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Listening to Al Murray’s Command, ahead of his appearance on RHLSTP on Monday and it’s an entertaining but thorough account of decisions made by some of the allied commanders in World War II. Al is very much into the hardware and tactics of war - which I am not really- but his enthusiasm and knowledge is infectious. And talking of infection, there’s a very illuminating chapter largely about the effect that VD (or STDs as you might know) had on the war effort and the moral minefield of trying to deal with it, without offending the sensibilities of the chaplains and moralists who thought soldiers shouldn’t be having sex. Giving out condoms would have been a fine solution, but that was not deemed proper. You’d think if people were going to stop having sex, the high chance of catching syphillis (which could only be uncomfortably treated at the time, but which could ravage the bodies and minds of those who had it) would be enough. But people still had sex regardless (obviously the more immediate prospect of death in battle made thoughts for the future somewhat moot).
Yet VD was putting more soldiers in hospital than trench foot and so it’s incredible that so little could be done.
I hadn’t really thought about this issue too much before - even though, when he was about 10, my nephew had sent me a postcard he’d picked up at the Imperial War Museum of a wartime poster of a skull in a pretty pink hat saying “Hello boy friend, coming MY way?” labelled VD. Warning of the dangers of the ‘easy’ girlfriend. I don’t think my nephew knew what VD was when he sent it. He just thought it was a funny image to send to his stupid uncle.
He wrote “Dear R Herring” (we had a very formal relationship)
“I am having a nice holiday. The first week of the holiday I went to cub camp. It was very good. I went to the IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM.
Hope your having a nice time
Love Michael”
The weird thing is he was 28 years old at the time.
Oh shit, I said he was 10 earlier and ruined it. But that just made the surprise that he was 28 even greater.
He is almost 39 now. Fucking Hell.
If people fucked on indiscriminately despite VD and the high chance of pregnancy then you can be pretty sure that our grandparents generation wasn’t any less permissive than ours. And a lot of our attitudes towards casual sex must be influenced by those generations who risked disease and death (of course my generation was still not immune to that). We are fucking machines. Nothing will stop us.
Anyway,
Al’s book is a proper popular history book and a serious look (with some humour) even when dealing with VD and is highly recommended.
