http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-the-arms-of-a-french-sweetheart-9643738.html
"Speaking of organised prostitution on the Western Front was long a taboo in Britain. One of the few to defy it was the poet and author Robert Graves in his celebrated autobiography Goodbye to All That. "There were no restraints in France," he wrote. "These boys had money to spend and knew that they stood a good chance of being killed within a few weeks anyhow. They did not want to die virgins.'
The misery of the trenches, and the fear of imminent extinction, appears to have dissolved the sexual inhibitions of tens of thousands of young men born in late Victorian Britain. "Other ranks" were restricted to crude "red-lamp" brothels. There are modern accounts of queues of British soldiers many yards long. According to one unpublished contemporary report, 171,000 British troops visited brothels in a single street in Le Havre in just over a year."
"Speaking of organised prostitution on the Western Front was long a taboo in Britain. One of the few to defy it was the poet and author Robert Graves in his celebrated autobiography Goodbye to All That. "There were no restraints in France," he wrote. "These boys had money to spend and knew that they stood a good chance of being killed within a few weeks anyhow. They did not want to die virgins.'
The misery of the trenches, and the fear of imminent extinction, appears to have dissolved the sexual inhibitions of tens of thousands of young men born in late Victorian Britain. "Other ranks" were restricted to crude "red-lamp" brothels. There are modern accounts of queues of British soldiers many yards long. According to one unpublished contemporary report, 171,000 British troops visited brothels in a single street in Le Havre in just over a year."
