Words and The First World War

by Julian Walker

  356Jones, In Parenthesis, 1969 edn, pp. 15, 48.

  357For ‘blooming/bloomin’ see The Fuze, 1916 Vol. 1, No.1, p. 2, and Taft, G., Reminiscences of a V.A.D., 2014, 8 September 1916; for ‘blinking/blinkin’, see Rifleman B. Eccles in a letter to his mother, 16 April 1917, in MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 205, and On the Road to Kut: a soldier’s story of the Mesopotamian campaign, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1917, p. 207; for ‘ruddy’ see Holmes, A Yankee in the Trenches, p. 185, and The Fuze, 1916 Vol.1, No.1, p. 4; for ‘bloody well’ see Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, 1986 edn, p. 107; for ‘gore blimey’ (as the soldier’s cap) see the Fifth Gloucester Gazette June 1917, p. 211.

  358In MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 26.

  359J. Winter and B. Baggett, 1914–18, (London: BBC Books, 1996), p. 292.

  360Holmes, A Yankee in the Trenches, p. 210.

  361Daily Mirror, 26 November 1917, p. 10.

  362http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/results/1919-01-01/1919-12-31?basicsearch=blimey&somesearch=blimey&sortorder=score&exactsearch=false&page=2 accessed 2 November 2016.

  363In Treves, Made in the Trenches, p. 66.

  364Ibid., p. 71.

  365Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 21.

  366Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 100.

  367The Athenaeum, 1 August 1919, p. 695.

  368The White Band, April 1916, p. 7.

  369Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 81.

  370Jones, In Parenthesis, 1969 edn, p. 53.

  371Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 74.

  372Punch, 29 May 1918, p. x.

  373Denham, Dardanelles, 14 August 1915.

  374In MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 85.

  375In the Hands of the Huns: being the reminiscences of a British civil prisoner of war, 1914–1915, (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1916), p. 20.

  376Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, 1986 edn, p. 47.

  377Ibid., p. 47.

  378T. Johnson quoted in Cook, ‘Fighting Words’, p. 337.

  379Punch, 15 May 18.

  380Yorkshire Evening Post, 1 December 1919, p. 7.

  381S. Graham, A Private in the Guards, (London: Macmillan, 1919), p. 205.

  382Cyril Jose’s account of a charge made it clear they were not http://www.pollingerltd.com/bookshop/martin_body/2nd-devons-somme.pdf accessed 6 February 2017.

  383Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 11.

  384Mottram, A Personal Record, p. 95.

  385Clark, Echoes of the Great War, 1988 edn, 2 September 1916, p. 242.

  386Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 268.

  387Quoted in Van Emden and Humphries, All Quiet on the Home Front, p. 30.

  388Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 166.

  389The Western Chronicle, 6 August 1915, p. 7.

  390Spicer, Letters from France, 15 March 1916.

  391Letter, On Active Service, author’s collection.

  392Douie, The Weary Road, p. 165.

  393N. F. Tytler, With Lancashire Lads and Field Guns in France, (Manchester: John Heywood, 1922), p. 76.

  394Weekly Freeman’s Journal, 17 October 1914, p. 2.

  395Harvey, A Soldier’s Sketches, p. 139.

  396H. Quigley, Passchendaele and the Somme, (London: Methuen & Co., 1928), p. 84.

  397Derry Journal, 7 July 1915, p. 6.

  398Pte G. Howard, The Berwick Advertiser, 8 June 1917, p. 4.

  399Edmonds, A Subaltern’s War, p. 142.

  400Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 110.

  401The Western Chronicle, 6 August 1915, p. 7.

  402Douie, The Weary Road, p. 115.

  403Spicer, Letters from France, 5 July 1916.

  404A Goole gunner, quoted in the Hull Daily Mail, 4 June 1915, p. 7.

  405Vansittart, John Masefield’s Letters, 25 September 1916.

  406A soldier’s letter in the Walsall Advertiser, 20 March 1915, p. 5.

  407Winter and Baggett, 1914–18, p. 191.

  408Vansittart, John Masefield’s Letters, 25 September 1916.

  409Quoted in Holmes, Tommy, p. 405.

  410Highland Regiment officer, Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser, 9 October 1915, p. 5.

  411Lt A. Behrend, in Holmes, Tommy, p. 405.

  412Quoted in Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 114.

  413Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, 1986 edn, p. 26.

  414Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 115.

  415Jones, In Parenthesis, 1969 edn, p. 35.

  416Fraser and Gibbons.

  417S. Beames, quoted in Cook, ‘Fighting Words’, p. 333.

  418Lt F. J. Sleath in the Whitby Gazette, 4 October 1918, p. 10.

