Words and The First World War

by Julian Walker

  There was, however, a strong female presence in all the combat zones where English was used, in the names of weapons. How are we to interpret the gendering of the names given to large guns, shells, mines, tanks, even the bayonet and rifle? ‘Minnie’ obviously derived from the German Minenwerfer, and ‘Big Bertha’ derived from the German ‘Dicke Bertha’, derived from the name of Bertha Krupp von Bohlen und Handbach.459 But other names carried no clear female connection; Fraser and Gibbons record ‘Asiatic Annie’, ‘Gentle Annie’, ‘Jericho Jane’, ‘Coughing Clara’, and the shells ‘Lazy Eliza’ and ‘Silent Susan’ while Brophy and Partridge record the use of ‘Emma’ as ‘a favourite German name for a cannon’, and ‘Kathe’ was the name given to a German tank;460 conversely the French named the 75-mm gun, (known to English-speakers as soixante-quinze) ‘Eugène’.461 There were also the names ‘Stuttering Lizzie’ given to a machine gun,462 and ‘Mournful Mary’ or ‘Mournful Maria’ for the air-raid siren at Dunkirk.463

  Not all names given were female – there were the shells ‘Creeping Jimmy’,464 ‘Whistling Percy/Walter/Willie/Rufus’465 and of course, ‘Jack Johnson’ (the name was also given to the gun firing the shells); the guns at the Dardanelles, ‘Artful Archie’, ‘Morbid Montmorenzi’, ‘Morose Montmorenzi’, ‘Spiteful William’, and ‘a big Asiatic “Jack Johnson” ’;466 near Ypres there was ‘Perishing Pavey’467 (possibly a reference to the Flemish cobblestones), and ‘Belching Billy’.468 The largest guns were given male names: the German Langer Max became ‘Long Fritz’ in English, while Fraser and Gibbons record ‘Long Tom’ as the name for the British 60-pounder gun early in the war, the name originating from a Boer gun used at Ladysmith. Alliteration played a large part in this, another aspect of the propensity of the English language to provide opportunity for wordplay, dating back to Old English poetry and riddles.

  FIGURE 3.8 Postcard sent ‘On Active Service’, 5 July 1918. The image shows a view of a hospital, the location information scratched out. The writer asks Sapper Wilf Barrett, ‘have any Berthas been near your place yet?’

  But the preponderance of female names and references remains uncomfortable. There was in the French and German armies a tradition of female association with the rifle; for Germans soldiers the rifle was Braut des Soldaten, ‘the soldiers’ bride’,469 while Partridge records ‘Laura’ and ‘Karline’, with ‘Kusine’ and ‘Tante’ adopted from French470. The French had ‘Ma’m’selle Lebel’ for their rifle, from the name of the inventor.471 French nicknames for the bayonet were ‘Josephine’ and ‘Rosalie’, though there was resistance to the latter because of its known civil and literary origin; Partridge believed that nevertheless it prospered.472 The British army during the war, despite the venerability of the name ‘Brown Bess’, did not develop a personal nickname for the rifle or bayonet. However, the terms ‘Granny’, ‘grandmother’ and ‘mother’ were used for larger guns. Fraser and Gibbons give the names ‘Granny’ and ‘Grandmother’ for the first British howitzer used in the fighting, in April 1915, the names being used later for other large guns – one of the captions for the film The Battle of the Somme reads ‘Operating the 15-inch howitzer (“Grandmother”) …’. Both terms featured in the list put together by members of The Times staff who had served,473 with ‘Granny’ as specifically a 9.2-inch gun, though Partridge later assigned it to a shell.474 ‘Mother’, the name given to the first tank,475 was also used for a gun: the Daily Mirror reported a correspondent talking to a soldier on leave, telling ‘his stories in a language full of the slang of the trenches, newborn phrases that will soon be part of every story of soldier life. … “Mother” is a pleasant, very effective gun of ours, a heavy and far-reaching piece of artillery that the Germans don’t like a little bit. It takes good care of our infantry and comforts them considerably – hence the name.’476 This is rather too comfortable, fitting the needs of journalism; a more appropriate connotation might be the idea of ‘delivering’, fitting the cynical worldview of the trenches. There are antecedents for this female association, going back a long way: the fifteenth-century siege gun at Edinburgh Castle, ‘Mons Meg’ (from its place of manufacture), is well known, but current thinking is that the origin of the word ‘gun’ itself derives from the Scandinavian woman’s name ‘Gunna’, extended to ‘Gunnilda’, the suffix carrying the meaning of ‘war’. A gun called ‘Domina Gunilda’ is mentioned in the munitions accounts of Windsor Castle for 1330–1.477

