Words and The First World War

by Julian Walker

  104http://encyclopedia.1914–1918-online.net/article/soldier_newspapers accessed 13 November 2016.

  105Seal, The Soldiers’ Press, p. 92; Eyewash, August 1918, was edited by Sapper R. Fitzpatrick ‘(who is responsible to the Commanding Officer for the conduct of this magazine)’, while The Maple Leaf, No. 7 1917, was ‘Passed by Press Bureau’.

  106Illustrated London News, 27 February 1915, p. 276.

  107Home Chat, 10 October 1914, p. 66.

  108J. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 113; T. Walter, ‘War grave pilgrimage’, in T. Reader and T. Walter (eds), Pilgrimage in Popular Culture, 1993, p. 72, quoted in Todman, The Great War, p. 69.

  109South Shields Daily Gazette, 31 January 1916, p. 2.

  110Herbert, Mons, Anzac, and Kut, 1919 edn, p. 144.

  111Duffin, Diaries, p. 133.

  112Report of the Central Register of Belgian Refugees, 1919, p. 62.

  113Western Mail, 19 October 1914, p. 3.

  114Presumably taken during a trench raid, or from a captive. Author’s collection.

  115Herbert, Mons, Anzac, and Kut, 1919 edn, p. 119.

  116P. Chasseaud, Rats Alley, (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2006), pp. 180, 91.

  117Daily Express, 21 June 1918, p. 2.

  118Cambridge Independent Press, 6 September 1918, p. 6.

  119Daily Mirror, 16 January 1915, p. 5.

  120See R. Fogarty ‘We did not speak a common language: African soldiers and communication in the French Army, 1914–1919’ in J. Walker and C. Declercq (eds), Languages and the First World War: communicating in a transnational war, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 44–58.

  121G. Trevelyan, Scenes from Italy’s War, (London: T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1919), p. 103.

  122Omissi, Indian Voices, letter, Kachahaf, 9 March 1918.

  123Herbert, A., Mons, Anzac, and Kut, 1919 edn, p. 61.

  124S. H. Hewett, A Scholar’s Letters from The Front, (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918), p. 14.

  125Spicer, Letters from France, 2 June 1918.

  1269th Royal Scots, Diary, 1916, p. 15.

  127The Fuze, October 1916, p. 2.

  128Sgt F. Compton, in Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 133.

  129MacDonald, Somme, p. 197.

  130Duffin, Diaries, p. 133.

  131Ghain Tuffieha Gazette (Malta), March 1917; under the title ‘Corporal Atkins at Boulogne’, in the Navy and Army Magazine, 28 November 1914, p. iii.

  132Surrey Mirror, 22 January 1915, p. 7.

  133MacDonald, Under the French Flag, pp. 100–1.

  134Author’s collection.

  135Northern Mudguard, April 1917, p. 14; Fifth Gloucester Gazette, reported in Chelmsford Chronicle, 8 September 1916, p. 5.

  136J. Jones, The First World War Diary of James Gilbert Jones, (Welshpool: Montgomeryshire Genealogical Society, 1998), 3 February 1917.

  137Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 13 January 1915, p. 4.

  138Adèle De L’Isle, Leaves from a V.A.D.’s Diary, (London: Elliot Stock, 1922), p. 20.

  139Omissi, Indian Voices, letter, Badshah Khan, 26 July 1915.

  140https://davinaatkin.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/28th-july–1914/ accessed 12 December 2016.

  141J. Lighter, ‘The Slang of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe 1917–1919: an historical glossary’, in American Speech, Vol. 47, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press for the American Dialect Society, [1972] 1975), p. 103.

  142In Van Emden, Tommy’s War, p. 110.

  143Gibson, Behind the Front, p. 149.

  144Publishers’ Circular, 26 September 1914, p. 265.

  145Ibid., 30 January 1915, p. 79.

  146Daily Mail, 13 January 1915, p. 8.

  147Home Chat, 21 November 1914, p. 297.

  148War-Time Tips, p. 46.

  149Noticeable here too is the way English is manipulated to as much as possible match French syntax and vocabulary – Où se procure-t-on des billets? & À quelle heure le bureau de la poste ferme-t-il?

  150What a British Soldier Wants to Say In French, 1914.

  151English–Flemish Military Guide, (Poperinge: Drukk, 1915).

  152Gibson, Behind the Front, p. 155.

  153Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 71.

  154Dundee Courier, 19 November 1914, p. 2.

  155Belfast Weekly News, 12 November 1914, p. 10.

  156H. Williamson, The Patriot’s Progress, (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1930), p. 144.

  157Mottram, Journey to the Western Front, p. 16.

  1589th Royal Scots, Diary, 1915, p. 17.

  159Manchester Guardian, 22 February 1922, p. 5.

  160Gibson, Behind the Front, pp. 148–52.