  419Brindle, France and Flanders, p. 69.

  420The War Illustrated Album De Luxe, 1918, Vol. 9, p. 3114.

  421MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 168.

  422Chelmsford Chronicle, 19 March 1915, p. 10.

  423Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 222.

  424http://www.europeana1914–1918.eu/en/contributions/17242 accessed 7 October 2016.

  425Pte F. Russell, in MacDonald, Somme, p. 180.

  426Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 166.

  427Birmingham Mail, 4 August 1915, p. 6.

  428May 1916, quoted in Wadsworth, Letters from the Trenches, p. 31.

  429C. W. Langley, (‘Wagger’), Battery Flashes, (London: John Murray, 1916), p. 101.

  430Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 49.

  431Burrage, War is War, 1930 edn, p. 78.

  432Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 97.

  433Edmonds, A Subaltern’s War, p. 49.

  434Williamson, The Patriot’s Progress, pp. 132, 158, 161.

  435Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, pp. 16, 42, 48.

  436Barker, Agony’s Anguish, p. 28.

  437Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, 1986 edn, p. 93.

  438Pte J. Hodson, ‘The “Sure-To-Be-Hit” Feeling’ in Treves, Made in the Trenches, p. 182.

  439MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 131.

  440Rifleman N. Hains, letter quoted in Hull Daily Mail, 2 September 1916, p. 4.

  441Birmingham Gazette 29 December 1914, p. 4.

  442Burnley News 26 October 1918, p. 7; Birmingham Gazette 25 October 1916, p. 4.

  443Williamson, The Patriot’s Progress, p. 169.

  444Pte L. Sanders, quoted in Van Emden, Tommy’s War, p. 118.

  445A soldier’s letter in the Portsmouth Evening News, 22 October 1915, p. 3.

  446A. West, The Diary of a Dead Officer, (Llandogo, Monmouth: Old Stile Press, 1919), 7 December 1915.

  447Yorkshire Evening Post, 14 July 1915, p. 3.

  448Cpl F. Gillman, in Birmingham Daily Gazette, 15 May 1915, p. 4.

  449E. Liveing, Attack: an infantry subaltern’s impressions, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918), p. 53.

  450Hewett, A Scholar’s Letters, p. 43; Evening Dispatch, 4 September 1915, p. 6.

  451Spicer, Letters from France, 15 October 1915; Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 98.

  452Hewett, A Scholar’s Letters, p. 43.

  453Nobbs, Englishman, Kamerad, p. 101.

  454Evening Dispatch, 4 September 1915, p. 6.

  455Letter from Pte Mabbott in the Nottingham Evening Post, 19 May 1915, p. 5.

  456Marlborough Express, 21 October 1916, p. 2.

  457Van Emden, Tommy’s War, p. 118.

  458Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 48.

  459E. P. Williams, diary, 25 April 1915, in M. Wright, Shattered Glory: the New Zealand experience at Gallipoli and the Western Front, (Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin, 2010), p. 20.

  4609th Royal Scots, Diary, 23 April 1915, p. 17.

  4619th Royal Scots, Diary, 1915, pp. 61–2; Kirkintilloch Herald, 31 July 1918, p. 8.

  462Birmingham Daily Gazette, 17 July 1916, p. 1.


  463Kirkintilloch Herald, 31 July 1918, p. 8.

  464Manwaring, If We Return, p. 123.

  465Daily Record, 20 April 1915, p. 6.

  466Spicer, Letters from France, 15 March 1916.

  467Pte L. Sanders, quoted in Van Emden, Tommy’s War, p. 118.

  468The Gasper, 8 January 1916, p. 6.

  469The Champion (boys’ comic), (London, England, 1922–), 9 May 1925, which terms a machine-gun as ‘Stuttering Lizzie’.

  470Pte H. Baverstock, in MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 170.

  471Spicer, Letters from France, 5 July 1916.

  472Williamson, The Patriot’s Progress, p. 169.

  473Cpl T. North, in MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 32.

  474Letters to Madeleine, 2010, 6 Oct 1915, p. 257.

  475Vansittart, John Masefield’s Letters, 7 March 1915, p. 57.

  476H. Grimm, Schlump, trans. J. Bulloch, (London: Vintage Books, [1928] 2014), 2014 edn, p. 100.

  477Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 48.

  478Williamson, The Patriot’s Progress, p. 169.

  479Ibid., p. 113.

  480Perthshire Advertiser, 18 April 1917, p. 4.

  481A. Caseby, Diary, Private papers held by Imperial War Museum.

  482Edmonds, A Subaltern’s War, p. 44.

