Words and The First World War

by Julian Walker

17Douie, The Weary Road, p. 16.

  18Quoted in Arthur, We Will Remember Them, pp. 20, 21.

  19Douie, The Weary Road, p. 210.

  20Daily Mirror, 9 December 1918, p. 7.

  21Punch, 4 January 1919, p. 415.

  22Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, Thursday 21 March 1929, p. 5.

  23See http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/1921/jun/23/defence-of-the-realm-act#S5CV0143P0_19210623_CWA_68 accessed 21 October 2016.

  24http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1931/nov/23/defence-of-the-realm-act#S5CV0260P0_19311123_HOC_309 accessed 21 October 2016.

  25Fraser and Gibbons.

  26Auckland Star, 31 December 1918, p. 5.

  27Daily Mail, 4 June 1923, p. 7.

  28Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 1 December 1926, p. 4.

  29Daily Mail, 30 November 1932, p. 10.

  30Illustrated London News, 7 August 1920, p. 234.

  31Daily Mail, 27 April 1925, p. 7.

  32Derby Daily Telegraph, 25 September 1939, p. 6.

  33Manchester Guardian, 12 November 1915, p. 5; 23 July 1917, p. 3.

  34Yorkshire Evening Post, 7 August 1917, p. 2.

  35See Coleman, ‘ “Extraordinary cheeriness and good will” ’, in Walker and Declercq, Languages and the First World War: communicating, pp. 268–70.

  36The Bystander, 1 January 1919, p. 45.

  37‘Pop’ appeared seldom in the press post-war; its importance to the troops as a gathering site, out of range of most shells, was never going to be understood by the Home Front.

  38‘Perhaps 200,000 British lads at one time claimed “Plugstreet” as their wartime home’ – Daily Express, 15 October 1919, p. 4.

  39Lancashire Evening Post, 27 May 1931, p. 3.

  40Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, 28 October 1939, p. 4.

  41Birmingham Mail,10 November 1939, p. 8.

  42Gloucester Citizen, 30 May 1949, p. 4.

  43The Times, 16 November 1962, p. 14, review of Lord Alexander’s memoirs.

  44Though reproduced maps in the journal retain the anglicised names of sites like Mousetrap Farm, Paradise Alley, LRB Cottage. Ypres Times, April 1922, p. 83.

  45Ypres Times, August 1922, p. 23.

  46Gloucestershire Chronicle, 4 December 1925, p. 10.

  47Holmes, A Yankee in the Trenches, p. 166.

  48Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 15.

  49Mottram, A Personal Record, p. 99.

  50Partridge, Slang To-day and Yesterday, p. 260.

  51Sunderland Daily Echo, 15 October 1921, p. 2.

  52Cook, ‘Fighting Words’, p. 342.

  53In Treves, Made in the Trenches, p. 219.

  54D. Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 23.

  55The Times, 31 Mar 1915, p. 5.

  56A. Norval, The Tourist Industry, (London, 1936), p. 48.

  57W. Ewart, ‘Auburs Revisited’, Household Brigade Magazine, 1921, p. 15, quoted in Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism, p. 117.

  58Sunderland Daily Echo, 1 October 1914, p. 3.

  59Dundee Courier, 24 May 1920, p. 2.

  60Yorkshire Evening Post, 15 August 1919, p. 7.

  61Western Daily Press, 24 June 1919, p. 6.

  62Liverpool Daily Post, 4 November 1915, p. 7.

  63Aberdeen Evening Express, 29 July 1916, p. 5.

  64Dublin Daily Express, 25 June 1917, p. 8; 28 November 1917, p. 6.

  65Aberdeen Press and Journal, 2 August 1918, p. 3.

  66See Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism, pp. 24–5.

  67Daily Record, 29 April 1916, p. 2.

  68Leeds Mercury, 8 September 1916, p. 2.

  69Hull Daily Mail, 21 October 1915, p. 4.

