Words and The First World War

by Julian Walker

  129Robert Houston, MP, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1916/oct/11/statement-by-prime-minister accessed 7 February 2017.

  13023 September 1916, p. 6.

  131British Newspaper Archive search, 29 October 2016, http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/results/1916–01–01/1916–12–31?basicsearch=negro&somesearch=negro&exactsearch=false&sortorder=score&page=0.

  132Gloucestershire Echo, 20 September 1915, p. 4.

  133Nottingham Evening Post, 19 December 1914, p. 1.

  134See concerns expressed by R. Seton-Watson, reported in Diss Express, 7 April 1916, p. 3.

  135R. Munro, From Darwinism to Kaiserism, (Glasgow: J. Maclehose & Sons, 1919), p. xii.

  136Ibid., p. 151.

  137Ibid., p. 152.

  138Ibid., e.g. ‘No ethical creed, divine or human, homologates the extinction of a smaller race, merely to give greater scope to a larger one’, p. 151.

  139The Times, 7 September 1914, p. 9.

  140Har Dayal, Forty-four months, p. 102.

  141Naoko Shimazu, ‘The racial equality proposal at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference’, doctoral thesis, Oxford University, 1995.

  142Daily Express, 10 February 1915, p. 5.

  143See M. Beyen on Jeroom Leuridan, ‘Linguistic syncretism as a mark of ethnic purity? Jeroom Leuridan on language developments among Flemish soldiers during the First World War’, in Walker and Declercq, Languages and the First World War: communicating, p. 228.

  144Die Sprache gegenüber den uns feindlichen Staaten kann hart sein. Eine beschimpfende, den Gegner unterschätzende Tonart aber ist kein Zeichen von Kraft. Die Reinheit und Größe der Bewegung, die unser Volk erfaßt hat, erfordert eine würdige Sprache. “The language we employ towards our enemies may be harsh. However, a tone that insults and underestimates the enemy is not a sign of power. The purity and greatness of the movement that has seized our people requires a dignified language.”

  Richtlinien der Zensur (censorship guidelines), 1914. (Letter of the Prussian War Ministry to the Army commanders)

  Übermittlung und Erläuterung der Ergänzungen des Merkblattes für die Presse, 9. November 1914, Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv, Freiburg i. Br., MA/RMA, Nr. 2049, XVII. 1. Mai 1933, Bd. 1, Abschrift. Supplied by Robin Schäfer.

  145Partridge, Slang To-day and Yesterday, 1970, p. 261.

  146Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 87.

  147Partridge, Slang of the British Soldier, p. 52.

  148Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 102.

  149Notes and Queries, 29 October 1921, p. 342.

  150Manchester Guardian, 17 November 1914, p. 5.

  151In Vansittart, John Masefield’s Letters, 3 April 1915, 5 April 1915.

  152Dauzat, L’Argot de la Guerre, 2007 edn, p. 93.

  153Déchelette, L’Argot des Poilus, p. 9.

  154The spelling ‘Bosche’ was used in a number of newspapers, e.g. Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 19 October 1915, p. 8; Sussex Agricultural Express, 14 September 1917, p. 1; Birmingham Daily Post, 1 August 1918, p. 5; Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal, 31 October 1919, p. 8.

  155A. Hunter-Weston, Private War Diary, add. MS 48355–48368, British Library, p. 57.

  156E. Hulse, Letters written from the English Front in France, 1914–15, (privately printed, 1916), p. 32.

  157Capt F. B. Parker, letter, 18 October 1915, Private papers held by Imperial War Museum.

  158The spelling ‘Boche’ was used in French.

  159Illustrated Evening News, 29 November 1915, p. 2, and 11 September 1915, p. 322, respectively.

  160Daily Mirror, 14 July 1915, p. 10.

  161Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 25 May 1916, p. 2.

  162Barker, Agony’s Anguish, p. 56.

  163Hewett, A Scholar’s Letters, p. 46.

  164Spicer, Letters from France, 22 May 1918.

  165Caseby, Diary.

  166Hepper, Great War Diary, 18 October 1917.

  167Spicer, Letters from France, 5 July 1916.

  168R. Cude, Diary, Private papers held by Imperial War Museum.

  169Barker, Agony’s Anguish, p. 68.

  170The Attack/The Estaminet, [sound dramatisation].

  171Broadhead, Diary.

  172Quigley, Passchendaele and the Somme, p. 131.

  173Malins, How I Filmed the War, p. 130.

  174The Times, 21 September 1914, p. 7.

  175Pte F. Dunn, quoted in Arthur, We Will Remember Them, p. 6.

  176Illustrated London News, 23 November 1918.

  177Stars & Stripes, 15 February 1918, p. 1, quoted in Lighter, Slang of the AEF, p. 19.

  178Manchester Guardian, 5 December 1918, p. 6.

