You realise that after four years the early slang got hopelessly démodé towards the end of the conflict. But, as you know probably, the one word that won the war was the well-known obscenity containing four letters. From generals downwards everyone used it, and everyone was comforted by saying it. No dialogue pretending to represent military conversation ever rings quite true because this essential word is omitted. Of course, in public writings it can’t be very well referred to, but only those who have soldiered out here realized what a companion in adversity that little word has been.
CLAUDE H. SISLEY, 2nd Lt.312
Sisley points out that slang changed a lot during the war, and that early slang would be seen as way out of date by 1918, and that the use of ‘fuck’ was not limited to one class of men (and he does not specifically say that women did not use it). After the main point about the ubiquity and apparent absence in documentation of the word, Sisley observes that the expletive was also a palliative. For Brophy313 ‘most men who served in the army were coarsened in thought and speech’, giving three words (fuck, cunt and bugger) which were ‘uttered in every other sentence when soldiers spoke among themselves’; ‘fuck’ or ‘fucking’, like ‘bloody’, functioned, almost like the sound of a shell, as ‘a warning that a noun was coming’. ‘It became so common that an effective way to express emotion was to omit this word’; thus for greater urgency a sergeant would say ‘pick up your rifles’ rather than ‘pick up your fucking rifles’.
So, we know that the word was used (see Digger Dialects’ entry ‘Fookers’ and ‘Carksuccers’), but there is little documentation to show how or when it was used, other than from rare documentations, use in fiction (implicitly corroborated by Sisley’s comment), and individual observations from Brophy and Sisley etc. of frequent and widespread use at all times and across the entire military social scale. In his preface to In Parenthesis David Jones writes ‘I have been hampered by the convention of not using impious and impolite words, because the whole shape of our discourse was conditioned by the use of such words’.314 Away from the Front, in hospital in Bournemouth, Senior Assistant Surgeon Godbole noted that you did not hear people say ‘bloody’ or ‘damn’,315 implying that ‘bloody’ and ‘damn’ were generally expected.
More common than records of words used are casual or obfuscated documentations of swearing happening: Charles Kendall observed of troops in London in October 1916 that ‘their language may be coarse … a finer looking lot of men I never saw’;316 Gunner Frank Spencer noted that getting the telephone wires at the Front to work required ‘lavish use of the new revised and enlarged edition of the English Language’;317 ‘we left behind us a trail of dust and of profane French and English’.318 Particularly there are records that the words cannot be written down: Harry Atkin wrote in his diary on 10 September 1915 ‘We frequently shout to Fritz across the way but the language is not fit to record’;319 obscenity in songs was widespread – ‘I couldn’t in all decency repeat what came in the middle [of a song]’.320 Being away from ‘the mellowing influence of home-life and the concomitant feminine graces of womankind’321 was one cause of the prevalence of swearing, a view supported by another observer who attributed the supposed increase in swearing at the Front to the large numbers of men together ‘without the refining influence of women’;322 for this writer, though ‘the soldier was always noted for his lurid language’ there were ‘large numbers of men [who] cannot say a dozen sentences without swear words’ – a notably smaller proportion than that given by Sisley. Swearing in the trenches seemed entirely natural to a correspondent for the Birmingham Daily Post: ‘profanity seems natural here, for the bullets are profane little things, and swear at you as they pass’.323 Cursing under shellfire was common, and Cpl Mitchell noted: ‘Some men crouched in the crowded boat … while others cursed with ferocious delight’.324
Swearing was of course not unnatural to a vast number of men in the new armies: their home and work background was transferred to the Front – The Times reported a discharged soldier who in court stated that ‘he had heard some swearing in the army, but his wife’s language “took the biscuit” ’.325 Capt A. Lloyd of the Church Army noted that the pre-war army swore less than the men of the new armies, bringing their language habits with them; he had heard ‘far worse language in the Lancashire mills than I ever heard in the barrack-room’. For him, the language of swearing was changing: ‘if you want to hear some really hard selected swearing, full of new oaths, you should go to the University cadet battalions’.326 He also noted that swearing in the Navy was ‘quite as terrible’ but ‘not so interesting’ as swearing in the army. One of the profoundest changes in language during the war was in the prevalence of swearing among those who had previously avoided it, as learning to swear, for those who did not, was seen as necessary both for social acceptance, and pragmatically as a means of coping: ‘The majority … acquired the habit of using obscene and blasphemous expletives …’.327 One battalion padre recognised his charges by their language – ‘I couldn’t see you but I knew where you were from the language that was coming up. I knew it was the Church Lads Brigade and I’ve never heard anything like it in all my life’.328
