The subject – you can almost certainly guess – is sex and, in particular, sex with prostitutes, a word which is itself now contested, of course.
What’s a fact is that once Britain had a million men in the field in France during the First World War, there were some 137 licensed brothels in 35 French towns dotted along the Western Front, catering to the needs of the soldiers.
But this being the British Army, there were two sorts of brothel: the Blue Lamps, so-called because they displayed a blue light outside, and the Red Lamps, because they showed a red light. The former served officers of the British Army, the latter, the other ranks – so the ordinary soldiers. And never the twain shall meet.
In his wartime memoir of 1929, Goodbye to All That, the writer Robert Graves remembered seeing a queue 150 men deep outside the Red Lamp in the town of Béthune – where, by the way, my novel Cut and Run, is set. Among the men in the queue was his servant, Graves recalled. He ‘told me that the charge was ten francs a man – about eight shillings at that time. Each woman served nearly a battalion of men every week for as long as she lasted. According to the assistant provost-marshal, three weeks was the usual limit: after which she retired on her earnings, pale but proud.’
There’s much in Graves’s observation that a modern reader would want to question. But reading it, a thought struck me: what would happen if a women working at the Blue Lamp were murdered – and what would happen if, quite plausibly, a British Army officer was believed to be the culprit? How would the British Army hierarchy, which at best was highly conflicted about the existence of these brothels in the first place but recognised that they were essential for maintaining the morale, react? It would, of course, be the last thing they wanted – one of their own seemingly breaking ranks with his class and undermining the steep triangle of authority through which the whole madness was operated. So they would want it closed down – and fast.
This is the pretext for Cut and Run. And it is to the town of Béthune, some 50 miles south-east of Calais, that the man tasked with solving this mystery goes in the March of 1916. His name is Frank Champion; he has not long before had his own brush with death on the front line in France and he must overcome that as well as the injuries he sustained – physical and psychological – plus quite a few other obstacles to find the justice he seeks. The outcome, I can tell you, is far from certain but Frank will never give up, even when he worries that he might…
Cut and Run is published by Sharpe Books and available on Kindle priced £3.99, Kindle Unlimited and in paperback priced £8.99
