Bordel militaire de campagne
French military brothels
Bordels militaires de campagne ("military field brothels", abbreviated BMC) were mobile brothels used during World War I, World War II and the First Indochina War to supply prostitution services to French soldiers fighting in areas where brothels were unusual, such as at the front line or in isolated garrisons. The BMCs were significant drivers towards the creation of prostitution regulations within the French army.
These mobile brothels were, in some cases, officially organised by the army. They consisted of large trailer trucks in which up to ten women would work. The first references to these BMCs were in World War I, and they are noted particularly in the Indochina War and the Algerian War.
Subsequently, only the Foreign Legion still used them and closed the last BMC on French soil, in French Guiana, in 1995. The BMC in Djibouti was still operating until 2003.
History
It is said that the habit of "brothels to soldiers" was started during the Third Crusade by Philip II of France. According to tradition he was so shocked by the extent of sodomy and rapes committed by the Crusaders that he arranged for a full boat of "girls of joy" to be sent from France. The first BMCs probably appeared during the period of military control of Algeria (1830–1870), following its conquest by the French army.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bordel militaire de campagne” as french military brothels. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2910707. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1995, 2003, 1830 and 1870.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bordel militaire de campagne” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.