References to VD, Brothels, etc in WW2

Discussion in 'General' started by Franek, Jul 8, 2009.

  1. Franek

    Franek WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

  2. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Franek

    You will not be surprised to learn that we had very similar films shown to us in the British Army.

    Just in passing, did you recognise the so called medical officer in the film ?

    He was a well known US actor of bit parts but don't ask me his name :)

    Ron
     
  3. Franek

    Franek WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    I remember an incident back in 1944. As I was recuperating from a wound in Paris. I went out on a one day pass. I ended up standing in line at a French Whore house.$2.00. As I got closer the thought came back from watching the VD films.. I lost my nerve and stepped back out of line. I remained a 19 yr old virgin but I had no shankers. [​IMG]
     
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  4. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    VD became such a serious problem among Canadian troops during the Italian campaign that Maj.-Gen. Chris Vokes suggested the creation of a "brigade brothel" in which the women would be regularly screened for sexual diseases. The suggestion, similar to one also being considered by U.S. General George Patton, was quickly rejected by senior leaders, no doubt horrified about the consequences on the home-front if it became known the Canadian Army was running its own whorehouse.
     
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  5. PA. Dutchman

    PA. Dutchman Senior Member

    American Army set up brothels for troops stationed in Liberia during World War II.

    http://news.library.cornell.edu/content/cornell-collection-documents-wwii-africa-campaign

    Cornell UniversityCornell University Library·
    ·
    Cornell Collection Documents World War II's Africa Campaign

    Archives of George “Doc” Abraham ‘39 reveal little-known aspects of life in Liberia during the war
    ITHACA, N.Y. -- An extensive photograph collection recently acquired by Cornell University Library documents little-known and occasionally controversial aspects of World War II’s Africa Campaign. Images depicting camp life in one of the U.S. Army’s first racially integrated units, customs of the indigenous people of Liberia, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s visit to the troops, and Army-sponsored brothels are just some of the collection’s highlights.

    George “Doc” Abraham graduated from Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1939. When the U.S. entered World War II, he enlisted in the Army and was handed a camera along with an assignment to document life in Liberia during the war. Much of Abraham’s work never came to public light until recently when his children, Leanna Landsmann and Darryl Abraham, donated his extensive collection to the Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC).

    The collection sheds new light on the lives of U.S soldiers who were assigned to Liberia during World War II in part to guard the Firestone Rubber Plantations, the source of allied rubber during the war. Task Force 5889 was comprised of 2,100 African American soldiers and 76 whites in one of the Army’s first racially integrated units. White soldiers assigned to the unit had to pass a psychological test to determine their ability to get along with people, and the photos show the troops working and relaxing side-by-side.

    “This collection will enhance Cornell’s holdings of Africana materials and will showcase previously unknown details on the integration of African American soldiers in the U.S. Army,” said Eric Kofi Acree, Director of Cornell’sJohn Henrik Clarke Africana Library. “Photos have a way of telling a story that the printed text cannot.”

    The archive also contains photographs and descriptions about brothels created for the African American soldiers. These were staffed with “comfort women” who were routinely offered medical care by Army doctors to combat sexually transmitted diseases. Abraham’s photos of two brothels, Paradise and Shangri-La, were featured on the History Channel’s series, Sex in World War II, as well as in his book published in 2000 The Belles of Shangri-La and Other Stories of Sex, Snakes, and Survival from World War II. Abraham and a colleague also took explicit photos of the ritual of female circumcision that he shared long afterward with policy makers in hopes of ending the practice.

    "Photo documentation of West Africa from the 1940s is scarce,” said Brenda Marston, historian and curator of RMC’s Human Sexuality Collection. “These materials will serve as a rich, new resource for researchers. We are so pleased to be able to make these fascinating and historically significant photos available to people now."
    Abraham and his wife, Katherine (Katy) Mehlenbacher Abraham’43, gained renown during six decades as "The Green Thumb" duo on radio and TV and in a syndicated newspaper column. Their family recently donated more than 1,000 photos, 24 hours of film, and hundreds of negatives from Abraham’s WWII collection to Cornell, along with the couple’s Green Thumb horticultural collection. Both collections will be available in 2008.