  179S. Haasmann, Deutsch–Englischer Soldaten-Sprachführer, (Leipzig: Verlag Hachmeister & Thal, 1914), p. 3.

  180Manchester Guardian, 21 July 1921, p. 9.

  181New York Times, 6 January 1923, p. 7.

  182Daily Mail, 17 December, 1919, p. 4.

  183The Times, 13 May 1919, p. 11.

  184Nottingham Evening Post, 27 July 1921, p. 1.

  185The Ypres Times, October 1924, p. 97.

  186The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, T. Pinney, (ed.), 1931–36, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2004), p. 158.

  187Though in September 1917 Flying Sgt E. A. Boyd was sentenced to a year in internal prison as a PoW for referring to his captors as ‘the Hun’ – Manchester Guardian, 13 December 1918, p. 12.

  188Trench journal of the No. 1 Canadian Field Ambulance.

  189No actual claim was made by Wilhelm II, http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=755 accessed 17 October 2016.

  190The Pow-Wow, 9 December 1914.

  191For Huns Ancient and Modern see the widely used Hymns Ancient and Modern.

  192John Bull, 2 January 1915, pp. 2, 14.

  193Ibid., 13 February 1915, p. 16.

  194Ibid., 23 January 1915, p. 3.

  195John Bull, 15 September 1917, p. 4, of a vicar who urged his congregation to think about a negotiated end to the war.

  196Manchester Guardian, 13 January 1915, p. 5.

  197http://www.bobbrookes.co.uk/DiaryCH2.htm accessed 10 October 2016.

  198R. James, letter, 10 August 1915, National Archives (RAIL 253/516).

  199Spicer, Letters from France, 12 February 1916.

  200Fall In, (journal of the Duke of Cambridge’s Regiment) 15 January 1916, p. 60.

  201Cpt A. A. Emmett in The Middlesex Chronicle, 1 September 1917, p. 6

  202E. Shears, Active Service Diary, 17 February 1917.

  203Caseby, Diary.

  204Tytler, With Lancashire Lads, p. 132.

  205Manchester Guardian, 29 November 1918, p. 4.

  206Cpt A. A. Emmett in The Middlesex Chronicle, 1 September 1917, p. 6.

  207Illustrated London News, 12 September 1914, pp. 5, 6.

  208Leeds Mercury, 3 March 1918, p. 2; the German aeroplane the Taube, with fluted wings swept back at the end, was known as ‘the bird’.

  209Walker, Lost Generation, p. 18.

  210Huns Ancient and Modern, (London: Skeffington & Son Ltd, 1918), pp. 12, 13.

  211A. Ponsonby, The Crank, (London: Headley, 1916), p. 9 (the Merchant’s view).

  212Vivid War Weekly, October 1915, pp. 167, 170.

  213Dundee Courier, 13 November 1914, p. 2.

  214Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 13 November 1914, p. 2.

  215Spicer, Letters from France, 4 April 1917.

  216Manchester Guardian, 25 November 1918, p. 3.

  217Robert Smillie quoted in the Manchester Guardian, 7 December 1918, p. 8.

  218Labour politician Ben Tillett, speech quoted in the Taunton Courier, 7 March 1917, p. 4.

  219Though it does not appear in Slang of the AEF or Digger Dialects.

  220A War Nurse’s Diary, 1918, p. 66.

  221Brindle, France and Flanders, p. 31.

  222Bilbrough, Diary, 29 March 1916.

  223In the Hands of the Huns.

  224‘
The cussed Huns have got my gramophone’, Punch, 15 May 1918.

  225Manchester Guardian, 22 January 1919, p. 5.

  226The Athenaeum, 12 December 1919, p. 1350.

  227Edmonds, A Subaltern’s War, p. 79.

  228Ibid., p. 37.

  229The Comet, 23 January 1917, p. 2.

  230Broadhead, Diary.

  231Manwaring, If We return, p. 128.

  232Pte W. H. Harris, Private papers, Imperial War Museum, 13 April 1917.

  233Déchelette, L’argot des Poilus, p. 104.

  234William Jesse Stanley, Headquarters Co., 150th Field Artillery, 42nd (Rainbow) Div., Grant County, Indiana http://www.wwvets.com/42ndDivision.html accessed 28 October 2016.

  235Quoted in Holmes, Tommy, p. 248.

  236I. Hay, Carrying On: after the first hundred thousand, (Edinburgh London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1917), p. 288.

  237Illustrated London News, 23 February 1918, p. 2.

  238Northcliffe, At the War, 1916, p. 146.

  239Broadhead, Diary.

  240Rifleman F. Walker, letter, 15 September 1918, author’s collection.

  241E. Judge, quoted in Wadsworth, Letters from the Trenches, p. 61.

  242Manwaring, If We Return, p. 79.