  161Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 19.

  162H. Stanley, Grandad’s War, (Cromer: Poppyland Publishing, 2007), p. 22.

  163In Treves, Made in the Trenches, p. 72.

  164Author’s collection, printed in Britain.

  165Spicer, Letters from France, 31 December 1915.

  166Both sent On Active Service, author’s collection.

  167Author’s collection.

  168Diary of Cpl R. D. Doughty, http://www.thekivellfamily.co.nz/military_history/ralphs_diaries/transcribes/diary_five_p3.html accessed 14 December 2016.

  169Diary of Walter Shuttleworth, 22 August 1917, http://www.klewis.org.uk/Diary/August accessed 12 December 2016.

  170Diary of C. B. Spires, 2 May 1917, http://www.bertspires.co.uk accessed 14 December 2016.

  171Quoted in L. MacDonald, Voices and Images of the Great War, (London: Penguin, [1988] 1991), 1991 edn, p. 48.

  172L. MacDonald, They Called it Passchendaele, (London: Penguin, [1978] 1993), 1993 edn, p. 114.

  173R. H. Mottram, ‘A Personal Record’, in Three Personal Records of the War, (London: Scholartis, 1929), p. 99.

  174D. McNair, A Pacifist at War: military memoirs of a conscientious objector in Palestine, 1917–1918, (Much Hadham: Anastasia, 2008), p. 9.

  175In Van Emden, Tommy’s War, p. 111.

  176Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 93.

  177C. Douie, The Weary Road, p. 39.

  178Burrage, War is War, 1930 edn, p. 43.

  179Williamson, The Patriot’s Progress, pp. 43, 52.

  180Author’s collection.

  181Diary of C. B. Spires, 2 May 1917, http://www.bertspires.co.uk accessed 14 December 2016.

  182Harvey, A Soldier’s Sketches, pp. 105–6.

  183Punch, 26 June 1918, p. x.

  184Vansittart, John Masefield’s Letters, 28 March 1915, p. 79.

  185Gibson, Behind the Front, p. 156.

  186Douie, The Weary Road, p. 198.

  187Vansittart, John Masefield’s Letters, 28 March 1915, p. 79.

  188Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 11.

  189A. Dauzat, L’Argot de la Guerre, (Paris: Armand Colin, [1918] 2007), 1918 edn, p. 120.

  190E. Partridge, Words! Words! Words!, (London: Methuen, 1933), p. 169.

  191F. Déchelette, L’Argot des poilus, (Paris, 1918).

  192Nottingham Evening Post, 27 October 1917, p. 2.

  193The Times, 9 May 1916, p. 3.

  194Hay, The First Hundred Thousand, p. 302.

  195Partridge, Words! Words! Words!, pp. 178–9.

  196Account of Red Cross work with Russian prisoners of war in Germany, 1919, Imperial War Museum.

  197G. Nobbs, Englishman, Kamerad!: Right of the British line, (London: William Heinemann, 1910), p. 143.

  198Liverpool Daily Post, 14 August 1916, p. 6.

  199He became a Doctor of Economics; quoted in MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 192.

  200De L’Isle, Leaves from a V.A.D.’s Diary, p. 92.

  201Daily Express, 25 September 1916, p. 5.

  202Liverpool Daily Post, 3 November 1916, p. 5.

  203Duffin, Diaries, pp. 101, 114.

  204Herbert, Mons, Anzac, and Kut, 1919 edn, p. 86.

  205Quoted in Doyl
e and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, 2015, p. 13.

  206Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 188.

  207Duffin, Diaries, p. 162.

  208Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 145.

  209Derbyshire Courier, 29 July 1916, p. 2.

  210In Van Emden, Tommy’s War, p. 86.

  211The Times, 13 December 1916, p. 13.

  212H. Lake, In Salonica with our Army, (London: Andrew Melrose, 1917), pp. 185–6.

  213‘Anzac Slang’ in Treves, Made in the Trenches, p. 78.

  214In H. Jones, ‘Imperial captivities: colonial prisoners of war in Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1918’, in S. Das, (ed.), Race, Empire and First World War Writing, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2011, p. 186.

  215J. Brophy and E. Partridge, The Long Trail – Soldiers’ Songs and Slang 1914–18, (London: Sphere, [1965] 1969), p. 105.

  216Duffin, Diaries, p. 58.

  217Fraser and Gibbons note that this phrase was ‘pronounced according to ability’.

  218Pte W. C. Brock, Private papers held by Imperial War Museum.

  219Holmes, Tommy, p. 296.

  220Barker, Agony’s Anguish, p. 58.

  221The Times, 20 April 1917, p. 5.

  222Punch, 25 April 1917, no page number.

  223In Van Emden, Tommy’s War, p. 111; Gibson, Behind the Front, p. 151.

