Words and The First World War

by Julian Walker

  It was taken over by anglophone soldiers, possibly from Frank Reynolds’ cartoon in Punch showing ‘a Prussian household having its morning hate’, so that the dawn bombardment became the ‘morning hate’, with frequent examples of ‘evening hate’ and ‘night-time hate’.

  In August 1916 Lancelot Spicer wrote home that he was ‘supposed to be suffering from what the Daily Mail calls Trench Fever’,564 raising the question of how much of this was generated at the Front and how much in Britain or elsewhere. The relationship between the language used ‘at home’ and ‘out there’ is one of the strongest markers of the different experiences, attitudes and desires during the period; it is evident in the phrase ‘out there’ – ‘there isn’t any more “Out there” with us now. It’s “Out here.” ’565 Soldiers were strongly aware of how the press both misreported the situation at the Front and were fascinated by soldiers’ slang, to the point of becoming over-involved in it. Soldiers had a range of views as regards newspapers, from their being the only way soldiers could get an idea of the progress of the war to parody of war-reporting in trench journals. While a middle view is given in a postcard from the Front dated 24 March 1918 – ‘you can give some idea of what it is like here now by the papers but not all’566 – what is very clear is how soldiers took home-generated expressions and mockingly adapted them for use at the Front. The ‘Hymn of Hate’,567 a poem by Ernst Lissauer attacking Britain, first appeared in translation in British newspapers at the end of October 1914, and was a gift to satirists. It was taken over by anglophone soldiers, possibly from Frank Reynolds’ cartoon in Punch showing ‘a Prussian household having its morning hate’, so that the dawn bombardment became the ‘morning hate’, with frequent examples of ‘evening hate’ and ‘night-time hate’. This developed into ‘Fritz sending his daily hate over’,568 ‘spasms of intense hate’,569 or ‘more hate this morning’,570 all with slightly different nuances. As the original poem had been sung by German schoolchildren its musical aspect also transferred into slang, as a bombardment became ‘an evening serenade’.571 The expression was also carried across to Gallipoli, where Aubrey Herbert felt ‘a beautiful dawn [was] defiled by a real hymn of hate from the Turks’.572 While this downgrading was a way of managing fear, it was also edged with a knowledge that the German press and public opinion had in the period around 1914 stirred up intense hatred against Britain, which may have been diluted in the first two years of the war at the Front, but which was a strong aspect of the fighting from mid-1917 onwards.

  FIGURE 3.9 Frank Reynolds’ cartoon of a Prussian family engaged in their morning hate, published in Punch.

  HATE

  Ernst Lissauer’s Hymn of Hate provided cartoonists with rich material for satire. Frank Reynolds’ drawing, which appeared in the 24 February 1915 issue of Punch, captioned ‘Study of a Prussian household having its morning hate’, was one of many that made fun of the idea. The parents, the patriarch very much resembling Hindenburg, with three children and a dog, all frowning, grimacing, clenching hands round the table in a dark and heavily curtained parlour, typified the propagandists’ model of futile bombast. While the phrase engendered the belittling descriptions of artillery barrages as ‘the morning hate’ or ‘the evening hate’, George Orwell’s later use of the term in 1984 carries a much more sinister sense of manufactured hysteria in the post-Second World War period, closer to the original usage in Germany in 1914:

  Before the hate had proceeded for 30 seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. In its second minute the hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the top of their voices. The horrible thing about the two minutes hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.

  ‘Frighfulness’ too was taken up mockingly by the troops, Fraser and Gibbons describing the process thus: ‘the word “Frightfulness” was so persistently used in the Press in England and Allied countries in the early part of the War that it became a word of jest in the Services, being used in all sorts of connections, and of anything, however trivial. A man, for instance, appearing for the first time with an incipient moustache, or wearing a new pair of trousers, or with anything at all unusual in his appearance or get up, would be chaffingly told that he was displaying “frightfulness” ’.573 By 1917 ‘frightfulness’ was being parodied in the pages of the press itself, a cartoon advertisement for Ensignette Cameras giving tips for avoiding ‘photographic frightfulness’.574 Attempts to ‘gift’ slang words by the press met with mixed success; ‘Rosalie’, the French name for a bayonet invented in an erotic song by Théodore Botrel in 1914, was equally energetically dismissed by Henri Barbusse in Le Feu, translated as a phrase for ‘padded luneys’ [looneys?] in Fitzwater Wray’s 1917 translation (p. 124). Fraser and Gibbons state that ‘Cuthberts’ (for those who attempted to avoid being sent to the trenches by getting desk-jobs) was invented by a cartoonist at the Evening News, but this was definitely taken up by the troops, as was ‘Sammy’, the American equivalent of ‘Tommy’, offered by Punch on 13 June 1917 – though there was a view that ‘American soldiers hate being called “Sammies”. They do not know what the word means’.575 The famous ‘’Arf a ‘mo, Kaiser’ catchphrase, popular with civilians, who bought plates and prints showing the picture, never caught on with soldiers, and does not feature in either Brophy and Partridge or Fraser and Gibbons.

