when I saw the blood assumed I was dying. I must have been a prosaic little girl even then, since my reaction was to take the knowledge I did have, and put the pants in cold water, since everyone knows you soak bloody things in cold water. (My grandmother, the mother of 4 sons, brought me up, and wasn't familiar with how to approach such a subject to a little tomboy. She told me I was growing up and I cried and she said, "I feel like crying too." We can't have had the modern-day feeling of girls wanting to be older than they are.) You might be amused, Cass, to hear of a fuss in NZ this last couple of weeks where the CEO of an employers' group said rather clumsily that women were paid less because they looked after children and were sick on a monthly basis. This didn't go down well and he was eventually sacked. But I read one commentary saying that an interview which had the interviewer saying she had never taken time off because of her periods was always going to be worth listening to.
  
  As regards your last point, although from a evolutionary point of view women may be keen to add their genes to a vital young man, I would have thought that the social consequences and the embarrassment of explanations to parents and community would outweigh this interest.
  
  Cheers, Caro.

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 15th July 2011

  Caro
  
  Thanks for your post.. and for your personal recollections..
  
  I would imagine that you can now look back on that scene with a sense of almost occupying both the girl and the grandmother..Life does move on, and we are becoming very much aware of the fact that when and if our children provide us with grandchildren they will not be able to find us anything like their own grandparents who were about 25 years younger than we already are.. And should we find ourselves having to bring up any of our grandchildren "in loco parentis" I think that will have definite bitter-sweet moments. Your grandma no doubt- based upon what happened "in her day" thought that she had more time: and the truth is that we never know how much time we have.
  
  Of course in that respect biology has made it possible for quite old men to father children, but this is because biology makes women more indispensible.
  
  I was pondering upon this a few years ago while walking alongside a mountain torrent. I got a definite sense that as men we do not have "the pulse of life" flowing through us in the same way as women, who carry the ebb and flow of the stream of life within them.
  
  As for the biological drive to breed with "fit" young men, that is the Future, and there is no point providing for the Future without first providing for the Present. So most of those French women in Celine Western Front experience were married, or if not at least courting. If you are going to have sex with the "wild one", it makes sense to also have sense with the "domesticated one", who will provide a home for you and your offspring.
  
  I believe that this research has led to many men in the USA feeling inclined to use dna testing in order to establish whether their children are actually theirs biologically.
  
  As for Malta, it is a Mediterranean island and therefore must surely have a port and a port-city, such places have been part of a general Mediterranean culture for centuries, and have long since learned to "service" the needs of a predominantly male and transitory labour force. Outside of the cities life tends to be very different, and I am reminded of my landlady at Cardiff, who was of Welsh-Italian stock. Her husband told me that they had never been alone together at all until after they were married. Perhaps it was just too easy for young men to leg it to the cities and jump on a boat.
  
  I was, however, given an insight into the world of ports some years ago by a pupil whose roots were in Cornwall. We think of Devon and Cornwall as remote, but they belonged to a water-world which for centuries connected it to Iberia and the Mediterranean, because of the mines that were there. Cornish sailors went far and wide, including the fishermen who followed the herrings around the British Isles.. But, this girl told me, if the sailors had a girl in every port, the girls and women in the ports that they left behind could "do likewise": and sailors from Iberia could at times bring the fruits of a Golden Age.. This perhaps links to the Bob Dylan song "Spanish Boots of Spanish leather". Certainly my pupil insisted there were very apparent signs ( with her clothes off) that her genes were definitely of mixed race, evidence of past "latin lovers".
  
  The evidence of my maternal family from a little village in the Cotswolds, however, is that questions of paternity were not necessarily crucial, or even scandalous. For basic survival healthy children were an asset, and the exigencies of war made it possible to blame either the war or the soldiers etc.. And of course as in the "Lady Chatterly's Lover" story some men returned from the war so damaged that they were incapable of fathering or even sex, so finding their wife/fiancee pregnant was not an unpleasant surprise.
  
  [Yesterday out shopping two mothers walked passed and one was telling how the Doctors had told a third party that it was physically impossible for her to have children. And now she has got two!!.. Obviously a real life story there. Is this a happy or a sad ending? I would have liked to know]
  
  Cass

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  Posted by MB (U177470) on Friday, 15th July 2011

  I am sure that I have read that the services did make some arrangements in areas like the Middle East, they might not have actually been involved in operating brothels but the Medical Officer would monitor the health of the staff because VD was the biggest concern.
  
  But where there is a will .......
  