    On Veterans Day, a preview of the George “Doc” Abraham WWII Africa Campaign Liberia Collection will be available for viewing on LibeCast at www.libecast.library.cornell.edu. A brief narration by Chris Metzger from Middlesex, NY, a researcher and photography expert who is helping to assemble the collection, will take listeners through some of the highlights of this unique archive. Eventually many of the photographs will be digitized and made available online.
    For more information, please contact Brenda Marston, curator, at (607) 255-3530 or bjm4@cornell.edu.


    Cornell University Library | ©2010 Cornell University |
     
  6. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

    Moved these 2 posts over from here

    Something we tend to 'skirt around' but which perhaps deserves more discussion.
     
  7. bamboo43

    bamboo43 Very Senior Member

  8. Wills

    Wills Very Senior Member

    A subject that nearly cost Montgomery his command, ever vigilant to all aspects of his command it came to his attention that the sickness rate for venereal disease was high. He asked the MO would it be better to issue condoms, he agreed and also suggested brothels where medicals could be carried out. Once Montgomery could see the military logic of it he ordered it to be carried out, this shook the old school to it's foundations, once again his great friend,supporter and mentor FM Alan Brook stepped in. Montgomery's failing? He could never understand those that could not see the logic of an action, if they failed to see it they were 'bowler hatted' (Sacked)
     
  9. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

    post 5
    http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/veteran-accounts/33338-dunkirk-veterans-accounts.html

    “Three of us boys were walking down the street and there was a queue of soldiers and we said, ‘What are you queuing up for?’

    They said ‘Fish and chips.’

    ‘God right.’ We’re in the queue see. When we got there ... it was a brothel. It was, honest. So of course us boys done a runner, got out of it. Don’t forget, we were only nineteen.”
     
  10. Verrieres

    Verrieres no longer a member

    John Williams DLI
    Brothel in Cherbourg
    We went down a road and here was some brothels doing a fine trade. And one of us blokes said
    “Is that one of them places, why aren’t we ganning in, you can talk to the lasses cannot you?” I
    said “Yes”. So we went in and there was little garish sort of thing. I remember there was a big
    wench with a - I can still see her – with a blue, a short blue dress on, a miniskirt which I’d never
    seen a woman wear. Came and sat on my knee and said “Hey soldier, English soldier, you like
    nice girl?” And I bought her a drink you know, and she said “You come upstairs with me”. And
    there was a big central stairs and there was a long trek of soldiers coming up and going down. And
    there was some of our blokes “Hey, they’re all right these aren’t they?” I said “Yes, yes”. And there
    was this girl who was just sort of playing with my hat, you know, and then patting my face and
    saying “You like nice French girl?” and so on. And I thought to myself “I wonder what it’s like?” And
    I bought her an absinthe, she wanted an absinthe. And I said to her “Absinthe”, I said “pas bonne
    pour la mademoiselle”. She said “No, but it is good for making love”. And I was looking to say that
    and coming down the stairs who but this character from our lot who had had VD. And I looked at that lad and I
    thought “Right Williams, you nearly went upstairs with this wench. Now you know he might still
    have VD, you don’t know any of the other characters”. So I said “Allez, fini”. I’ll always remember
    her. Her charm turned off and she said, if you’ll excuse the thing, “You f@*k off, you no f@*king bon”! And went away. And so I remained moral for the rest of my Army life.

    From `Listen to the Soldier`
    At War
     
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  11. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

    Does anyone know what happened if a man reported sick due to VD? Was pay stopped? Was he charged with breaking any Regulations, ie self-inflicted?
     
  12. Verrieres

    Verrieres no longer a member

    Does anyone know what happened if a man reported sick due to VD? Was pay stopped? Was he charged with breaking any Regulations, ie self-inflicted?