  243The Gasper, 8 January 16, p. 7.

  244Birmingham Daily Post, 26 February 1915, p. 4.

  245Newcastle Journal, 14 April 1916, p. 5.

  246Hay, Carrying On, p. 230.

  247Western Times, 22 September 1916, p. 12.

  248Spicer, Letters from France, 6 December 1915; Cpl T. Keale in Arthur, We Will Remember Them, p. 26.

  249Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 43.

  250Cpl B. Thomson, in MacDonald, Somme, p. 126, but NB this is in an interview from the early 1980s.

  251Crofts, Field Ambulance Sketches, p. 129.

  252Percy Bryant, Imperial War Museum interview.

  253H. M. Tomlinson, All Our Yesterdays, (London: William Heinemann, 1930), p. 448.

  254Duffin, Diaries, p. 156.

  255Comic Cuts, 25 August 1917.

  256MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 195.

  257Broadhead, Diary, 26 April 1916, 19 May 1916, 29 July 1916, etc.

  258The Listening Post, 10 August 1917, 1 December 1917.

  259Leeds Mercury, 31 August 1922, p. 6.

  260Aberdeen Journal, 28 June 1927, p. 5.

  261MacArthur, A Bug’s-eye View, p. 30.

  262Dawson, A “Temporary Gentleman”, p. 125.

  263Liverpool Echo, 8 July 1915, p. 3.

  264Portsmouth Evening News, 24 July 1915, p 2.

  265Daily Mirror, 14 July 1915, p. 10.

  266Soldier’s letter, Coventry Herald, 1 January 1915, p. 7.

  267Gloucester Echo, 21 April 1915, p. 5 (Cheltenham soldier serving with a Canadian unit).

  268Soldier in the South Wales Borderers, Coventry Evening Telegraph, 7 April 1915, p. 3.

  269Pte W. Thomson, Black Watch, Sussex Agricultural Express, 21 April 1916, p. 8.

  270Folkestone Herald, 30 March 1918, p. 3.

  271Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 3 November 1916, p. 1 – also NB the combination of terms – ‘ “That’s true, ain’t it Fritz?” and the Boches gave a nod.’

  272Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 20 September 1915.

  27332nd News (American trench journal), November 1918, pp. 4, 15.

  274Saxons ‘are known to be gentlemen’, War Diary of the 1st Life-Guards, 22 October 1914.

  275Huns Ancient and Modern, p. 13.

  276War Budget, 29 August 1914, pp. 3, 17; 5 September 1914, p. 21.

  277Meaning ‘military imperialism’; Ponsonby, The Crank, p. 10.

  278J. H. Moulton, British and German Scholarship (Papers for Wartime), No. 31, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1915), p. 11.

  279Daily Chronicle, 26 July 1917, p. 2.

  280In Treves, Made in the Trenches, p. 20.

  281Punch, 26 February 1919, p. 155.

  282In the Hands of the Huns, p. 55.

  283Holmes, Tommy, p. 270.

  284Kilpatrick, Atkins at War, p. 110.

  285H. Wheeler, Daring Deeds of Merchant Seamen in the Great War, (London: G. G. Harrap & Co., 1918), pp. 70, 48.

  286Crofts, Field Ambulance Sketches, p. 140.

  287In MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 129.

  288Partridge, Words! Words! Words!, p. 221.

  289K. Bergmann, Wie der Feldgraue Spricht, (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1916), p. 26.

  290e.g. ‘Hans was at last convinced of the futility of further effort’, F. Coleman, With Cavalry in 1915, (London: Sampson Low & Co., 1916), p. 7.

  291See for example MacDonald, They Called it Passchendaele, which ‘has of necessity been compiled from the recollections of old people’, author’s foreword, p. xiii.

  292Graham, A Private in the Guards, pp. 328–9.

  293Fraser and Gibbons.

  294Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn.

  295The Great War Interviews, recorded 1964, [BBC television programme], http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p01tbj6p accessed 7 February 2017.

  296Herbert, Mons, Anzac, and Kut, 1919 edn, p. 171.

  297Wright, Shattered Glory, p. 126.

  298The Leadswinger, 16 October 1915, p. 20.

  299Spicer, Letters from France, 23 March 1916.

  300Partridge, Words! Words! Words!, pp. 220–1; pointus may have been in part a counterbalance to poilus.

  301Bergmann, Wie der Feldgraue Spricht, p. 26.

  302Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 85.

  303Quoted in Wadsworth, Letters from the Trenches, p. 86.

  304Duffin, Diaries, p. 62.

  305Barker, Agony’s Anguish, p. 59.

  306The Champion, 23 May 1925, p. 500.

  307Pte W. Nixon, quoted in MacDonald, Voices and Images, 1991 edn, p. 105.

  308Rochdale Observer, 20 May 1916, p. 6.

