“The soldiers who landed in Normandy on D-Day were greeted as liberators, but by the time American G.I.’s were headed back home in late 1945, many French citizens viewed them in a very different light. In the port city of Le Havre, the mayor was bombarded with letters from angry residents complaining about drunkenness, jeep accidents, sexual assault — ‘a regime of terror,’ as one put it, ‘imposed by bandits in uniform.’ Ms. Roberts also found a desperate letter from the mayor in August 1945 urging American commanders to set up brothels outside the city, to halt the ‘scenes contrary to decency’ that overran the streets, day and night.”
