In World War I, a "significant minority" of soldiers were having sex while stationed on the front line - but the presence of wartime sex workers who helped rally the troops has been mostly forgotten.
They worked in brothels frequented by troops serving on the front line in northern France, but their role has been virtually erased from the history books. [...]
McNish told BuzzFeed News that one of the things that she found most poignant was the fact that so many men wanted to visit a sex worker if they thought they would die the next day.
“It is shocking the numbers of men looking to go into brothels before major battles,” she said. “It’s a much deeper thing than we give it credit for. The men thought they were likely to die the next day, the thought you’re never going to have someone touch you nicely again before you die, it must be horrendous.
“Before one of the major offensives, where 80% of men were expected to die, 300 men were lined up outside this one brothel.”
Many of the men, she said, were virgins, who wanted to experience having sex before they died.
“It didn’t cross my mind that so many men would have been virgins,” McNish said. “We don't really talk about virgin boys, but we obsess over female virginity, purity. Men who had never experienced being with a woman wanted not to die before they knew what it was like.”