Words and The First World War

by Julian Walker

  Occasional differences in meaning between then and now create a sense of otherness, a distinction in sensibilities. When a billet gets shelled the soldiers ‘just turn out, stand behind the wall and put on a pipe [light a pipe]’;193 a sentry standing by Robert Graves tells him ‘Keep still, sir, and they can’t spot you. Not but what a flare is a bad thing to fall on you’194 – ‘not but what’ meaning ‘nevertheless’; James Hope Moulton in 1915 wrote ‘German scholarship and science are naturally being canvassed vehemently in Britain today’, ‘canvassed’ meaning ‘attacked’;195 Fraser and Gibbons include the term ‘give it best’, as in ‘That’ll do, I’ve had enough, I’ll give it best’, to mean ‘to admit defeat’.196 There are terms used which now seem utterly inappropriate – 2nd Lt Arthur Lamb describing a gas attack as ‘bally awful’,197 while The War Illustrated headlined a page of photographs of curiosities as ‘New Year Novelties of the Ever-Wonderful War’;198 others that sound just slightly different – ‘Am going on alright’;199 and others – ‘to get off with’ (see p. 193) – which survived and seem surprisingly un-old-fashioned. Particularly, ‘fed up’ was a lot stronger then than now: Pte James Jones wrote in his diary that ‘a box of cigs from Madge … really saved my life, as I was about fed up’.200

  Other usages seem shocking to us a hundred years on: the Bovril advertisement using as a setting the loss of the Anglia hospital ship (see p. 216), the Boots advertisement using the pun on the word ‘Somme’, the war toys and fireworks advertised in 1914 using fictionalised anecdotes of the battlefield. The cynicism of ‘gassed’ meaning ‘drunk’ is difficult now, as we view with some reverence the pain of the soldiers, though the term had been in use for years beforehand, deriving from the use of gas as an anaesthetic; its unacceptability to us is partly due to the way that gas has been considered as such an icon for the horror of the war for so many decades. Were these usages clumsy or cynical, did they distress people at the time? If there was any reaction against them it was overshadowed by the enthusiasm – certainly in the case of the use of the ‘Somme/some’ pun – with which they were copied and re-used by others, including soldiers. Though the verbal irony and cynicism that emerged from the war lasted long afterwards it is difficult for us at this distance to feel comfortable with seeing it at its source, or to accept such tactless innocence. But the deadening of mind produced, such that anyone could create the phrase ‘Anzac soup’ for a water-filled crater with the bodies of soldiers in it, is exactly why the First World War made such a difference, and continues to matter.

  Apart from the obvious terms still in use – ‘trench-coat’, ‘over the top’, ‘dug-out, ‘cushy’, ‘lousy’, ‘crummy’, ‘bumf’, ‘wangle’, ‘A1’, ‘cop it’ – which originated in or were popularised by the war, the English language still retains an ear for the officialese that so many were exposed to: London Underground passengers still ‘entrain’ or ‘detrain’, or occasionally ‘disentrain’; we instantly recognise ‘towels, swimmers for the use of’ as military officialese; ‘no man’s land’ and ‘the Front’ are still signifiers of combat in the modern era. And terms are still being developed from them: ‘over-the-topness’ and ‘trench-talk’. A second generation of terms – ‘lions led by donkeys’ and ‘Oh, what a lovely war’ – ensures the survival of the mythology of the war. As much as anything the war gave to English a ready-made language for war, both for the military and the Home Front, as can be seen in the way that terms from 1914 to 1918 were re-used in 1939;201 1915 was echoed in 2015, with ‘Terry Taliban’ not far from ‘Johnny Bulgar’, nor ‘Lash Vegas’ and ‘Camp Butlins’ from ‘Eddesburg’ or ‘Eat Apples’.202

  Partridge, critiquing Dauzat’s interpretation of the developments in French slang during the war, proposes an idea for the pattern of survival of newly-acquired slang. Dauzat looks at the four chief military sources of slang: the languages of foreign soldiers fighting in France, the German occupation of Northern France, the French corps in Salonika, Gallipoli and Italy, and the prisoners of war in Germany; but these exert less influence on soldier slang than transformations in Parisian slang, the pre-war vocabulary of the army, and changes, metaphors and puns occurring in standard French. Generalising from this, and implicitly comparing it with English, Partridge proposes that externally-originating terms ‘may seem to be more interesting than, but they are rarely so long-lived as, the continuous graftings of the domestic stock’.203 At a distance of a century we are in a position to feel that ‘dekko’, ‘cushy’, ‘pukka’, ‘wallah’, and ‘gone phut’, all of which have been in English usage for much longer than 100 years, and which were popularised by the war, can claim to be as domestic as centuries’ worth of adoptions from French, and are surely as entrenched in the language as ‘wangle’, ‘cop it’ and ‘bumf’. ‘Napoo’, ‘sanfairyann’, ‘tooter the sweeter’, ‘compree’ have all gone now, as have ‘Blighty’, ‘pozzy’ and ‘gippo’, all pre-war. But ‘ersatz’, ‘ace’, ‘souvenir’, ‘morale’, sound as comfortable to English-speakers as ‘dig in’, ‘pillbox’ and ‘wash-out’.

