'Young sluts and vicious debauchery'

London's West End during World War II.

While the popular impression of the influx of GIs was of an alluring group of men who were “overpaid, over-sexed and over here”, it transpires that they were not the sexual predators worrying Whitehall. Rather, the US troops proved to be irresistible to many British women, often living alone because of the war, and who in bleak wartime Britain were only too glad to grab the chance of some fun.

American troops wrote home in such colourful terms about being propositioned by prostitutes and “good-time” girls in the West End of London that the US military demanded action be taken to curb the “debauchery”. So bad was the West End considered to be that US troops who caught venereal disease became known as “Piccadilly commandos”.

Via Clive Davis.