Indeed for many swearing was seen as essential to army life – ‘if a man doesn’t swear when he’s in the Service there must be something the matter with him’,329 and the standard simile for swearing, ‘to swear like a trooper’, had been in use for a century. A short story in Made in the Trenches has an officer ‘burst into a torrent of swearing’; when his companion complains he says ‘Time was when I was a nice-mannered person in a quite respectable business house. I suppose that must have been about a hundred and fifty years ago. Since then I have learned the art of vocal expression as constructed for military usage. Everybody does it’.330 One of Graves’s ‘very Welsh Welshmen, who had an imperfect command of English’ nevertheless had managed to pick up the expression ‘bloody bastard’.331 Coningsby Dawson in Living Bayonets tells the story of a soldier’s progress from a weak link to hero involving learning to swear,332 and in this sense swearing was part of being a soldier, or rather, because of its ubiquity, part of the uniformity of being a soldier; Tim Cook notes one Canadian soldier’s comment on how slang was ‘pass[ed] along from unit to unit’,333 an act of uniformity, and that opting out meant removing oneself from the soldiery. Similarly young Canadian soldiers taught themselves to swear excessively to prove their identity as soldiers.334
Yet there were many for whom this was a problem, either because they had come from homes where swearing was not the norm, or where religious observance condemned swearing, or because swearing exacerbated class awareness and discomfort; in many cases these were combined. Tim Cook quotes a Canadian mule-driver who was ‘amazed at the cursing’ when his own language seldom exceeded ‘damn’ or ‘darn’.335 Any problems attendant on men of different social classes mixing, problems which in the British Army the setting up of the Pals Battalions had to some extent bypassed, were revived by swearing, which strongly declared class difference. Just as ‘bloody’ had become a class marker,336 swearing of any kind carried connotations of class, and of place. Charles Douie remarks on ‘two very old soldiers, whose home address was well east of Aldgate Pump, addressing the German army in familiar, if deplorable language’.337 Coningsby Dawson by August 1918, having previously shown an interest in the language of his fellow-soldiers, was describing them as ‘coarse men, foul-mouthed men’.338 Plymouth Brethren member Donald McNair’s letters home referred to a ‘most respectable looking young man’ whose ‘torrent of pure and unadulterated swearing, punctuated with incessant blasphemies, was unique’; later he had to share living space with four men who were ‘utterly low-class and foul-mouthed louts – I certainly have nothing in common with them, and find it difficult to put up with their wantonly pointless, witless and filthy conversation’.339
As soon as men re-entered the company of women adjustments were made; Emma Duffin reported that one of her charges ‘used the ‘Pygmalio
n’ word to me’ (bloody), but she made him apologise.340 One young woman had to learn three words in Chinese to send away men from the CLC who were prohibited from making purchases in the YMCA canteen where she served in France; though told that the words were ‘the most frightful swearing’, she never found out their meaning, but continued to use them to effect.341
Though some officers used foul language, swearing was seen as the attribute of the men – William James Newton remembered swearing at an officer during a football match at the Front in 1915, and feeling that it was essential to apologise afterwards.342 Officers turned a blind eye, or indulged in mild or occasional swearing: ‘a few lusty curses delivered when things looked bad would often have a steadying effect’.343 Some chaplains attempted to clean up soldiers’ language at the Front, and they were not alone. Douglas Haig was very disapproving of obscene language, and on one occasion reprimanded a colonel who had not only let his men on the march sing a very bawdy song, but had joined in himself.344 At the other end of the scale a number of people were shocked at the supposed profanity of some of the songs performed at a camp concert in Essex in September 1916; a Mrs Sargent was ‘of the opinion that soldiers’ ears should not be wounded by such expressions’, the term in question being ‘bloke’.345 These extremes aside, there are even in trench journals expressions of disapproval of swearing, some tongue in cheek, such as in the trench journal Carry On: The Trotters’ Journal, where one of the things that are specified as needing a ‘pull-through’ (with a piece of cleaning rag) is ‘Company Sergt.-Major Flannery’s language’.346 But these are nevertheless indicative of something people would recognise:
C.O. ‘You say the Sergeant used foul language to you?’