    Quite a bit about if here from 1918 Hansard
    DEFENCE OF REALM REGULATIONS (VENEREAL DISEASE). (Hansard, 19 June 1918)


    Mr. MACPHERSON
    The soldier is penalised not only for concealing it, but for getting it. This Regulation is not a one-sided Regulation. The woman in this case is punishable either with six months' imprisonment as a maximum, or with a fine of £100. The soldier in the first place if he conceals the fact that he has got the disease is liable, after trial by court-martial, to two years' imprisonment with hard labour; but supposing he does not conceal his disease, but goes to the appro-priate officer, and acquaints him with the fact that he has inflicted himself with that disease, he is penalised very severely, and so is his wife, by hospital stoppages. We deduct 7d. a day, we deduct proficiency pay if he is in receipt of it, 3d. or 6d., or corps or engineer pay if he is in the Royal Engineers, the Army Service Corps or the Royal Army Medical Corps. The rates vary from 2s. to 6d. per day. We also deduct the increased pay upon pre-war rates recently granted to soldiers
     
  13. Alan Allport

    Alan Allport Senior Member

    Does anyone know what happened if a man reported sick due to VD? Was pay stopped? Was he charged with breaking any Regulations, ie self-inflicted?

    Yes, contraction of VD was a military crime usually punishable with loss of pay and privileges, etc.

    In some overseas theatres, the RAMC set up prophylactic aid stations where a soldier could obtain a condom and/or a treatment of permanganate potash crystals on his nether regions. He was then issued a (dated?) blue chit, and if he could produce this later he was not judged to have committed an offense even if he had nonetheless contracted VD.

    Best, Alan
     
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  14. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

    Thanks Jim & Alan

    -

    Merged this with older thread on same subject.
     
  15. PA. Dutchman

    PA. Dutchman Senior Member

    When I was in the US Navy in the 1960s we had a man from New York that a great number of tattoos in various stages of completion.

    The Chaplin called him in, I know this for a fact, and told him that he was US Government Property while he was in the Armed Services. He had to stop getting tattooed because he was defacing US Government Property.
    As US Service personnel we were the property of the US Government and it was a CRIME to deface it in this way.

    Most of the time they looked the other way, but this person was going over board with his tattoos and it was a crime they could bring you up on charges for in the military.
     
  16. Wills

    Wills Very Senior Member

    Anything that renders a soldier unfit for duty - self inflicted is punishable, a pal became sunburnt, he was charged for not taking adequate precautions.
     
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  17. PA. Dutchman

    PA. Dutchman Senior Member

    My father did an interview on the Attack on Hickam on 12/7/1941 with our son for school.

    He was in the service from 1937 to 1945. My father told Matthew they would go into town on Saturday nights for a few beers. He told Matthew to be careful who you go into town with for the beers. Pop told him to be careful who his friends would be in the service when going out on a Saturday night. He said told Matthew not get drunk or get into fights or be out with someone who did. Pop did real well in his 9 years with no problems.My father liked the service and knew if you followed the rules you could usually do OK.

    Drinking and drunkenness could do a number on ones' career as well.

    His brother was just the opposite and they had totally different experiences. My uncle was discharged from the Navy and he was going to Officers school at the time. He did too much drinking and too much fighting. He re-enlisted in the Merchant Marine and served through the war and beyond for 24 years. But his drinking got him locked up probably in every port their ship visited.
     
  18. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

  19. Buteman

    Buteman 336/102 LAA Regiment (7 Lincolns), RA

    From the War Diary of 6 Lincolns, 1944:-

    [​IMG]
     
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  20. Ron Goldstein

    Ron Goldstein WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Wills

    I know that the thread title was supposed to be about VD & Brothels, a subject on which I am happy to admit that I have no experience of, but I spotted your reference to troops getting charged for suffering from sunburn.

    Take the case of my long term friend Lew (Larry) Fox:

    The funniest story about keeping clean in the field has got to be the one that concerns my good friend Larry Fox.

    Larry, a keep fit enthusiast in civilian life, was determined to get himself a good tan at the expense of HM Forces. At every opportunity he would sunbathe, strictly against standing orders that regarded sunbathing as not only a waste of good time but likely to risk sunburn and regarded by the Army as a self-inflicted wound.

    On one occasion, Larry was caught in the act by BSM Lillie, who promptly hauled him up before the OC on a charge of 'Conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline'.

    When the case came up before Major Mouland, Larry conducted his own defence which was, in effect, that he was washing himself at the time, as could be seen by the presence of his washing bowl.

    Major Mouland asked BSM Lillie, 'Did you see his washing bowl, Sgt Major?'

    A puzzled Lillie admitted he hadn't.

    Mouland said, 'I'm afraid that I find the charge unproven, case dismissed.'

    A triumphant Larry was marched smartly away and ever after used to see that he always had a washing bowl to hand! :)

    Ron
     

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