Prostitution and war often go hand-in-hand. But this is perhaps most true of the First World War, where even the French government played a part in the sex industry – a legacy that continued almost to up to today, reports FRANCE 24.
“You could find anything you wanted in the brothels in the surrounding area and at the camps. It was a mêlée, a hard, dangerous and disgusting business. Fifty, sixty, up to a hundred men of all colours and races to see every day, all under the constant threat of air raids and bombardments.”
These are the words of Dr Léon Bizard in his memoires of the First World War. He was describing the daily routine of a hidden army operating in the shadows of the one fighting on the front lines - the thousands of sex workers that catered to the soldiers of the Great War.
Prostitution flourished from the moment fighting began in the summer of 1914 – supply rising to meet the demand of soldiers who, far from their families and plunged into the hell of war, found themselves in need of female companionship.
“You can die at any moment, from one second to the next. When there is the opportunity to respond to desire, there are no restraints,” explains Lieutenant Colonel Christian Benoit, author of a book on the military and prostitution entitled ‘The Soldier and the Whore’.
For centuries, soldiers and sex workers have shared history, he tells FRANCE 24. In fact, he says, they are inseparable.
"This is explained by the fact that the armies are groups of young, unmarried men who have the need occasionally to be with a woman, not always for sex by the way, but also for company.
“This mass of men provides clients for prostitution. Where there are soldiers, pimps quickly follow.”
With the mobilisation of vaster quantities of men than had ever been seen before, the phenomenon reached new heights in the First World War.
Prostitution became rife in areas close to the front lines, as well as in nearby towns and villages, says Benoit.