What was the real truth about the stuff they put in our tea ?

Loved the Milligan explanation in CL1's explanation - fire 300 lb shell loaded with bromine at soldier's lower parts. Seriously though, if potassium bromide wasn't having any effect on the libido of soldiers, then it should have been making them very dozy indeed - the sedative effect comes first, the lack of libido afterwards, because you're too dozy to be bothered. The same myth was common in mental hospitals where chlorpromazine (largactil) was widely used as a sedative - the story was that the food/tea/whatever was doctored to reduce sexual appetite. (see 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) It wasn't, but the 'liquid cosh' soon reduced you to a dozy stupour or a drooling, shuffling wreck - depending on how much you were given. The loss of sexual desire was because you were too busy being off your face - hardly conducive to military discipline I'm sure. By the way, did the story continue that the Yanks (over paid, over sexed and over here!) weren't dosed with bromine then?

I found the Paul Fussell book - "Wartime - understanding and behaviour in the second world war" - well worth a read and definitely in my top ten WW2 books, perhaps even in my top ten books....well.... In a chapter entitled 'Rumours of War', he states, " Despite one's never meeting anyone whose job it was to add the saltpetre, this rumour has been a favourite amongst troops at least since the American Civil War" and later "Sexual deprivation and inordinate desire generally did not trouble men on the front line. They were all too scared, busy, hungry, tired and demoralised to think much about sex at all."