  483On Active Service, 29 May 1915, author’s collection.

  484Pte H. Baverstock, in MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 170.

  485Sgt G. Dunn, Liverpool Echo, 20 October 1914, p. 5.

  4869th Royal Scots, Diary, p. 54; 2nd Lt A. Stanley-Clarke, quoted in Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 149.

  487Douie, The Weary Road, p. 121.

  488Daily Mirror, 22 February 1916, p. 10.

  489Barker, Agony’s Anguish, p. 39.

  490Hull Daily Mail, 4 August 1915, p. 2.

  491http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/Scapa_Diary/Jul_17.html accessed 12 October 2016.

  492Hull Daily Mail, 11 November 1914, p. 1.

  493Edmonds, A Subaltern’s War, pp. 59–60.

  494Holmes, Tommy, p. 423.

  495E. Edwards, in Yorkshire Evening Post, 14 July 1915, p. 3.

  4969th Royal Scots, Diary, 23 April 1915.

  497In Van Emden, Tommy’s War, p. 132.

  498Derry Journal, 25 September 1918, p. 2.

  499Philip Gibbs in the Hull Daily Mail, 12 July 1916, p. 1.

  500The Times, 7 September 1917, p. 7.

  501Ibid., p. 7 (‘a private in France’).

  502Spicer, Letters from France, 5 July 1916.

  503Jones, In Parenthesis, 1969 edn, p. 47.

  504Pte H. Baverstock, in MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 170.

  505Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 48.

  506In Noakes, Voices of Silence, p. 206.

  507Lighter, Slang of the AEF, p. 88; Boyd Cable, The Athenaeum, 18 July 1919, p. 632.

  508Merrill, A College Man in Khaki, p. 227.

  509Downing, Digger Dialects, p. 34.

  510Williamson, The Patriot’s Progress, p. 64.

  511Douie, The Weary Road, p. 95.

  512Pte L. Sanders, quoted in Van Emden, Tommy’s War, p. 118.

  513MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 189.

  514The Somme Times, 31 July 1916.

  515Grimm, Schlump, 2014 edn, p. 108.

  516Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 73.

  517Hull Daily Mail, 9 September 1914, p. 1.

  518Douie, The Weary Road, pp. 156–7.

  519D. Walker, Lost Generation, p. 18.

  520Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 91.

  521Tytler, With Lancashire Lads, p. 262.

  522Edmonds, A Subaltern’s War, p. 58.

  523Lighter, Slang of the AEF, p. 118.

  524Grimm, Schlump, 2014 edn, p. 73 – ‘und die Splitter fauchten auseinander wie tausend Katzen, und manche klagten und heulten wie verflughte Geister’.

  525The Times, 29 May 1916, p. 9.

  526Langley, Battery Flashes, 1916, p. 168; Lighter, Slang of the AEF, p. 113.

  527Daily Telegraph, 25 January 1916, p. 3.

  528Daily Telegraph, 11 July 1916, p. 5.

  529Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 157.

  530D. Walker, Lost Generation, p. 26.

  531Hull Daily Mail, 25 May 1915, p. 4.

  532F. Hitchcock, Stand To: a diary of the trenches 1914–1918, (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1937).

  533Lighter, Slang of the AEF, p. 109.

  534Ibid., p. 54.

  535Pte L. Onions, 24 October 1916, p. 4.

  536Pte S. McFarlane, Burnley Express, 11 December 1915, p. 4.

  537Postcard, On Active Service, 29 May 1915, author’s collection.

  538Moynihan, A Place Called Armageddon, letter home, 2 October 1914.

  539Kilpatrick, Atkins at War, p. 50.

  540German Atrocities in France, translation of the official report of the French Commission, published by the Daily Chronicle, 1915, pp. 4, 10, 13, 19.

  5412nd Lt A. Stanley-Clarke, quoted in Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 118.

  542Diary, 12 October 1916, http://www.firstworldwar.com/diaries/rlm1.htm accessed 22 December 2016.

  543Dawson, Living Bayonets, p. 101.

  544Spicer, Letters from France, 11 February 1918.

  545See E. Jones, ‘The psychology of killing’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 41, No. 2, (London, 2006), p. 244.

  546A. Cornet-Auquier, A Soldier Unafraid, trans. E. Stanton (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1918), p. 78.

  547Vansittart, John Masefield’s Letters, 17 May 1917.

  548Douie, The Weary Road, p. 129.

  549Diary, Capt C. May, 6 April 1916 http://www.express.co.uk/news/world-war-1/489831/Charlie-May-s-War-Secret-diary-WWI-officer accessed 27 December 2016.