Recruit ‘Yes, sir (with a blush), he called me a-er ruddy fool.’
C.O. (reflectively) ‘A ruddy fool, eh! – and you didn’t like it?’
Recruit ‘No, sir, I certainly did not.’347
For some the reaction was strong: ‘to think that young striplings of sergeants and corporals should use the foulest of language to men in the execution of duty was utterly appalling to me’;348 while for others it was just tiresome: ‘one got so very wearied of hearing everything being described as f-cking this and f-cking that, the very word, with its original indecent meaning, being at length a mere stupid and meaningless vulgarity’.349 Some of those who had become accustomed to swearing tired of it: Robert Graves, dealing with discipline infringements by soldiers in camp, noted that the ‘obscene language, always quoted verbatim, continued drearily the same’.350 Or swearing failed to do the job it was supposed to do: ‘I fell into the frozen shell-holes three or four times, and soon exhausted all the swear words I ever heard, and was reduced to vulgar blasphemy’;351 Charles Douie describes a ‘nightmare march’ at the end of which the men are ‘almost too tired to swear’, and in speaking to their guide he uses ‘language which was excusable only in the circumstances’; but the guide has ‘developed an absolute indifference to popular opinion’.352
‘Fuck’ and ‘fucking’ made the most impact on those who observed soldiers’ language, probably because of the disparity between their extensive use at the Front and the limited exposure to them of many people away from the Front; John Brophy, writing ‘After Fifty Years’ as an introduction to the 1969 edition of The Long Trail – Soldiers’ Songs and Slang 1914–18, felt he could restore many other words to the texts of soldiers’ songs – arse, balls, ballocks (sic), piss and shit, and also bugger, but not yet ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ which he ‘jibbed at’;353 Robert Graves notes the early gas helmet’s name ‘goggle-eyed booger with the tit’,354 the 100th Brigade were known as ‘the black-buttoned bastards’,355 and David Jones in In Parenthesis has ‘that shit major Lillywhite’, and ‘bastards’ applied to shell-splinters.356
The majority of swearing was mild and might even then have passed as little more than a marker of class. ‘Blooming’, ‘blinking’, ‘ruddy’, ‘bloody well’, ‘gorblimey’, even occasionally ‘bugger’ appear in letters, postcards, memoirs and recorded dramatisations.357 Pte S. Fraser used the expression ‘silly buggers’,358 and Lt C. Greaves described the first day of the German advance in March 1918 as ‘a bugger’,359 but these may be post-war interviews or texts; it is noticeable that Graves spelled it ‘booger’, ‘bugger’ still being of doubtful legality. ‘Lumme’ and ‘blimey’ become standard indicators of soldier speech, emphasising the prevalence of cockney, and, as an indicator of how war changed the language, there was discussion as to whether ‘damn’ and ‘bloody’ were swearwords at all. Holmes in A Yankee in the Trenches gives a glossary which includes ‘bloody’, which ‘is vaguely supposed to be highly obscene, though just why nobody seems to know’;360 The Daily Mirror gossip writer in November 1917 remarked that ‘Brigadier-General Elles’ picturesque use of “damn”, in his signal to his tank commanders, has made the word popular. Yesterday we had Lord Rhondda saying about the Huns that “we would give them a damned good lesson before the finish”. The word is, I believe, banned on most music-hall stages, but with such fresh examples of its forcefulness the ban may be lifted’.361 Comparison between the popular and provincial press of 1911 and that of 1919 shows a more than doubling of the use of ‘blimey’.362
Casual swearing is documented in a range of ways, none of which show swearing to be anything other than natural: in ‘With the Bombardiers’ in Made in the Trenches, if water drips down a man’s neck he ‘will immediately swear, straighten his back, bump his head, swear again’,363 ‘Blimy’ is the caption for a drawing of a soldier ducking to avoid a hand grenade;364 ‘you find yourself in a shell hole, knee deep in mud and water, sprawling about against the slimy sides. Several swear words follow’.365 Graves reports a conversation between a stretcher bearer and a Welsh soldier in his regiment: ‘ “Who’s the poor bastard, Dai?” … “Sergeant Gallagher … silly booger aims too low … it breaks his silly f-ing jaw …” ’; the soldier also swears in Welsh, using ‘Deoul’ (‘the Devil’), a comparatively mild term.366
Apart from the obvious use of dashes, e.g. E. H. J. in a letter to The Athenaeum367 – ‘There is a very queer phrase denoting “nothing” – “- all!” No record of war slang is complete without it’ – the printed dash records awareness that swearwords cannot be printed, and that swearwords were used, and, depending on the audience, that the reader knows the likely word being alluded to. Thus The White Band gives ‘Australia’s War Song’,368 with a very good cartoon of a grinning soldier; the first two lines set the rhythm – ‘Fellers of Australia, Blokes an’ coves an’ coots’, which set up the chorus:
Get a ---- move on.
