"I think the country needs to realize that these people are out here, they're working their asses off and they're risking their lives," says Eric, a Navy officer who recently returned from Iraq and asked that his real name not be used. He keeps track of who's naughty and who's nice, because he believes military discounts are a litmus test for troop support. The Holiday Inn and the fast-food restaurant near his base both serve him well, he says, but he's upset that his military I.D. means nothing in the surrounding bars and clubs.

When possible, Eric will gladly take a discount. So, when he heard that a legendary Nevada brothel was offering free sex to military personnel who had fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, he and a buddy hopped in a car and drove straight there. Eric had never visited a prostitute, an impressive display of restraint for a man who has been stationed overseas. There, far from the yellow ribbons and hand-held polyester flags, lies a world of cheap gratification, just begging to be tapped. Bolstered by "too much pride," Eric says he outright refuses to pay for sex, even if it's wildly cheap. But a freebie, he says, is totally different.

"Why not? It's free sex," he says. "Hey, free sex with a porn star. You can't pass that up. That's like every boy's dream."

The Moonlite Bunny Ranch, best known as the subject of the HBO documentary "Cathouse," has won international attention for its coital offer. Starting June 5, the first 50 military people back from Afghanistan or Iraq who showed up got free sex. (And active military personnel who weren't overseas get 50 percent off). It costs owner Dennis Hof between $200 and $1,000 per military customer, depending on the service and the woman requested, but that doesn't faze him. The radio stations are calling, the television cameras are showing up at his door, and military personnel are writing by the thousands. When he talks with his new military customers, he says, they tell him how relieved they are to be rewarded for fighting abroad. For Hof, this has given meaning to what could easily be just a public-relations stunt. "Is it a promotion? Absolutely. I'm the Colonel Sanders of pussy," he said. "But is it the right thing to do? You're fucking right it is."

But underneath the glitz and glamour of a brothel that employs porn stars and boasts a four-page menu, Hof's offer has created a strange homecoming of one well-ignored military tradition. From the Vietnamese girls who robotically stammered "Me love you long time" in the movie "Full Metal Jacket" to the seedy night life of Thailand's Pattaya Beach, prostitution has been the military man's escape from chaos, the cheap imitation of a pleasure he left behind. It has been a presence in American fighting and peacekeeping since the days of muskets and cannons, and its linguistic influence from the Civil War may still be felt today. Legend has it that Union Gen. Joe Hooker often brought a group of ladies along to raise the spirits of his men, and they soon became known as "Hooker's women" -- and that, of course, was soon shortened. The story is popular in some historical circles, although its legitimacy is doubtful and hard to verify, according to Clemson University military history professor Ed Moise.

Prostitution is such an unwavering staple of the overseas military experience that the armed forces have been bipolar in their response to it, Moise says. In past wars, officers have tried discouraging brothel visits with grade-school tactics, such as screening ghastly films of the horrors of venereal disease or simply prohibiting their men from going at all. (However, he says there is no truth to the widely known tale of potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, being slipped into the mess-hall food to diminish men's libidos.)

Sometimes, though, the military will embrace prostitution in the interests of regulating it, employing an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" philosophy. Officers would gather a group of prostitutes, approve them for use, and then have medics check them weekly. Moise says he knows of this happening during the Vietnam War and World War II, although he says he wouldn't be surprised if the practice were more widespread than that. "Where you have a bunch of young men who are mostly away from their families and away from the moral pressures of home and family life," he explains, "you will often get a lot of prostitution, sometimes organized by the higher command, which wants to make it available in a controlled fashion to keep it from happening in an uncontrolled fashion."

These days, though, a soldier just needs to know where to look. Steve Csicsatka, a former Marine currently in the Air Force Reserves, spent years overseas in Thailand and Japan. The hot spots there were sometimes ramshackle -- makeshift strip clubs and brothels with women lined up and numbered -- but cheap and easily accessible, he says. And while the men were not supposed to visit these places, the rules were rarely followed, and everyone knew it. "They literally handed you condoms before you went out on leave," Csicsatka said.

One time, he walked into a brothel and found eight other Marines inside. Other times, he ran across some of his officers. "Thailand was kind of scandalous, a lot of married people doing crazy stuff," he says. But he would not elaborate, nor would he even hazard a guess at the percentage of married men who stray to the dim lights of a cheap brothel. "They say what happens in the field stays in the field."