  Why was language so dynamic during this period, and why does it continue to fascinate? Eric Partridge proposed that the soldier’s speech was characterised by terms that were ‘brutally cynical yet inherently courageous’.204

  ‘Anzac soup’ is horrific because it is funny, and funny because it is horrific. ‘Bert’ both acknowledges the foreign and demands the familiar. ‘Fanny Durack’ makes a game of war, as ‘camelry’ makes a game of language. ‘Archie’, ‘woolly bear’ and ‘coal-scuttle’ belittle that which overcomes us. ‘After England Fails’ builds the self at the expense of the other; the French response to seeing US troops with what appeared to be Boy Scout hats, and calling them ‘the Second Children’s Crusade’, did the same. When the American army took delivery of Chauchat machine-guns they were renamed ‘hot cats’, a knowing de-exoticising. ‘Whizz-bang’ is about learning survival skills. Naming a child after a battle says ‘these things matter, carry it into the future’. Bairnsfather’s post-war cartoon of Ole Bill seeing a tin of plum and apple jam, with the caption ‘Alas, poor Yorick’, is about knowing how culture creates us and gives us the material with which we continuously recreate ourselves. ‘No man’s land’ is about the fragility of civilisation. ‘Blighty’ starts by acknowledging the gaze of the other, and makes it the ultimate object of the gaze of the self. ‘Plonk’ tells us that we want simple creativity to come out of industrialised destruction. ‘Napoo’ takes an expression of nothingness and turns it into a wealth of different meanings of nothingness. ‘Rainbow’, the name for a recruit arriving just after a battle, is about as good as irony gets, it hurts as it amuses.

  Taken as a whole the overwhelming impression is of people using language as play, a deadly game in cases of propaganda, but creative nevertheless. Seeing the subject in this light offers no simple resolution, no underlying answer, but a conflicting complexity as people tried to understand a situation that, at anything beyond the simplest level, could not be comprehended: as one of the most long-lasting of the songs of the war offered – ‘we’re here because we’re here’.

  NOTES

  Introduction

  1E. Partridge, Slang of the British Soldier 1914–18, in Twenty Years After, E. B. Swinton, (ed.), (London: Newnes, 1936–38), Vol. 3, p. 52.

  2Ibid. p. 59.

  3Lord Moran, (see under C. Wilson) Anatomy of Courage, (London: Constable & Co., [1945] 1987), 1987 edn, p. 143.

  4D. Todman, The Great War, (London: Hambledon, 2005), p. 26.

  5http://research.gold.ac.uk/16713/1/Grayson%252c%20R.pdf accessed 2 April 2016.

  6War-Time Tips for Soldiers and Civilians, (London: C.A. Pearson, 1915), p. 62.

  7‘Among the fragments of leather and helmets were a number of scraps of letters and postcards, …’ G. Young, From the Trenches, (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1914), p. 49.

  8Fifth Gloucester Gazette, (Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing, [1915–1919] 1993), February 1917; E. Baker, Th
e Athenaeum, (London: J. Lection, 1830–1921) 11 July 1919, p. 583.

  9L. D. Spicer, Letters from France, 1915–1918, (London: Robert York, 1979), 3 December 1915.

  10P. Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1975] 1977), 1977 edn, pp. 228–30.

  11The Attack/The Estaminet, (Memories of France –), [sound dramatisation], (England): 78 rpm disc, R517, Parlophone, 1920s; CD41-001, Oh! It’s a Lovely War, Vol. 1, CD41 Publishing Ltd, 2001).

  12Major A. E. Rees, dir., In the Trenches, [sound dramatisation], (England): 78 rpm disc, R2796 B, Columbia, 1917; CD41-001, Oh! It’s a Lovely War, Vol. 1, CD41 Publishing Ltd, 2001).