  Place

  ‘The Front’ was a new expression in August 1914, and for the military a verbal response to the sudden development of a stationary rather than a mobile campaign, even though trench warfare had been a common feature of the Crimean and American Civil Wars. There was surprise at the sense of a barrier, though the speed with which newspapers reported the areas of confrontation between the German, French and British armies (from September 1914) meant that the terms ‘Western Front’ and ‘Eastern Front’ (though the Eastern Front changed much more) appeared within a week of the opening of hostilities between Britain and Germany.478 ‘The Front’ was very quickly a term established in the public consciousness as a place – newspaper readers were told to expect ‘news from the front’ and ‘letters from the front’ in August 1914.479

  While the trench warfare of the 19th century and beforehand had been often to do with besieging cities, the battlefield stasis of 1914 required a quick shifting of terminology. Andrew Clark observed how The Scotsman applied the word ‘siege’ to the kind of warfare, ‘No longer a battle’, along a ‘hundred miles of front … consisting of old forts and disused quarries. Bomb-proof shelters, formed of bags of cement, and subterranean passages …’.480 Lynda Mugglestone’s examination of Clark’s documentation of terminology at this time481 shows the change towards the pre-eminence of the trench, as both physical and symbolic expression of the limit of movement. Though ‘siege war’ and ‘siege warfare’ continued in use – ‘a regular siege war has been in progress for two days’,482 and ‘siege warfare on the Aisne’483 – soldiers were reported as digging trenches in mid-September 1914, and ‘digging ourselves in’ on 21 September,484 the Germans having already been ‘digging themselves in’ by this time.485

  What soon developed was the awareness of the pre-eminence of the trench, with its own growing culture and its status in the perception of the war. Its terminology became widespread – ‘parapet’, ‘firestep’, ‘parados’, ‘supports’, ‘dug-out’, ‘communication trench’ – while other terms – ‘firing line’, ‘front line’ – changed or assumed different meanings. Though there was terminology for attacking or defending – ‘over the top’, ‘hop over the bags’, ‘a jumping-out trench’, ‘hold your trench’ – the predominance of the phrase ‘in the trenches’ emphasises the static nature of the experience. ‘In the trenches’ rather than ‘in a trench’, pointing to the constant movement of men and supplies, the area rather than the single line being where the soldier was, and indeed where the artillery was directed; for the prime role of the infantry was to be shelled, and not to break. ‘In a trench’ is seen rarely, in a letter to ‘Arthur’ from T. Harold Watts dated 18 June 1915, or the song ‘Living in a Trench’ by Parsons and Woodville (published 1917), but overwhelmingly the expression was ‘in the trenches’. It was in the UPS journal The Pow-Wow by December 1914486 and its later form The Gasper;487 in advertisements – ‘In the trenches – Symingtons Soups (so easy to “fix up”)’,488 and ‘a watch I can depend on in the trenches’;489 in postcards – ‘We are in the trenches fighting at present’490 and ‘Dan has been in the trenches’;491 in newspaper articles – ‘after the spell in the trenches’,492 and ‘the same kind of spirit as the men in the trenches’;493 it appeared in French as ‘Dans les tranchées’,494 including in British soldiers’ French – ‘I have not been “dans les tranchées” for about a fortnight’.495 Soldiers would ‘go to the trenches’, ‘leave for the trenches’, and on arrival ‘take over trenches’;496 ‘I am going in the trenches again’ writes Henry on 26 May 1
915 in the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.497 And they ‘only came out of the trenches last night’,498 or ‘have come out of the Ts well’.499 There were occasional variations: ‘Relieved infantry in trenching’ shows an early form from September 1915;500 and the specific term ‘in supports’, for support trenches.501

