After France Outlawed Brothels, Its Army Kept North African Women Selling Sex in Secret

After France Outlawed Brothels, Its Army Kept North African Women Selling Sex in Secret

In the summer of 1947, a reporter for Qui? Detective magazine walked into a brothel on the edge of an army camp in Frejus, in southeastern France. The only thing distinguishing this building from the other boxy, ugly army barracks was the barbed wire fence around it. He took note of a cupboard full of douches and antiseptic, and posters on the wall telling soldiers how to wash out the insides of their penises with a thin tube after paying for se…