Hello, greetings. I am currently watching a film that takes place in The Great War. More specifically, 1918. In the movie, it is shown that a “Doughboy” had a small glass bottle and inside were some little white pills. A little bit later a British Major asked one of his other British officers “What are those? Seems to be eating it like candy” to which the officer replies that it is cocaine and it seems to be handed out with almost all their rations.
My question is, Did the United States troops get supplied with cocaine? Or is this just something that Hollywood wanted to put in the film. And if so, was almost every soldier supplied with a little bottle of coke pills?
Thank you for reading/helping, Nalle Puh
Ps. Flashlights? Battery powered? Were they a thing? Or was it mainly flame sourced lights?
The greatest inaccuracy here seems to be the fact that a British major would be surprised by the sight of drugs in the trenches. Before the war, cocaine, heroin, morphine and others were often used for medicinal and recreational purposes. In 1915, incoming Canadian troops stationed in the British Isles caused moral panic in the Home Islands due to their copious use of cocaine. Injection kits for heroin and pills containing cocaine called Forced March were marketed regularly in shops, as useful items to be put in care packages sent to friends and family at the front. I don't know of the US army in particular issuing drugs to its troops, but drugs were commonly used by soldiers on all sides.