  ‘Hate’ and ‘frightfulness’ show language change happening in a transference from home to the Front, but more recognised at the time was the process happening in the other direction: ‘soldiers bring [new words] into vogue, and the public gets to know them from the letters which are published in the newspapers and joyfully adopt them’.576 When presented by the press to the public these words were given as ‘new slang’, as in the case of ‘flying pigs’,577 or ‘Toot the sweet’ (straightaway), a forces adaptation of the French tout de suite, whose development, ‘and tooter the sweeter’, appeared in a Punch cartoon in December 1917, under the heading ‘The New Language’: Eric Partridge dated its use among troops to two years earlier.578 The Iodine Chronicle noted ‘toot sweet’ as ‘a hackneyed saying’ in December 1915. Developments of meaning or usage at the Front meant that there was a potential for delay in transference, so that a phrase might mean one thing at the Front and another at home. An example of this is ‘over the top’, ‘the top’ being the highest level of the parapet at the front of the trench. ‘To go over the top’, or ‘go over’, meant ‘to leave one’s own trench and join in the attack on the enemy’, this usage being widely known at home from 1916. The ‘top’ was also the open ground between the trenches; hence by 1916 troops were using ‘over the top’ to mean ‘in trouble’,579 and a glossary in the trench journal Aussie defines ‘hopover’, from ‘hop over the bags’ (i.e. the parapet) as ‘the first step in a serious undertaking’.580 After the war there appears to have been an occasional reversion to unfamiliarity with the usage. On 25 April 1919 the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer felt the need to use quotation marks again in reporting the last action of a tank being used as a memorial – the tank was to be located in Hartlepool, going over an obstacle: ‘and the tank will “go over the top” for the last time’. The sense of ‘excessive’ or ‘extreme’ was evident from 1919: on 26 June 1919 the Hull Daily Mail reporting on a trench re-enactment wrote ‘the culminating spectacle is an “over the top” affair’. But there was an emerging use of the phrase as metaphorical: the same newspaper reported that the Archbishop of York ‘urges the Welsh Church to go “over the top” on March 31st for a living wage for the disendowed clergy’.581 The Illustrated London News on 4 October 1919 showed an image of people running to board a tram during the train strike with the caption: ‘ “Over the top” on the Thames Embankment: suburban travellers struggling to get home’.

  While slang may have insulated the army against civilian encroachment, soldiers could not equip themselves against direct que
stions that went to the heart of the inexpressibility of trench-warfare – ‘what is it really like out there?’ or ‘the question, asked in letter after letter, “How many Germans have you killed?” ’

  Language was a symptom and a driver of the distance troops felt between themselves and civilians in Britain. Graves wrote that ‘the civilians talked a foreign language: and it was newspaper language’.582 While slang may have insulated the army against civilian encroachment,583 soldiers could not equip themselves against direct questions that went to the heart of the inexpressibility of trench warfare –‘what is it really like out there?’,584 or ‘the question, asked in letter after letter, “How many Germans have you killed?” ’585 As another trench journal put it in an article entitled ‘Quaint questions asked by “Civvie” ’, ‘one’s language fails at such interrogations’.586