  70B. Brice, Ypres – Outpost of the Channel Ports, (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 48. A curious comment in The Story of an Epic Pilgrimage, p. 98, describes an area where ‘so many of our boys fell … No wonder wheat and corn grew so luxuriantly.’

  71R. Fielding, War Letters to a Wife, (London: Medici Society, 1929), p. 206.

  72Ypres Times, October 1921, p. 22.

  73‘holy ground’ Illustrated London News, 21 August 1921, p. 284; The Story of an Epic Pilgrimage, title of the book about the 1928 British Legion organised trip; ‘Guarding Sacred Ypres’, stereoview postcard caption; ‘holy ground … to be approached with solemn prayer … a shrine …’ Daily Telegraph, 9 August 1928, p. 12; ‘Pilgrims’ Way’, Menin Gate Pilgrimage, p. 12.

  74The Story of an Epic Pilgrimage, p. 40.

  75The Times, 5 December 1919, p. 16.

  76Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 23 May 1919, p. 2.

  77Brice, Ypres, p. 3.

  78The Story of an Epic Pilgrimage, p. 39.

  79Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism, p. 43.

  80Illustrated London News, 14 June 1919, p. 853.

  81Fielding, War Letters to a Wife, p. 206.

  82Douie, The Weary Road, p. 176.

  83Manchester Guardian, 21 May 1920, p. 8.

  84Daily Telegraph, 9 August 1928, p. 12.

  85E. Richardson, Remembrance Wakes, (London: Heath Cranton, 1934), p. 206.

  86T. Allen, The Tracks They Trod, (London: Herbert Joseph, 1932), p. 80.

  87Manchester Guardian, 21 May 1920, p. 8.

  88Daily Express, 15 October 1919, p. 4.

  89I. Hay, The Ship of Remembrance, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1926), p. 12.

  90Northern Whig (Antrim), 28 April 1927, p. 8.

  91Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism, p. 169.

  92The Story of an Epic Pilgrimage, p. 97.

  93Mottram, Journey to the Western Front, p. 76.

  94The Story of an Epic Pilgrimage, p. 150.

  95Yorkshire Post, 9 August 1928, p. 9.

  96The Daily Telegraph, 9 August 1928, p. 12.

  97The Story of an Epic Pilgrimage, p. 133.

  98Ibid., p. 114.

  99Ibid., p. 102.

  100Gallipoli. Salonika. St. Barnabas, 1926, 1927, p. 7.

  101Illustrated London News, 21 May 1921, p. 696.

  102Letter in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 18 August 1915, p. 3.

  103Brice, Ypres, p. 2.

  104Fielding, War Letters to a Wife, p. 208.

  105Ypres Times, October 1921, p. 23.

  106Mottram, Journey to the Western Front, p. 1.

  107A. Norris, Mainly for Mother, (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1920), p. 124.

  108From Kipling’s poem ‘Recessional’, first published in 1897.

  109Founded at the end of the war and included in Fraser and Gibbons, an association to support disabled servicemen.

  110Winter, Sites of Memory, p. 115.

  111Brophy and Partridge, Dictionary of Tommies’ Songs and Slang, p. 14.

  112Hamilton, Gallipoli Diary, 1920, p. 120.

  113Holmes, Tommy, p. 291.

  114Western Morning News, 23 July 1928, p. 3.

  115Allen, The Tracks They Trod, p. 75.

  116Aberdeen Press and Journal, 14 April 1922, p. 4.

  117Gallipoli. Salonika. St. Barnabas, 1926, 1927, p. 23.

  118Surrey Mirror, 22 July 1921, p. 7, the dedication of the Gatton War Memorial; Western Gazette, 16 November 1928, p. 8, Service of Remembrance.

  119Winter, Sites of Memory, pp. 97, 113.

  120https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daddy,_what_did_you_do_in_the_Great_War%3F accessed 2 May 2017.

  121D. Athill, Alive, Alive Oh: and other things that matter, (London: Granta Books, 2015), p. 170.

