London Girls

Telegraph

How our Piccadilly Commandos had the GIs surrounded
By Neil Tweedie
(Filed: 01/11/2005)


The Americans, as every schoolboy knows, were guilty of three heinous offences in wartime Britain, being over-paid, over-sexed and over here.

But according to a Metropolitan Police file from the Second World War released at the National Archives today, the GIs who inspired so much envy in their war-weary hosts should be forgiven a little for the over-sexed bit.

They were, after all, mere victims of one of the great unsung elite units in history, the "Piccadilly Commandos".

The women so named were the prostitutes and "good-time girls" who frequented the US servicemen's clubs that by mid-1942 had turned Mayfair and much of the West End into what police described as an "American colony".

So numerous and persistent were they that the Foreign Office judged them a serious threat to Anglo-American relations.

The problem began in August 1942, nine months after Pearl Harbor and during the early stages of the huge US military build-up in Britain culminating in D-Day.

In answer to the concerns of the US military, Supt Cole of the West End Central Division of the Met produced a report.

He concluded that the prostitutes who plied their trade in Mayfair had not taken particular advantage of the influx of young, relatively wealthy GIs. However, more recent arrivals tended to congregate in drunken groups in Piccadilly Circus and beyond, attracting "innumerable prostitutes".

In addition to practitioners of the oldest profession, many female munitions workers and other women were drawn to the West End by the promise of well-cut uniforms and disposable cash.

Supt Cole provided a summary of the types of prostitute to be found. The Burlington Gardens variety was "rather expensive", while those in Maddox Street were overwhelmingly French and rarely caused trouble.

In Piccadilly Circus one encountered the "lower type, quite indiscriminate", and in Glasshouse Street "similar to Piccadilly - perhaps a slightly better class". Old Compton Street in Soho gloried in "the lowest type of all drabs".

The Washington Club and 100 Piccadilly, both US Army establishments, were magnets for British women who waited outside.

Supt Cole identified other clubs, the Woolly Lamb, Chappie's and Eve's, as centres of unfortunate activity.

The Americans were not happy. Col WM Clark, the legal adviser to US forces in Europe, told his British counterparts that: "The impression created on the American troops and their mommas at home is bad."

By March 1943, the Foreign Office had become involved. Richard Law, a junior minister, said the scale at which American troops were accosted by prostitutes may have long-term effects on Anglo-American relations.

Reports in American newspapers and in letters sent home by GIs created an unfortunate impression. Mr Law added: "If American soldiers contract venereal disease while in this country, they and their relatives in the United States will not think kindly of us after the war."

American soldiers interviewed after contracting the afore-mentioned complaint spoke regretfully of their encounters with the "Piccadilly Commandos".

But there was strong disagreement about the scale of the problem. In September 1943, Adml Sir Edward Evans, the head of civil defence in London, wrote to Air Vice Marshal Sir Philip Game, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He pulled no punches, prompted by complaints from a friend at the Leicester Square Theatre.

"Of course the American soldiers are encouraged by these young sluts, many of whom should be serving in the Forces," he spluttered. "At night the square, with its garden, is apparently given over to vicious debauchery."

Game replied that talk of debauchery was "rubbish".

The Home Office mandarin Sir Alexander Maxwell was equally unconvinced.

He wrote: "To anyone who knew Paris or even London in the last war, London at the moment is by comparison a Sunday school."

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.