  As much as uniting a nation, language could push services and civilians into separate camps. While ‘baby-killers’ and ‘doing your bit’ were occasionally used by soldiers, these were terms which originated in the civilian environment, as did ‘pushing up daisies’ and ‘turd-walloper’ (sanitary-fatigue man), both terms associated with the Front. Even ‘Tipperary’, the archetypal First World War song, was, according to F. T. Nettleingham, author of Tommy’s Tunes (1917),587 ‘never “Tommy’s” song’; Pte S. J. Levy stated emphatically of a regiment going to the trenches that ‘they were not singing “Tipperary”. No!’588 Ernest Baker, writing to The Athenaeum post-war, proposed separate entities as creators of terms: ‘carry on’, ‘get the wind up’, ‘going over the top’ and ‘to have cold feet’ were army terms, while ‘doing your bit’, ‘fed up’, ‘get a move on’ were civilian inventions, ‘deliver the goods’, ‘cut no ice’ and ‘keep doggo’ were ‘Yankee’, and ‘dazzle’ a navy term. Unsurprisingly, civilian slang terms developed, which, indicative of how the First World War has been studied and remembered, have been totally overshadowed by soldier slang, or not thought of as, at the time, particular to the civilian – Edgar Preston, writing in the National Review, reckoned ‘zepps’ as civilian slang.589 Specific fields produced their own slang: a 1916 Daily Mail article by Monica Cosens showed how the culture of the munitions factory was creating its own slang, including ‘shell hands’, ‘mystic’ (soap and water), ‘basis’ (the number of shells worked on before bonus work), a ‘dump’ (a shell needing reworking), and the ‘cloaker’ (cloakroom).590 Though ‘the Home Front’ appeared only once during the war, in The Times in April 1917, there were terms to do with food-production: ‘allotmenteer’,591 ‘alloteer’, and ‘allotman’, and ‘grubber’,592 producers of the much-desired potato, itself also known as a ‘U.S.’ – for ‘underground strawberry’,593 as at the Front the shortage of food produced imaginative lexis, though not necessarily what you would want to serve in December 1914 to invited soldiers at a ‘Tommy party’.594 At a society party, in a cartoon in The Tatler, 1 November 1916 (p. 131), the guests are bored to sleep by a ‘social tank’.

  4 THE HOME FRONT

  Commerce and war language

  The idea that commerce will always find a way was challenged by the mass of languages in use in France and Flanders, but trade quickly found ways of surviving and flourishing, with Flemish merchants picking up words of Chinese languages in order to sell to members of the CLC.1 In Britain war terms were quickly put to the service of commerce. The vociferous patriotism in the press from August 1914 made it essential for advertisers to participate and associate with the soldier and the war effort; this took the form of declarations of patriotism, association with the war effort, particularly supporting soldiers, and using terminology from the war, particularly soldiers’ slang. An advertisement for Swan pens in The Sphere October 1914 showed a soldier writing home, with the caption ‘Tommy with his “little black gun” when a lull comes’, an early instance of copywriters trying to create a slang expression. The jostling for position can be seen in an early spat between Waterman and Onoto in November 1914, concerning whether Austrian shareholders were receiving income from sales of Waterman’s pens. Onoto’s claim was that Waterman’s pens were sold in the UK through an Austrian-controlled firm; Waterman’s denied it, and Onoto re-affirmed their accusation. Onoto claimed that ‘Every Waterman Pen sold, therefore, in this country means profit to the King’s Enemies’.2 Some practices and advertisements were frankly crude and exploitative: in January 1915 The Lady noted that ‘everybody is ordering the newest biscuit produced by Macfarlane, Lang, and Co. They have named it the “Belgian,” by way of a little compliment to our brave ally’.3 An advertisement in the Daily Sketch in December 1914 states that ‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary – but it doesn’t seem a long way if you are wearing Wood-Milne rubber heels and tips’.4 The Portsmouth Evening News carried an advertisement for ‘Goldman for Uniform’, in which the tailors challenged their competitors by saying ‘we still hold our trenches and they will not take “Calais” if we can help it’.5

  FIGURE 4.1 A typical use of war terminology in an advertisement in Public Opinion, 8 September 1916, p. 238, also exploiting the emotional links between the Home Front and servicemen and women, manifested in correspondence.

