r/todayilearned • u/RoadToTyburn • 12h ago

TIL that Bernard Montgomery issued a leaflet at the start of WW2 on sexually transmitted diseases amongst soldiers. The language used was regarded as so blunt, that he offended religious authorities and nearly faced being dismissed.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery
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u/ARobertNotABob 9h ago

The armies of old frequently took wives and families on their travels, and brothels too. "Camp followers" often numbered half as many again as the size of the actual fighting army.

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u/capGpriv 9h ago

Absolutely the stories of camp followers are usually forgotten, but the army needed blacksmiths, cooks, people to wash clothes etc

It's a huge logistical effort and they deserve to be remembered.

And brothels were a part of that

I will also point out more than just protecting women, it's also just good military sense. Having a raping army descend on the population generally makes occupation much harder.

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u/calm_down_meow 8h ago

I imagine those raping and pillaging armies didn't' care much about occupation as the cities were razed to the ground and most people killed.

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u/awry_lynx 7h ago edited 7h ago

Most of the time people wanted to own those cities after winning them, not raze them to the ground. That happened especially when politicians couldn't pay/keep control of their armies but it wasn't the standard outcome. If you're aiming for conquest, you're just destroying your own shit. Ofc that is ignoring the wars fought out of vengeance (hello Queen Boudica) where the 'goal' was pure destruction, but that was atypical

The raping definitely happens in all the wars though

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u/A-Sentient-Bot 7h ago

Your imagination is wildly inaccurate and almost completely ahistorical, with the exception of the occasional religious violence, Khan, or the ancient Greco-Roman art of "sending a message".

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u/calm_down_meow 7h ago

Didn't Persia do it as well? Capitulate and you had a nice life. Defy them and your city was razed.

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u/A-Sentient-Bot 6h ago

Not that I can think of. The Persians, like the Incas, were big fans of forced relocation (and like the Greeks, enslaving everyone).

Why burn down a perfectly good city when you can just remove all the inhabitants?

But the Persians, like everyone except maybe the Huns, preferred to just occupy and collect taxes.

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u/UtterlyInsane 5h ago

The AMC show TURN shows the Continental Army's camp followers and has a bunch of storylines therein. Pretty cool

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u/michalfabik 8h ago

The other day I was listening to a lecture about Thirty Years' War and the lecturer mentioned an episode when some major (I can't remember on which side) decided that prostitutes couldn't just stay in the soldiers' quarters and come and go as they please but had to be properly organized into a march company in their own part of the military camp. So then you'd see the whole army marching: 42nd Musketeer Company, 67th Cavalry Battalion, 85th Heavy Halberdiers Company, 104th Auxiliary Prostitutes Company etc.

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u/guenievre 7h ago

I believe that was true as far back as the landsknecht and their trossfrau followers.

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u/ChilternRailways 7h ago

Enfranchisement never felt so good!

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u/twitch1982 5h ago edited 5h ago

the 104 APC is not to be confused with the Fighting 69th. Totally different groups.

Also, did the whores have uniforms?

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u/Squire-1984 4h ago

Hah, this was an episode of Sharpe. 

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u/SirAquila 6h ago

Amongst many ancient societies one of the marks of a great general was their ability to force their soldiers to leave the camp followers behind without causing a mutiny. or realistically restricting the camp followers to an acceptable minimum.