Have some ---- sense;
Learn the ---- art of
Self-de ---- fence.
Apart from dashes, there were several ways of avoiding swearing while making it clear that it was only the form of swearing that was being avoided. Graves records the use of obscene language by a soldier called Boy Jones, in 1917; the offended bandmaster, described as ‘squeamish’ reported it as: ‘Sir, he called me a double effing c–.’369 David Jones writes ‘you use the efficacious word, to ease frustration’370 – and the first part of ‘efficacious’ shows clearly what he is referring to; Brophy and Partridge list ‘blurry’ as a common euphemism for ‘bloody’;371 a cigarette advertisement in Punch uses p-d-q,372 while H. M. Denham at the Dardanelles refers to a coxswain as ‘a young b.f.’;373 the still current ‘effing and blinding’ is used by Lance-Sergeant J. L. Bouch, probably in a post-war interview;374 and In the Hands of the Huns substitutes verfluchter for ‘damned’.375
It was not all a dreary procession of ‘fucking bloody bastard’ (Coppard stated that ‘the enemy were always “bloody bastards” ’376), though this clearly served a useful role in giving form to the expression of despair in the trenches. There was humour and invention, such as the postcard showing a man in court saying to the judge ‘he called me German and used other filthy language’, reputedly an actual event. Coppard noted that ‘after a parti
cularly foul and original sentence [a pent-up bloke’s] face would beam at the cheers which acclaimed his efforts’.377 And some of the local place names supplied combinations of syllables that called out to be used: Fraser and Gibbons noted particularly that Krakenhohe, a German town passed by after the Armistice, was ‘adopted’ as a convenient swearword. There is evidence for soldiers from Canada feeling that their swearing was superior to British swearing: ‘the Canadian swears more. His language is richer and more original … [English swearing] … is hackneyed and lacking in ideas. He swears with a sort of apology in his voice, whereas the Canadian is conscious that he is inventing phrases which are his own, so he has a pride in his own language.… This originality tends to make him a more dangerous opponent’.378
Soldiers’ casual swearing or swearing at the situation or the enemy was deemed more or less acceptable by the end of the war – ‘the cussed Huns have got my gramophone’ was fine in May 1918 for an advertisement in Punch.379 At the unveiling of the war memorial at Stainforth Capt Tyas told the audience that ‘a man who could swear and let out his feelings was a much better soldier than a sulky man’, and that he ‘did not care whether a man died swearing or not’.380 The extent, nature and impact of swearing might be judged by the traces it left on the local population, for which we have little long-term evidence. Inevitably there were cases of men teaching the locals swearwords they did not understand the import of, and delighting in hearing them with foreign accents: ‘I think the French girls who repeated and threw back at the men all the bad language they heard had little notion what it all meant’.381 Van Welleghem thought that British soldiers were saying ‘Fake Belgium’,382 but one French woman picked up nothing more harmful than ‘you damn fool’;383 if this was indicative of how soldiers swore at civilians, they appear to have been as capable of controlling their speech as they were of censoring their postcards home. R. H. Mottram gives a picture of British troops behaving in a way that appears the polar opposite of the effing and blinding Tommy: ‘How often have I not seen twenty or thirty of them packed into some little Flemish kitchen, treating the peasant women with elaborate Sunday-school politeness, … tittering slightly at anything not quite nice, and singing, not so often the vulgar music-hall numbers, as the more sentimental “Christmas successes” from the pantomimes’.384 Soldiers, as we all do, were able to temper their language and behaviour to the circumstances. On these grounds we should consider that self-censoring of swearing applied to memoirs was an authentic aspect of the language of the war.
Words and The First World War Page 14