  13T. Cook http://research.gold.ac.uk/11325/1/AngelsofMonspapersocieties-04-00180.pdf accessed 15 February 2016.

  1 Language, Dialect and the Need to Communicate

  1e.g. Nelson (Edinburgh 1844), Simms & M’Intyre (London 1854) (see Walker, J. in the bibliography).

  2J. Walker, A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language, (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1844), p. 17.

  3H. Alford, A Plea for the Queen’s English, (London: Strahan, 1864), p. 280.

  4AQA GCSE examination in Geography, May 2010.

  5The Board of Education, The Teaching Of English In England, (London: The Board of Education, 1921), p. 60.

  6Pp. xvi–xvii, quoted in G. Knowles, A Cultural History of the English Language, (London: Arnold, 2005), p. 147.

  7A. M. Burrage, War is War, (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, [1930] 2010), 2010 edn, p. 99.

  8R. Holmes, Tommy, (London: Harper Collins, 2004), p. 149.

  9Quoted in R. Van Emden, Tommy’s War, (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), p. 168.

  10P. Doyle and R. Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, (Stroud: The History Press, 2015), p. 49.

  11B. Cable, ‘The Blighty Squad’, in F. Treves, (ed.), Made in the Trenches, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1916), p. 15.

  12Todman, The Great War, p. 123.

  13M. MacDonald, Under the French Flag, (London: Robert Scott, 1917), p. 164.

  14‘The Sergeant’s Langwidge’, Yorkshire Evening Post, 16 September 1916, p. 4.

  15Punch, 7 February 1917, p. viii.

  16Burton Daily Mail, 26 March 1917, p. 2.

  17Spicer, Letters from France, 15 March 1916.

  18The Bystander, 8 January 1919, p. iv.

  19The Sphere, 3 June 1916, pp. 211, 213.

  20In a letter from ‘a Bradford soldier’ published in the Plymouth and Exeter Gazette, 3 November 1916, p. 1.

  21R. D. Holmes, A Yankee in the Trenches, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1918), p. 200.

  22Pte E. Roe in Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 43.

  23The War Illustrated Album De Luxe, 1918, Vol. 6, p. 2072.

  24W. Spencer, War Letters 1914–1918; From a Young British Officer at the Western Front during the First World War, (WarLetters.net, 2014), 2 February 1915.

  25J. Crofts, Field Ambulance Sketches, (London: John Lane, 1919), pp. 97, 98.

  26W. Brindle, France and Flanders, (Saint John: S. K. Smith, 1919), p. 53.

  27H. Harvey, A Soldier’s Sketches under Fire, (London: Sampson, Low, Marston & Co., 1916), p. 36.

  28The Lady, 13 August 1914, p. 274.

  29Home Notes, 22 August 1914, p. 345.

  30A. Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, (London: Odhams Press, 1922), pp. 163, 153.

  31G. Barker, Agony’s Anguish, (Manchester: Alf Eva, 1931), p. 28.

  32Anon, A Sunny Subaltern, (Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Steward, 1916), p. 140.

  33‘One of the Jocks’, Odd Shots, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1916), p. 37.

  34J. Graystone, Diary, 1 August 1916, Private papers held by Imperial War Museum.

  35J. E. Parrott, The Children’s Story of the War, (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1915–19), p. 103.

  36E. Duffin, T. Parkhill, (eds), The First World War Diaries of Emma Duffin, (compiled in 1919), (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014), pp. 64, 74, 121, 116.

  37E. Bilbrough, My War Diary 1914–1918, (London: Ebury Press, 2014), 7 October 1915.

  38Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 3.

  39G. W. Broadhead, Diary, 3 December 1916, Private papers held by Imperial War Museum, – he had previously used the same word without inverted commas, 4 July 1916, so presumably was unsure of it.

  40E. Stuart, letter (undated), National Archives (RAIL 253/516).

  41I. Hay, The First Hundred Thousand, (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1916), p. 269.

  42E. W. Bratchell, undated letter, National Archives (RAIL 253/516).

  43Burrage, War is War, 2010 edn, p. 17.

  44Daily Sketch, 25 January 1916, p. 10.

  45Ibid., 10 December 1914, p. 10.

  46Illustrated London News, 7 August 1915, p. 187.

  47E. Partridge, ‘Frank Honywood, Private’, in Three Personal Records of the War, (London: Scholartis, 1929), pp. 322, 385, 304.

  48Ibid., p. 312.

  49J. R. Pinfold, (ed.), A Month at the Front: the diary of an unknown soldier, (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2006), p. 39.

