Sex and the Soldier, Continuation: Sexually Transmitted Diseases

Modern day writers are trying to interpret events they were not present for, and they are making huge mistakes that dishonor the legacy of the U.S. Army in Europe during WWII.

"A pinch more, s'il vous plait?" - An American soldier offers advice to a French woman pouring a celebratory glass of wine for U.S> troops who have just liberated her hometown, Brignoles, from German occupiers in August 1944.

(PORTLAND, OR) - I previously posted 'Sex and the Soldier: the Real Truth' May 24 2013 in Salem-News.com. As a critique of the book "What Soldiers Do" by Mary Louise Roberts, she implies that American soldiers spent most of their free time raping in France, Belgium and Germany. She printed that they committed thousands of rapes. There are some gross skewing of the facts. First of all, there are at least two different kinds of armies. The army most people think of and know about are the combat infantrymen. Yes, we do the fighting. Only about 10 percent of the army are in combat, but we had 70% of the casualties or 300,000 killed and 700,000 wounded in WWII.

There was very little sexual activity at the front --- too much artillery and rifle fire.

The rapists were the 90% non-combat army who rarely if ever got up close to the front lines, bu they did have access to many females from the front line back to the port cities where they unloaded and shipped by truck, supplies to the combat areas. They always took what they wanted along the way and they, the rear echelon commandos, in fact got nearly all of the good stuff in cigarettes, candy, winter clothes and everything else. They also had another advantage combat soldiers didn't have. France, in particular, had hundreds of brothels or 'whorehouses' and probably about 300,000 prostitutes - professional and amateur. Other European countries had similar numbers. What I'm trying to report is that, for the rear echelon troops, a prostitute was much more accessible, more likely to be free of diseases, and he did not have the danger of being accused of rape. There were some however, 141 wartime executions took place as a result of WWII, 70 of those executions took place in the European theatre, all had committed either murder or rape.

Simultaneously, the army shipped about 50 million condoms to Europe but the number of sexual transmitted diseases skyrocketed after the war because the rear echelon boys had little else to do.

The venereal disease rates were at least 30% per year and in some units up to 70% per year.

While author Roberts was printing her falsities, an article in the office of medical history called "simply venereal disease" had 620,000 hits. Also, another article, "STD Symptoms, Pictures and Treatment" printed the following facts:

• 65 million Americans have an STD
• There are 50 million new cases per year
• 2/3rds of STD cases are under 25 years
• 1/4 of cases are teenagers

I'm trying to point out the widespread STD cases in the U.S. It is far greater in civilians than it is with the military.

DR MARY LOUISE ROBERTS - WILL YOU PLEASE CHECK YOUR REFERENCES?

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