  550W. Wood, In the Line of Battle, (London: Chapman & Hall, 1916), p. 38.

  551Spicer, Letters from France, 20 February 1916.

  552West, The Diary of a Dead Officer, 26 February 1916.

  553E. H. Shears, Active Service Diary, (Liverpool: Henry Young & Sons Ltd, 1919), 18 February 1917.

  554Quoted in Wadsworth, Letters from the Trenches, p. 147.

  555Manchester Guardian, 4 January 1919, p. 6.

  556Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 23.

  557Burrage, War is War, 2010 edn, p. 144.

  558In E. Weekley, An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, (1 New York: Dover Publications, 1921), col. 783, ‘Archie talking to Jerry’ (Daily Chronicle, 13 July 1918).

  559West, The Diary of a Dead Officer, 29 September 1916.

  560Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, pp. 159, 166.

  561Jones, In Parenthesis, 1969 edn, p. 143; A. Bluett, With Our Army In Palestine, (London: Andrew Melrose, 1919), p. 248.

  562The Gasper, 28 February 1916; Edmonds, A Subaltern’s War, p. 137; if its effect lasted it was a ‘souvenir’, Sgt F. Woodhouse, quoted in Wadsworth, Letters from the Trenches, p. 32.

  563Spicer, Letters from France, 30 August 1916.

  564Quoted in MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 170.

  565F. Sandes, Autobiography of a Woman Soldier, (London: H. F. & G. Witherby, 1927), p. 20.

  566Duffin, Diaries, p. 96.

  567Diary Of A Nursing Sister, 1915 edn, p. 156.

  568Partridge, ‘Frank Honywood’, p. 323.

  569William Henry Early, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/11/shakespeare-hut-london-first-world-war accessed 20 August 2016.

  570Yorkshire Evening Post, 21 July 1917, p. 5.

  571P. Gibbs, The Soul of the War, (London: William Heinemann, 1916), p. 357.

  572Partridge, Words! Words! Words!, p. 195.

  573Quoted in Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 237.

  574Yorkshire Evening Post, 17 August 1917, p. 4.

  575E. Stride, quoted in Wadsworth, Letters from the Trenches, p. 101.

  576Portsmout
h Evening News, 19 March 1915, p. 3.

  577J. Beck, A Diary of Armistice Days, (Philadelphia: printed for private circulation, 1923), p. 43.

  578D. Walker, Lost Generation, p. 33.

  579B.E.F. Times, 1 December 1916.

  580The War Illustrated, 1 April 1916, p. xxviii.

  581Lighter, Slang of the AEF, pp. 20, 24, 66, 72.

  582The Great War Interviews, recorded 1964, [BBC televison programme], http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p01tbj6p accessed 7 February 2017.

  583Pte R. Price, quoted in Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 255.

  584Partridge, Words! Words! Words!, p. 151.

  585W. Blackledge, The Legion of Marching Madmen, (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1936), p. 44.

  586Fraser and Gibbons.

  587Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 126.

  588Pte S. Carson, quoted in MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 106.

  589MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 107.

  590Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 155.

  591Caption to The Battle of the Somme, [film], G. H. Malins and J. McDowell, British Topical Committee for War Films, 1916.

  592MacDonald, Under the French Flag, p. 167.

  593Tytler, With Lancashire Lads, p. 132.

  594E. M. Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, trans. A. W. Wheen, (London: Putnam, 1929), p. 236.

  595Ibid., p. 115.

  596Yorkshire Evening Post, 21 July 1917, p. 5.

  597Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 29 September 1914, p. 3.

  598Dawson, Living Bayonets, p. 183.

  599War Budget, 5 September 1914, p. 14.

  600Rees, In the Trenches, [sound dramatisation].

  601Surgeon-Major Cowie, War Diary of the 1st Life Guards. First year, 1914–1915, (England), 31 October 1914.

  602Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, 1986 edn, p. 26.

  603Wright, Shattered Glory, 2010, p. 205.

  604Bernard Livermore, quoted in Holmes, Tommy, p. 342.

  605Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 220.

  606De Loghe, The Straits Impregnable, p. 160.

  607Quoted in Palmer and Wallis, A War in Words, 2004 edn, p. 127.

  608J. Easton, ‘Broadchalk, a chronicle’, in Three Personal Records of the War, (London: Scholartis, 1929), p. 248.

  609Lighter, Slang of the AEF, p. 107.

  610Lt Col R. Fielding, quoted in Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 229.

  611http://www.pollingerltd.com/bookshop/martin_body/2nd-devons-somme.pdf accessed 20 March 2015.

  612Herbert, Mons, Anzac, and Kut, 1919 edn, p. 162.

  613MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 75.