“Complete Continence Is Wholly Possible”

This chapter examines U.S. Army deployments to France during the First World War and the occupations of France and Germany in the aftermath of the war. At the outset of American involvement in World War I, army and War Department officials were especially concerned with how they might cope with an anticipated venereal epidemic, and how to deal with expected problems from romantic fraternization between American soldiers and the European women they would encounter while deployed. This chapter also examines uses the experiences of the American Expeditionary Forces to illuminate differing conceptions of masculinity and sexual propriety for the officer corps and enlisted men.

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of why the U.S. Army sought to address perceived problems caused by soldiers’ sexual interactions with civilians and other soldiers as the army deployed across the Caribbean and into the Pacific and Europe in the early twentieth century. Military planners, army leaders, War Department officials, and civilian observers of the military were intensely concerned about issues related to sexuality because they tended to believe that soldiers had irrepressible sexual needs that could cause harm to the army. The army also believed that by instituting a series of legal regulations and medical interventions, it could mitigate the damages to the institution arising from sex, while also shaping soldiers’ sexuality in ways the army and interested civilian parties might find more acceptable. The chapter describes the research methodology and chapter overviews for the book as a whole.