  224Punch, 23 October 1918, p. xi.

  2 Language at the Front

  1W. Muir, Observations of an Orderly, (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1917), p. 223.

  2The White Band, (Officer Cadet Battalions, Crookham, 1917), April 1916.

  3Manchester Guardian, ‘Miscellany’ section, 5 September 1917, p. 30.

  4Yorkshire Evening Post, 7 August 1917, p. 2.

  5Birmingham Gazette, 31 May 1915, p. 4.

  6Burnley News, 12 January 1916, p. 2.

  7The Times, 19 June 1918, p. 6.

  8Partridge, Words! Words! Words!, p. 135.

  9Illustrated London News already on 22 August 1914 was advertising the Illustrated War News as ‘the only album … dealing with … The Great War’.

  10M. Moynihan, (ed.), A Place Called Armageddon – Letters from the Great War, (Newton Abbott: David & Charles, 1975), p. 26.

  11H. M. Denham, Dardanelles: a midshipman’s diary 1915–16 (London: Murray, 1981), 14 May 1915.

  12Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, pp. 94, 109.

  13Fifth Gloucester Gazette, February 1917.

  14Kit Dodsworth, quoted in L. MacDonald, The Roses of No Man’s Land, (London: Papermac, [1980] 1984), 1980, p. 98.

  15E. Weekley, Words Ancient and Modern, (London: John Murray, 1926), p. 105.

  16The Cornishman, 19 August 1915, p. 4.

  17The Sporting Times, 4 August 1917, p. 1.

  18L. Strange, Recollections of an Airman – Diary, (London: John Hamilton, [1933] 1935), 30 September p. 64, (OED).

  19Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 66.

  20Partridge, Slang of the British Soldier, p. 59.

  21The Athenaeum, 29 August 1919, p. 822.

  22The Observer, 23 March 1919, p. 6.

  23Notably Hazelden in the Daily Mirror.

  24F. Manning, The Middle Part of Fortune/Her Privates We, (London: Serpent’s Tail [1929–30] 2013), p. 104.

  25Notes and Queries, March 1919, p. 79.

  26The Athenaeum, 29 August 1919, p. 823.

  27Denham, Dardanelles, 9 May 1915.

  28De L’Isle, Leaves from a V.A.D.’s Diary, p. 23.

  29Poverty Bay Herald, 19 October 1916, p. 8; Evening Post, 8 July 1915, p. 2.

  30Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), 16 July 1923, p. 6.

  31Both in W. Downing, Digger Dialects, (Melbourne; Sydney: Lothian Book Publishing Co., 1919).

  32‘Vang-blong’ was given as a pronunciation guide in the phrasebook, D. Rees, The Briton in France, (London: Leopold B. Hill, 1906, 1918), 1918 edn, p. 57.

  33Register News-Pictorial (Adelaide), 31 October 1927, p. 26.

  34The Athenaeum, 29 August 1919, p. 822.

  35J. Randerson, The Origin of the War Term No Man’s Land as Applied to the World War, (Albany: Privately published, 1922), p. 12.

  36https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/dec/18/chitty-chitty-bang-bangs-not-so-pretty-origins & https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/21/chitty-chitty-bang-bang-goes-another-ian-fleming-theory accessed 5 February 2017.

  37Sheffield Independent, 23 August 1914, p. 4.

  38Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 29 September 1914, p. 3.

  39The Western Mail, 19 October 1914, p. 3, reports on the distributing of French, Flemish and English glossaries.

  40The Sphere, 28 November 1914, p. 214.

  41Yorkshire Post, 8 October 1914, p. 4.

  42West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, 3 April 1916, p. 4.

  43Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 29 September 1914, p. 3; Hendon and Finchley Times, 15 January 1915, p. 7; Liverpool Echo, 16 March 1915, p. 4; Portsmouth Evening News, 19 March 1915, p. 3; Newcastle Journal, 6 October 1915, p. 3; The Times, 12 July 1916, p. 10.

  44Leamington Spa Courier, 21 March 1919, p. 4.

  45Evening Despatch, 19 December 1917, p. 3.

  46Yorkshire Evening Post, 16 October 1916, p. 5.

  47Daily Mail, 1 February 1916, p. 4.

  48Derry Journal, 25 September 1918, p. 2.

  49War Budget, 23 March 1916, p. 179; Reading Mercury, 1 April 1916, p. 4.

  50The Times, 31 March 1915, p. 7.

  51The Gasper, 8 January 1916, p. 5.

  52The Gasper, 28 February 1916, p. 2.

  53B.E.F. Times, 15 August 1917, p. 7.

  54Poilu, October 1916, p. 3.

  55‘Rest – time dedicated to manoeuvres, parades, night marches, etc.’

  56T. O’Toole, The Way They Have in the Army, (London: John Lane, 1916), pp. 38–44.

