During the French Indochina War, the Bordels Mobiles de Campagne consisted of both indigenous Vietnamese prostitutes and Nailiyat (women from the Ouled Naïl people group in Algeria) prostitues.

I should caution that there is unfortunately a very limited amount of information available on the BMC. Precise numbers and actual details are hard to come by. I hope that there will be an interest in exploring the stories of these forgotten women, but until then, I will try and patch together what we do know.

The Nailiyat has a long history of Orientalist depiction in the French mind. These women of the Ouled Naïl were seen as prostitutes by tradition, women whose upbringing were all about the erotic arts and about pleasing men. The reality was a local variation of "prostitution" (in the western mind) in which the women, traditionally dancers, selectively chose to have sex with men they performed for in exchange for gifts or money which they later used to build themselves a hopeful life of financial independence. It is worth to note here that contrary to popular French depictions, not all Nailiyat women were dancers and they did not dance to gather money for a dowry.

This came to change with the French colonization of Algeria. The Nailiyat dancers were seen as prostitutes in the western conception of the word and were thus regulated as such, forced and isolated to remain in their homes or the cafés in which they performed. Both Arabs and barbers suffered tremendous repression and hardship under French rule in the latter half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century and poverty drove Nailiyat women into French prostitution, serving European clients instead of the freedom of choice of men in their own villages and homes.

The only first hand account of the Nailiyat women in Indochina in English comes to us through the eyes of the famous war journalist Bernard Fall:

"In Indochina, the B.M.C.'s function admirably well, and it made for a pleasant change in the monotony of an army convoy all of a sudden to spot a 2½-ton truck loaded with the Oulad-Naïl in their gaily colored Algerian garb, shouting jokes at the soldiers."

Fall goes on to recount a story of two Nailiyat who volunteered to make a 30 miles jungle trek from the garrison in Lai Chau to the tiny outpost at Tsinh Ho which was infamous for Viet Minh ambushes. Wearing military fatigues and boots (yet with their traditional garb packed into their backpack), they made the march in 48 hours and on their way back to Lai Chau, they were ambushed but "behaved as cooly under fire as the seasoned troopers they were". They arrived back safely and the officer in charge of the women, Lieutenant Laurent wrote up citations for medals for the women which was turned down by the Northern headquarters in Hanoi. Fall writes that they "were all greatly disappointed, for we felt that the girls had richly earned them."

While the Nailiyat were all volunteers and professionals (albeit there is some ambiguity considering the poverty of Algerians in Algeria at the time, a factor which would lead to the Algerian War), the same thing could not be said about the Vietnamese women. War drove Vietnamese women into prostitution and as Dr. Stephanie Limoncelli notes, young daughters to Vietnamese women were sometimes sold into prostitution.

It is worth noting however that Vietnamese women of the mobile brothers were equally as brave as the Nailiyat when put into a combat situation. During the infamous battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, both Nailiyat and Vietnamese prostitutes were in the garrison to serve the men and would later serve as nurses during the siege itself.

But how did the system work? As you might have gathered by now, they were driven or flown into garrisons or, as in the case of the two valiant Nailiyat mentioned above, marched into outposts to service the men. The women were airlifted into quite dangerous areas yet there always accompanied (or there was someone available) a medical officer to check the women for venereal diseases. These mobile brothels lowered the risk of venereal diseases since both the men and women were regularly checked. Yet taking advantage of the services offered by these women did not come free; the men had to pay the "regular tariff" (in the words of Bernard Fall).

What the regular tariff of a prostitute in metropolitan France during the early years of the 1950s was deserves its own question.

Since the use of mobile brothels stretches over a multitude of conflicts with different contexts and conditions, it might be better if you specify what particular conflict you're interested in to get a better answer.