  Other phrases show how terms changed or merged, particularly when describing the forwardmost trench: George Williams writes in his diary that he is ‘still on rations for 1st line’,502 while Stephen Hewett writes ‘Here in the Fire-trenches’.503 ‘The firing line’ was misunderstood in an early postcard which shows ‘German officers on the Firing Line’ standing conspicuously in a field; a more feasible image is seen in a cigarette card by Gallahers from 1915 showing ‘Shelters Behind the Firing Line’, with soldiers hiding beneath tarpaulins. A 1918 postcard showing a soldier and his sweetheart with the caption ‘In the Firing Line’ indicates that the phrase had changed from meaning ‘where you shoot from’ to ‘where you are shot at’.504 ‘The front line’ was easily and frequently shortened to ‘the line’ – soldiers spoke of ‘going into the line’ (see postcard Figure 2.3, p. 58), and there were variations ‘the fire trench’ and ‘the firing trench’. For the general area of the Front there were a number of terms: for example ‘the war zone’,505 ‘the fighting line’,506 or ‘the fighting zone’.507

  The depth of the trench, deep enough for men to pass along without the risk of receiving a head-shot from a sniper, meant that being in the trenches was very much a case of being below ground-level. Thus being in the trenches was often described as ‘being in’. In an undated letter from after Neuve Chapelle (March 1915) E. W. Bratchell writes ‘we have been “in” since the 8th’;508 therefore ‘we came out, after four days in’,509 ‘we are about to come out for a few weeks’,510 and ‘they have had no bacon since they came out’.511 ‘In’ and ‘out’ reflect the vertical nature of the battlefield, with soldiers reporting seeing nothing but the sides and base of the trench and the slice of sky above. Hiding from aeroplanes above, under tarpaulins in shell craters, or in dug-outs, was essential in daylight hours, adding to the sense of being ‘in’; and for those involved in mining activities, they were very much ‘in’ Flanders or France. This phraseology naturally merged with ‘being in it’, in the sense of being ‘in the fighting’, employing the language of avoidance. ‘We shall soon be in it’, wrote Major F. Crozier in December 1914,512 while ‘the odds would be against us coming out’ implied ‘coming out of the battle alive’.513

  No man’s land, between the two front lines, emerged as a military term around 1907/8, though the term in the sense of ‘waste land’ is medieval; yet despite its familiarity the written record shows people putting the term in inverted commas long after the war, and with even such an iconic expression there was no consensus as regards its written presentation. In August 1917 it was presented in provincial newspapers, variously as ‘No Man’s Land’, ‘No Man’s Land’, ‘no man’s land’, and ‘No man’s land’.514 W. H. Harris has it as ‘No Man’s Land’,515The Sphere has it as ‘No-man’s-land’ and ‘No-Man’s-Land’,516 Henry Williamson has it as ‘Noman’s-land’,517 and A Month at the Front has it as ‘no mans land’.518 James Addison in The Story of the First Gas Regiment (1919) has ‘No Man’s Land’ (p. 28) and without inverted commas (p. 101), while Eric Hiscock has ‘Nomansland’.519 Lighter’s Slang of the AEF gives three instances of the variation ‘Nobody’s Land’,520 while one American soldiers’ English–French phrasebook translates the term as Pays de mort.521

  By the end of 1914 the trench had become a clear locus of terminology, with the word in use as a suffix in terms such as ‘trench cooker’,522 ‘trench cap’,523 as commercial advertising recognised the value of associating products with the trench, both in terms of attractiveness to people buying items for soldiers, and in terms of patriotism by association. While ‘British Warm’ was widely used for heavy coats (Aquascutum),524 the first use of ‘Trench Coat’ appeared in Punch 23 December 1914 in an advertisement for Thresher and Glenny (‘Wind, Wet and Mud resisting’). A number of variations were available, some which retained the term ‘trench coat’, some adapting or modifying it, and others avoiding it. Aquascutum advertised a ‘Field coat’, Burberry advertised the ‘Trench-warm’,525 and there was the ‘Studdington waterproof trencher’.526 Trench coats were advertised widely and regularly throughout the war, with variations – ‘25 shilling Ladies Trench Coats’ were advertised in the Daily Express,527 and ‘ladies’ trench-proofs’ in the Liverpool Echo.528 There were also the ‘ “Carry-On” Trench Coat’ made by Alfred Webb Miles & Co.,529 Moss Bros’ ‘ “Moscow” trench coat’,530 the ‘Trench “Dexter” ’,531 the ‘Zambrene “Triple-triple” proof coat’,532 and the Barker ‘ “Kenbar” trench coat’.533 The term disappeared after the war, a sign of the changing attitude to the conflict. Burberry, by Spring 1920, appeared to be avoiding the term: in Punch and the Illustrated London News they advertised ‘the Guards’ Burberry’, ‘the Monte B’, ‘the Urbitor’, ‘the Rusitor’ and ‘the Race Weatherall’, but no trench coat, and by 1922 it was hard to find trench coats advertised anywhere.