  57M. Mügge, The War Diary of a Square Peg, (London: George Routledge and Sons Ltd, 1920), pp. 217–224.

  58Muir, Observations of an Orderly, p. 231.

  59Illustrated London News, 27 October 1923, p. 778.

  60Notes and Queries, 29 October 1921, p. 343.

  61Reported in Hull Daily Mail, 31 December 1921, p. 1.

  62Irish Times, 6 October 1921, p. 4.

  63J. Brophy, The Soldier’s War: a prose anthology, (London: Dent, 1929), p. 263.

  64Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 12.

  65Derby Daily Telegraph, 25 September, p. 6.

  66War Budget, 13 April 1916, p. 261.

  67Hull Daily Mail, 10 November 1914, p. 8.

  68The Gasper, 1 April 1915.

  69G. H. Malins, How I Filmed the War, (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1920), p. 129.

  70Williamson, The Patriot’s Progress, p. 167.

  71Hull Daily Mail, 20 September 1917, p. 3.

  72Manchester Guardian, 1 May 1916, p. 6.

  73Denham, Dardanelles, 21 March 1915.

  74‘jollies’, used for the Marines, in the Vivid War Weekly, 16 October 1915, p. 173, dated back to the 17th century.

  75Fraser and Gibbons.

  76Of these four Fraser and Gibbons say they were originally naval slang; Brophy and Partridge, both former soldiers, say this only for ‘gadget’; ‘bully-beef’ may though derive from ‘bull-beef’, described in The Newlanders Cure (1630) as appropriate food for ‘Labourers and Hindes’ (manual workers) p. 18.

  77Daily Express, 2 August 1918, p. 2.

  78Pearson’s Weekly, 13 February 1915, p. 722; Abergavenny Chronicle, 4 August 1916, p. 2; Daily Mail, 5 May 1917, p. 2; Diss Express, 21 June 1918, p. 3.

  79Folkestone Herald, 10 August 1918, p. 9.

  80E. Partridge, Dictionary of R.A.F. Slang, (London: Pavilion, [1945] 1990), Introduction p. 4.

  81The Athenaeum, 23 May 1919, p. 360.

  82The Athenaeum,1 August 1919, p. 695.

  83E. Partridge, Slang To-day and Yesterday, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1933] 1970), p. 259.

  84Daily Chronicle,
1 May 1915, p. 4.

  85John Bull, 22 January 1916, p. 9.

  86Yorkshire Evening Post, 5 February 1917, p. 3.

  87Yorkshire Evening Post, 1 September 1917, p. 5.

  88The Athenaeum, 12 December 1919, p. 1350.

  89Cheltenham Looker-On, 10 October 1914, p. 14.

  90Dundee Courier, 24 December 1917, p. 2.

  91Liverpool Daily Post, 15 November 1915, p. 7.

  92Yorkshire Evening Post, 6 September 1916, p. 6.

  93Birmingham Gazette, 2 October 1915, p. 5.

  94Belfast News-letter, 17 November 1916, p. 6.

  95Sunderland Daily Echo, 23 September 1916, p. 3.

  96Spicer, Letters from France, 20 February 1916.

  97Letter, author’s collection.

  98P. MacGill, The Great Push, (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1916), p. 113.

  99Postcard, On Active Service, 30 March 1918, author’s collection.

  100McNair, A Pacifist at War, p. 51.

  101In Fraser and Gibbons.

  102Postcard, On Active Service, 19 April 1918, author’s collection.

  103http://encyclopedia.1914–1918-online.net/article/censorship accessed 20 December 2016.

  104India Office Records, IOR/L/MIL/5/825/1, 20 March 1915.

  105For a study of this see H. Foottit, ‘Poetry, parables and codes: translating the letters of Indian Soldiers’ in Walker and Declercq, Languages and the First World War: communicating, pp. 115–27.

  106Omissi, Indian Voices, letter, unnamed Afridi Pathan soldier, 14 February 1915.

  107Ibid., letter, Lance Naik Ram, May 1915.

  108ap Glyn, I., ‘ “Dear Mother, I am very sorry I cannot write to you in Welsh …”; censorship and the Welsh language in the First World War’, in Walker and Declercq, Languages and the First World War: communicating, p. 128.

  109ap Glyn, ‘Dear Mother …’, in Walker and Declercq, Languages and the First World War: communicating, p. 139.

  110Brock, Private papers, 30 September 1918.

  111Williamson, The Patriot’s Progress, p. 37.

  112Letter, author’s collection.

  113Quoted in MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 141.

  114Letter in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 18 August 1915, p. 3.

  115Spicer, Letters from France, 6 October 1915.

  116Pinfold, A Month at the Front, p. 46.

  117Broadhead, Diary, 15 December 1916.

  118Postcard, On Active Service, 27 October 1917, author’s collection.