  509th Royal Scots (T.F.): B Company on active service; from a private’s diary, 13 April 1915.

  51C. Dawson, Living Bayonets, (London: John Lane, 1919), 20 June 1918.

  52Duffin, Diaries, p. 70.

  53Every time these terms appear in the Illustrated London News, 10 October 1914, it is in inverted commas.

  54Weekly Dispatch, 11 July 1915, p. 10.

  55Daily Sketch, 23 October 1914, p. 9.

  56Aberdeen Evening Express, 15 November 1918, p. 3.

  57Private collection, 24 November 1918.

  58Duffin, Diaries, pp. 74, 50, 138.

  59http://encyclopedia.1914–1918-online.net/article/warfare_1914–1918_belgium accessed 5 February 2017.

  60M. McDonald, ‘We Are Not French!’: language, culture and identity in Brittany, (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 136.

  61M. Bloch, (ed.), Écrits de Guerre, 1914–1918, (Paris: Colin,1997), p. 146.

  62L. Barthas, Poilu: the World War I notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, barrelmaker, 1914–1918, trans. E. Strauss, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 145.

  63A. Clement, letter to Liverpool Daily Post, 23 June 1917, p. 7.

  64S. Gibson, Behind the Front, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 148.

  65Dundee Courier, 6 April 1916, p. 2.

  66R. H. Mottram, Journey to the Western Front, (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1936), p. 20.

  67P. Vansittart, (ed.), John Masefield’s Letters from the Front 1915–17, (London: Constable & Co., 1984), 29 March 1915, p. 80.

  68C. Douie, The Weary Road, (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 54.

  69http://herolettersww1.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/ymca-during-wwi-with-photos.html accessed 13 November 2016.

  70A. Kennedy and G. Crabb, The Postal History of the British Army in World War One, (Epsom, Surrey: G. Crabb, 1977), p. 12.

  71E. Greenhalgh, The French Army and the First World War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 66.

  72MacDonald, Under the French Flag, p. 56.

  73D. Omissi, Indian Voices of the Great War, (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1999), letter, Raja Khan, 17 October 1917.

  74Ibid., letter, Signaller Nattha Singh, 8 December 1915.

  75Vansittart, John Masefield’s Letters, p. 65.

  76Spicer, Letters from France, 9 November 1915.

  77L. Karvalics, ‘Crosspoints of information history and Great War’, in L. Karvalics, (ed.), Information History of the First World War, (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015), p. 9.

  78War Budget, 24 August 1916, p. 1.

  79Barthas, Poilu, p. 5.

  80R. Graves, Goodbye to All That, (London: Penguin, [1929] 1960), 1960 edn, p. 177.

  81B. Nevill, Billie, (London: MacRae, 1991), p. 109, quoted in Holmes, Tommy, p. 270.

  82T. Ashworth, Trench Warfare 1914–1918: the live and let live system, (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 34–5
.

  83Holmes, Tommy, p. 270.

  84Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 29 October 1914, p. 2.

  85Liverpool Daily Post, 29 January 1915, p. 7.

  86R. Van Emden and S. Humphries, All Quiet on the Home Front, (London: Headline, 2003), p. 53.

  87Spicer, Letters from France, 21 October 1915.

  88A. Herbert, Mons, Anzac, and Kut, (London: Hutchinson & Co., [1919] 1930), 1919 edn, p. 98.

  89Spicer, Letters from France, 1 October 1915.

  90Aberdeen Evening Express, 2 December 1914, p. 3.

  91Liverpool Daily Post, 29 January 1915, p. 7.

  92Holmes, Tommy, pp. 370–1.

  93D. Gill and G. Dallas, Unknown Army, (London: Verso, 1985), p. 59.

  94The Times, 16 November 1962, p. 14.

  95L. MacDonald, Somme, (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 270.

  96Quoted in Van Emden, Tommy’s War, p. 149.

  97Vansittart, John Masefield’s Letters, 6 May 1917, p. 273.

  98Gnl Sir Ian Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, (London: Edward Arnold, 1920), p. 121.

  99Newcastle Journal, 1 January 1916, p. 3.

  100V. Noakes, Voices of Silence: the alternative book of First World War poetry, (Stroud: Sutton, 2006), p. xi.

  101E. B. Osborn, The Muse in Arms, (London: John Murray, 1918), p. v.

  102G. Seal, The Soldiers’ Press: Trench Journals in the First World War, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 2.

  103The front page of The Ghain Tuffieha Gazette, February 1916, announces that its editor is Colonel G. T. K. Maurice, CMG, RAMC.