  309Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 24 September 1914, p. 10.

  310Sunderland Daily Echo, 5 January 1917, p. 6.

  311Edinburgh Evening News, 24 November 1917, p. 4.

  312Punch, 4 November 1914, p. iii.

  313e.g. The Gasper, 28 May 1915.

  314e.g. the spy in Special Constable Smith, with an obviously anglophone actor as a German spy trying to put on an English accent, [sound dramatisation], (Regal 6842, 1915; CD41–003/2, Oh! It’s a Lovely War, Vol. 2, 2001).

  315Coldstream officer quoted in Holmes, Tommy, p. 338.

  316Home Chat, 28 November 1914, p. 324.

  317Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, 1986 edn, p. 51.

  318The Pow-Wow, 25 November 1914, p. 2.

  319The Bystander, 17 February 1915, p. 215.

  320Hay, The First Hundred Thousand, p. 227.

  321The Switchboard, September 1916.

  322Nobbs, Englishman, Kamerad!, p. 120.

  323Punch, 2 October 1912, p. 283, and 12 February 1912, p. 91.

  324Fraser and Gibbons.

  325Burrage, War is War, 2010 edn, p. 143.

  326In Treves, Made in the Trenches, p. 29.

  327Le Poilu, February 1916.

  328Le Mouchoir, 25 October 1916, p. 1, though Partridge (Slang To-day and Yesterday, 1933 edn, p. 179) gives ‘kamerad’.

  329German Atrocities in France, translation of the official report of the French Commission, published by the Daily Chronicle, 1915, p. 15.

  330Northern Mudguard, November 1915, p. 8.

  331Nottingham Evening Post, 27 October 1917, p. 2.

  332The Auckland Star, 2 February 1918, p. 15.

  333Jones, In Parenthesis, 1969 edn, p. 72.

  334Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 7.

  335Hay, The First Hundred Thousand, p. 227.

  336De L’Isle, Leaves from a V.A.D.’s Diary, p. 64.

  337Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 6 June 1919, p. 4.

  338The Leadswinger, 16 October 1915, p. 17.

  339Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 153.

  340D
ouie, The Weary Road, pp. 170–1.

  341The Times, 17 November 1915, p. 7.

  342The Comet, 5 February 1917.

  343Chasseaud, Rats Alley, p. 93.

  344Douie, The Weary Road, p. 140.

  345H. Greenwall, Scoops, (London: Stanley Paul & Co., 1923), p. 175.

  346De L’Isle, Leaves from a V.A.D.’s Diary, p. 22.

  347Fall In, 15 January 1916, p. 66.

  348Malins, How I Filmed the War, p. 132.

  349Duffin, Diaries, p. 40.

  350The Growler, 1 January 1916, p. 3.

  351R. Kipling, The Irish Guards in the Great War, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1923), p. 38.

  352Ibid., p. 64.

  353In the Aberdeen Evening Express, 11 January 1917, p. 2.

  354Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 81.

  355Crofts, Field Ambulance Sketches, p. 105.

  356Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 50.

  357Hay, Carrying On, p. 230.

  358Quoted in Holmes, Tommy, p. 306.

  359Quoted in ibid., p. 384.

  360Duffin, Diaries, p. 212.

  361The Fuze, Vol.1, Issue 2, pp. 1, 5.

  362T. Baggs, Back from the Front, (London: F. and C. Palmer, 1914), p. 92.

  363Mottram, Journey to the Western Front, p. 24.

  364Chasseaud, Rats Alley, pp. 96, 141, 158.

  365Daily Express, 18 June 1918, p. 2.

  366Birmingham Mail, 4 September 1915, p. 3.

  367Osborn, The Muse In Arms, pp. ix–x.

  368Yorkshire Evening Post, 28 July 1914, p. 4.

  369J. Coleman, ‘ “Extraordinary cheeriness and good will”: the uses and documentation of First World War slang’, in Walker and Declercq, Languages and the First World War: communicating, p. 261.

  370See Todman, The Great War, p. 17.

  371Jones, In Parenthesis, 1969 edn, p. xii.

  372Partridge, Words! Words! Words!, p. 165.

  373Daily Express, 25 September 1914, p. 2.

  374Greenwall, Scoops, p. 174.

  375Muir, Observations of an Orderly, p. 224.

  376Crofts, Field Ambulance Sketches, p. 34.

  377J. Nicholson, The Folk Speech of East Yorkshire, (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1889), p. 1.

  378Gill and Dallas, Unknown Army, p. 35.

  379Omissi, Indian Voices.

  380Mottram, A Personal Record, p. 85 notes the bewilderment of regular army staff officers faced with French and Flemish, compared to the ‘various Indian tongues’ they had a little knowledge of.

  381Chasseaud, Rats Alley, p. 91.

  382The War Illustrated, 5 February 1916, p. c.