What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France

US: University Of Chicago Press, 2014. Paperback. Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly-bu t if you're the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. That's not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we've been given, bu t it's the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Sol diers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports , propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime d iaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of h ow the US military command systematically spread-and then exploited-the myt h of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chao s-ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and ra mpant venereal disease-horrified the war-weary and demoralized French popul ation. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American milita ry leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the lib erated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty. While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do.