  A book on Scapa Flow mentions the lookouts on ships scanning the area around Lyness for any "activity" and would signal to other lookouts using a code for used for refueling at sea which had some suitable phrases :to describe what they saw through their powerful binoculars and telescopes =)
  
  Another book mentions a Hebridean island with a large airfield. An elderly lady and her daughter lived in a cottage near the airfield so the RAF fitted a red warning light to their chimney. RAF personnel used to call on them for a cup of tea, home baking and just a chat. Some Italian PoWs noticed this so one day turned up at the door with various gifts which they offered with sign language. The old lady was too innocent to realise that they thought that the red light had another meaning and thought that RAF personnel visited the cottage for another reason!
  
  
  
  

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  Posted by LongWeekend (U3023428) on Friday, 15th July 2011

  Caro
  
  Lucas's comments caused a mixture of amusement and irritation from non-flyers on publication and since. This arose largely from his assumption of entitlement - he was a fighter pilot and was therefore had a right to free sex on demand (nothing changes, incidentally). Malta, with very few servicewomen and "nice" girls in short supply and heavily chaperoned, was a shock after the UK.
  
  As to your wider point, the ability of soldiers to find women prepared to have sex, whether commercially or otherwise, almost anywhere they happen to be has been a source of amazement to the authorities since Biblical times. Normal "boy-meets-girl" stuff also happens in wartime, of course.
  
  The issue of the relationship between Occupying Forces and the Japanese is controversial (in certain Japanese circles anyway) but there was a huge amount of prostitution, especially during the Korean War.
  
  If you want a case study closer to home, I imagine there has been something published about the impact of US Marine training bases in New Zealand and US Navy port calls in WWII? Wayne's "The Sands Of Iowa Jima" has a sanitised reference to fraternisation.
  
  Regards
  
  LW

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  Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Friday, 15th July 2011

  In 1945, when the Japanese government was making preparations for receiving the occupation forces, sex was near the very top of their list of concerns. Japanese officials were worried about the arrival of hundreds of thousands of foreign men, many of whom had not enjoyed female company for a long time... and after years of propaganda about the racial superiority of the Japanese, they were also deeply concerned about the possible influx of foreign genes.
  
  Hence the Japanese government reached out to organized crime bosses with a request to set up specific brothels for the occupation force. A publicity campaign was started to recruit women using patriotic slogans, asking them to sacrifice their bodies for their country, a sacrifice similar to that of the soldiers who had sacrificed their lives for Japan... Although one suspects the volunteers were as much motivated by poverty and the threat of famine.
  
  Shamefully, the US authorities accepted the offer. Their only condition, another sign of the times, was that the brothels for the occupation troops had to be divided in three sections: For white officers, white enlisted men, and black enlisted men. (Of course their were no black officers at this time.) This arrangement lasted until the incidence of sexually transmitted disease reached unacceptable levels.
  
  Later Japanese prostitutes who specialized in US soldiers, and therefore adopted western dress and habits, were half-ironically acknowledged to be one of the major "westernizing" influences in Japanese society. Social researchers even discovered (no doubt to their dismay) that playing "American soldier and prostitute" had become a popular children's game...

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  Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Friday, 15th July 2011

  There’s lot to consider (and agree/disagree/query) in your responses, so I will just take them more or less in order. Hope I get the quotes right, usually manage to get something wrong.
  
  And of course as in the "Lady Chatterley’s Lover" story some men returned from the war so damaged that they were incapable of fathering or even sex, so finding their wife/fiancĂ©e pregnant was not an unpleasant surprise. 
  Cass, I don’t really believe this – it doesn’t fit with what I know and have read of human psychology. I think if you arrived home so damaged you couldn’t manage sex then the knowledge that another man not only could, but could impregnate your wife, would be a source of huge demoralisation and shame and anger. Only fairly special men seem to manage to take on another man’s child fully and happily in these circumstances, I think, and I doubt that that’s a damaged soldier. One shouldn’t base one’s information on novels but Minette Walter’s The Chameleon’s Shadow gives a very realistic-seeming study of such a soldier.
  
  Lovely story of the red light and the women there, MB. I am more on the wavelength of the old lady than the American soldier and prostitute game mentioned later. I have distinct memories of asking my grandmother what a prostitute was when I was 13. I walked from my hostel to school in crocodile with more knowing girls, who seemed to realise the young women hanging around a particular house lightly and provocatively clothed were prostitutes, not something that had been in my sheltered life. Unfortunately my grandmother wasn’t very open about these things, and told me to look up the dictionary which said they were people working in brothels. (An aunt later explained these words to me.)
  