  Other trench-clothing was advertised throughout the war: Manfield advertised ‘Officers’ war boots’ and ‘trench boots’,534 and ‘trench jackets’ were also available; there was the army issue ‘trench hat’ ‘commonly called a “Gor Blimey” ’,535 and, from the AEF, the ‘trench derby’ (‘tin hat’).536 Commercially available were the Wyse ‘famous trench pipe’,537 ‘trench pillows’ and ‘trench socks’,538 and ‘trench waistcoats’.539 Cramped and static posture and prolonged exposure to water in the trenches (Kipling recorded an order to the Irish Guards that men were ‘not to stand in the water for more than twelve hours at a time’540) led to ‘swollen feet’, in 1915, which eventually became ‘trench feet’541 (sometimes ‘trench foot’); there was ‘trench fever’,542 and what was described by the sister of a military hospital ward in Alexandria as ‘trenchitis’, ‘collapse after a month in the fighting line, owing to want of rest and food’543 (an alternative ‘disease’, which could also be cured by rest, was ‘sniper’s rash’544); a propos of the trope of food remembered but not provided in the trenches, it is notable how many projectiles were given food names as nicknames – ‘sausages’, ‘pine-apples’, ‘toffee-apples’, ‘eggs’, ‘plum-puddings’, ‘jam-pots’, and even the associated ‘potato-mashers’.545

  ‘Trench language’546 embraced clothing, objects and states of health. The Listening Post 10 August 1918 published a glossary of ‘trench terms and their meanings’, but as early as 31 March 1915 The Times had offered its readers a column on ‘trench slang’;547 the term ‘trench French’ appeared in jokes in newspapers, but it is not known whether the copywriters had tried to say this aloud.548 The idea that the view of trench language changed after the Armistice is seen in a cartoon in Comic Cuts 18 September 1919 which shows a wasp stinging a mask and remarking that the supposed face had not ‘even used a trench word’, with the implication that soldiers’ slang was seen now as merely swearing. The Daily Mail headlined an article based on a soldier’s letter with the words ‘Trench Types’ in which various models of attitude and behaviour are given,549 while Lancelot Spicer quotes a song from a ‘trench songster’.550 Trench names, apart from the information they give about attitudes to home, the progress of the war, and the predominance of London in the soldiers’ consciousness, show how the soldiers managed language: when British soldiers took over a French-controlled trench they changed its name from French to English, when English troops took over from Scottish troops place names were replaced, and on trench maps names were transcribed in non-Latin characters to aid Indian troops.551

  If the trench was the focus of the Front, then mud has lasted as the defining characteristic of the trench, though the variations in soil type, seasons and weather produced great variations of humidity and water retention in the soil; the prevalence of comments about mud would indicate that it was
the most annoying characteristic of the landscape. The Gasper described a trench as ‘water surrounded by mud’,552 and Stephen Hewett wrote ‘we live in a labyrinth of mud, which cakes us from hands to feet’;553 it was ‘difficult to exaggerate’,554 – ‘they say the mud is terrible at the front’.555 There were different types of mud: ‘deep viscous mud’,556 ‘gruelly mud’,557 ‘Mud, mud, nothing but mud mud without any bottom’,558 ‘foul slime’,559 and the memorably sticky ‘Wipers mud’.560 Away from the Western Front there was ‘very soft black Mesopotamian mud’,561 on the Italian Front there were mountain paths ‘extremely narrow, … often from one to two feet deep in greasy mud’,562 and on the Eastern Front the ‘history of the war is written in mud and battered roofs’.563