  Punch in April 1915 emphasised its position by its use of trench slang, stating ‘A future historian who takes no note of our soldiers making jokes about “Black Marias” in the trenches will fail to appreciate the spirit of our men who have fought so bravely against such mighty odds’.6

  Advertisements for products of direct interest to soldiers – creams, soap, cigarettes, equipment – would target the soldier-readers, or more likely those who would buy in quantity to send out to soldiers. These made claims, verifiable or otherwise, that created a direct link between buyer and soldier through specifically identifiable phrases – ‘Buy it for Your Soldier Friend … On the March and in the Trenches it Prevents Thirst and Fatigue’.7 Anecdotal reference to the Front might be included in an advertisement, though no direct link was made: Player’s Country Life Cigarettes were advertised with an image of a military motorcyclist and the text ‘Types of British Army – Motor Cycle Scout Carrying Despatches Under Fire’.8 Or absurdly improbable anecdotes might be invented to sell a product – Pears Soap offered an image of ‘Tommy’ reaching out of a trench in daylight and saying ‘Look here, someone’s dropped a cake of Pears’ Soap’,9 a suicidal gesture labelled as ‘An Incident of the Trenches’. References to censorship occur frequently in advertisements; a Kenilworth Cigarettes advertisement reads ‘For _________ somewhere in _________. Aren’t you going to send him some?’,10 ‘somewhere in ____’ being immediately recognisable from soldiers’ letters. The implication here is that the reader knows what is missing by virtue of being a recipient of soldiers’ letters; a triangular link is set up between reader, ‘soldier’ and product, by implying that the reader knows the missing word. Puns inevitably are put into service: a Sunlight Soap advertisement11 shows a wounded soldier being given a bar of soap by a woman, possibly a nurse, with the caption ‘In France you called this “Savon”, Tommy dear.… It’s the SAVON that you SAVE ON, Tommy, dear’. Again the sub-text is that the reader knows the French words that British soldiers picked up; an inside group is created, of which the product is both symbol and reification.

  Smoking was an area where the Navy was brought to the public’s attention in advertising; Woodbines were very much an army cigarette – soldiers often asked for a Woodbine rather than a cigarette – but Player’s Navy Cut tobacco and cigarettes were well-known and widely advertised. Navy slang hardly featured in these advertisements, and in one advertisement, for Martins Cigarettes, where a soldier and a sailor are shown, the sailor, though taller, is verbally ignored: ‘you can give happiness to the soldiers at – the – front – and in a personal way too. For each sixpence you spend the soldier gets a shilling’s worth of tobacco and cigarettes’.12 In 1916/17 Cavander’s Cigarettes ran a series of advertisements for Army Club cigarettes in local newspapers with invented texts from British, Empire and Allied
servicemen. An RNAS (Royal Naval Air Service) officer says, ‘one of my college chums chips me [makes fun of me] whether the letters I have mean “Rather Naughty After Sunset” or “Really Not A Sailor” ’ referencing a widely-used re-interpretation game;13 elsewhere ‘The “Tank” Commander’ says, ‘They thought anything we produced was a “wash-out,” but we caught them napping for once’.14 Cavanders also used the persona of the American sailor, but the slang here is American rather than naval – ‘But say, kid, some cigarette’.15 Again, the knowledge of slang creates the link. ‘Smokes’ was used in the Weekly Dispatch Tobacco Fund campaign, along with the famous image of the soldier with his pipe and the caption ‘ ’Arf a mo, Kaiser’, the use of ‘smokes’ allowing the inclusion of tobacco and cigarettes; but ‘smokes’ seldom appears in soldiers’ letters.

  Fictional anecdotes such as the Army Club personas were fairly harmless, but when actual events were used the use of identifying and linking slang to sell a product becomes more uncomfortable. An unidentified survivor of the loss of the Hogue (sunk 22 September 1914) is quoted as saying ‘[Oxo] made new men of us … we were all pretty nearly done for, I can tell you, but the crew were very good to us. They brought us round basins of hot Oxo, some with brandy in it, and it bucked us up at once and made new men of us’ [underlining and bold font as in original].16 On 17 November 1915 the hospital ship Anglia struck a mine and sank, with the loss of 164 wounded men, nurses, doctors and crew. The Graphic on 1 January 1916 carried an advertisement for Bovril (using the headline ‘Gives Strength To Win’) picturing the sinking of the ship, with rescued people being given cups of Bovril. ‘Part of a letter written by a survivor of the “Anglia” ’ states ‘We were just wondering how long it would be before we reached “Blighty”. Someone said – “Oh, about half an …” The sentence was never finished.’ The copy goes on to state that ‘Bovril was a Godsend.’ The use of ‘bucked us up’ and ‘Blighty’ puts the product at the centre of the action, but depends on the reader being familiar with these words.