  If you want a case study closer to home, I imagine there has been something published about the impact of US Marine training bases in New Zealand and US Navy port calls in WWII? Wayne's "The Sands Of Iowa Jima" has a sanitised reference to fraternisation. 
  
  LW, the US marines here were the subject of a riot in Wellington, called the Battle of Manners Street (I see a similar fracas in Australia called The Battle of Brisbane). It seems these were probably kicked off by racial slurs against Maori, and Maori have never been ones to take things lying down. But the basic feeling behind these was that these men were here stealing the NZers’ women and swanning around in a safe country while they were away fighting. I had a library book home a while ago about Iwo Jima (based on the film, I think) but didn’t get to read it much (and indeed still never remember which way round the ‘w’ and m’ goes – am very likely to call it Imo Jiwa).
  
  
  
  many of whom had not enjoyed female company for a long time.  This sentence is what I was thinking of when I wrote the OP. How did they manage in this situation? These are men in their 20s generally with lots of testosterone and energy (though sometimes I wonder how men half-starved and over-marched and possibly fearful could actually manage to do any fighting let alone any sexing). Did they just ignore sexual urges at those times of isolation from women?
  
  Thanks, Caro.
  
  

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  Posted by Pugwash Trouserpress (U1865008) on Monday, 25th July 2011

  In 1915/16 the Army were becoming increasingly worried about the number of men becoming unfit due to sexually transmitted diseases. This was obviously a major problem due to a lack of effective treatments ('A night with Venus, a lifetime on mercury).
  
  So the Army in their infinite wisdom, made contracting an STD a disciplinary offence.
  This obviously had an immediate effect and numbers dropped dramatically. A General at the time was quoted as saying "Some of my men put their members where I wouldn't put the ferrule of my umbrella!"
  
  It was then pointed out that the reason for the drop in numbers was more likely due to the men not reporting than a drop in infection rates and the matter was taken up in Parliament.
  
  This led to the VD Act of 1917 which set up free, confidential treatment centres across the country. The Act is still largely extant to this day.
  
  Incidentally, according to to act there are only three venereal diseases. Syphilis, Gonorrhoea and Chancroid (or soft chancre). Any other infections are classed as STD's (or STI's as they're now known).
  
  

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  Posted by rhmnney (U14528380) on Saturday, 30th July 2011

  Caro, extremely late reply.
  
  I was told by my cousin who was in the British Army in India pre-war that there were 'Regimental Brothels' for the soldiers, they called them that, but he said they were privately owned. When war broke out and married men were conscripted along with single males into the armed forces they were closed, so as not to cause concern for the wives and mothers of those called up.
  
  In India of a soldier was caught having, or being suspicious of had, or endeavoring to have sexual relations the punishment was 28 days in jail.
  
  In Britain, peacetime soldiers were not highly rated by the British population.

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  Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Monday, 1st August 2011

  No, soldiers seem to be everyone's heroes during wars and then forgotten about as soon as they are over. Our Vietnam veterans have been fighting since the 1970s for recognition (they tended to come back to NZ as incognito as possible) and for compensation for Agent Orange damage, which has finally arrived. Half of them are now dead.
  
  Finished my Malta book by Laddie Lucas and he mentions an episode when he has been made the person in charge of his squadron. (Still a bit uncertain about terminology - can't quite remember his title).
  
  He says that from public boarding school he is aware what men (and women) are capable of sexually, which makes his reaction to hearing of an airman and an officer in bed together a little surprising to me. He deals with it privately (rather than taking it to a higher level where they would have lost their jobs). One is later killed in action - the other becomes quite a decorated person.
  
  This seems to have been very much a one-off occasion which surprised me. I would have thought, with no women and in a very male-dominated society there would have lots of homosexual activity around, maybe not openly acknowledged, but not surprising. But he talks of the potential for sending shock waves over the Island. "The ramifications of the thing began to appal me." He said they both had exemplary records, been successful in the air, were brave and well like, and assets to their squadrons. He also said, "Today's civilian arrangement, whereby consenting adults (which is what these two were) can give expression to their desires in private, had (and has) no application for the Service."
  
  I am not sure where things stand now - would this still be true? There isn't 'don't ask, don't tell' in Britain, is there?
  
  Caro.

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  Posted by Pugwash Trouserpress (U1865008) on Tuesday, 2nd August 2011

  Caro,
  
  Homosexuality has been legal in the British Armed Forces since 2000
  
  

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