  122Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 83.

  123Wright, Shattered Glory, p. 9.

  124Spicer, Letters from France 1915–18, 20 December 1915.

  125In Arthur, We Will Remember Them, p. 177.

  126H. Miles, Untold Tales of War-time London: a personal diary, (London: Cecil Palmer, 1930), p. 29, quoted in Pennell, A Kingdom United, p. 122.

  127Wadsworth, Letters from the Trenches, p. 116.

  128Ibid., p. 72.

  129Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism, p. 103.

  130Quoted in Fussell, The Grea
t War, 1977 edn, p. 170.

  131Papers of Cpl J. Bemner, Private collection.

  132Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, p. 187.

  133Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960, p. 237.

  134Moynihan, A Place Called Armageddon, p. 28.

  135Vansittart, John Masefield’s Letters, 30 March 1917.

  136Personal Diary of H. H. Cooper, Private papers held by Imperial War Museum.

  137Paul Nash, letter, On Active Service, 16 November 1917.

  138Langley, Battery Flashes, p. 126.

  139In MacDonald, They Called it Passchendaele, 1993 edn, p. 127.

  140Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, p. 183.

  141Southard, Shellshock, p. 514.

  142G. Mosse, ‘Shell-shock as a social disease’, Journal of Contemporary History, (London, 2000), Vol. 35, No. 1, p. 101.

  143The Times, 2 September 1922, p. 13.

  144W. H. Rivers, Instinct and the Unconscious: a contribution to a biological theory of the psycho-neuroses, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), p. 189.

  145P. Leese, Shell Shock, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 123; ‘shellshock’ was recognised as a lay term ‘which will stand to medicine as the term weeds stands to botany’, Southard, Shellshock, p. 831.

  146Punch, 9 April 1919, p. v.

  147Todman, The Great War, pp. 20–21.

  148L. Napper, ‘Remembrance, re-membering, and recollection: Walter Summers and the British war film of the 1920s’, in British Silent Cinema, p. 111.

  149Todman, The Great War, p. 194.

  150Ibid., p. 195.

  151e.g. Chapter 16, ‘We Died in Hell’, in They Called it Passchendaele, 1993 edn, pp. 185–211.

  152Todman, The Great War, p. 202.

  153http://www.qsl.net/gm0fne/diaryt~1.htm accessed 14 December 2016.

  154W. H. Rivers, The Repression of War Experience, presented to the Royal School of Medicine, 4 December 1917.

  155Fussell, The Great War, 1977 edn, p. 170.

  156Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 14.

  157For example, E. O’Neill’s essay ‘War Words’, The Windsor Magazine, December 1918–May 1919, pp. 399–403; Edward Cook’s essay ‘Words and the War’, in Literary Recreations, pp. 142–75.

  158The Bodleian Quarterly Record, 1st Quarter, 1918, pp. 123–5.

  159Notes and Queries, November 1918, p. 306.

  160Ibid., December 1918, p. 333.

  161Ibid., March 1919, p. 79.

  162Ibid., June 1919, p. 159.

  163The Athenaeum, 23 May 1919, pp. 359–60.

  164Ibid., 11 July 1919, p. 583.

  165Ibid., 25 July 1919, p. 663.

  166Ibid., 26 September 1919, p. 957.

  167Ibid., 7 November 1919, p. 1163.

  168For an investigation of this see J. Walker, in Declercq and Walker, Languages and the First World War: representation, pp. 214–36.

  169See J. Coleman, A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries, Vol. 3, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 247.

  170Ibid., p. 253.

  171‘No 9’ is one of the more curious survivors from the war, still in use a hundred years later in Bingo calling, as ‘Doctor’s orders, Number 9’.

  172Notes and Queries, 5 November 1921, pp. 378–9.

  173The Athenaeum, 18 July 1919, p. 632.

  174‘A. H. B. ’ , 1 August 1919, p. 694.

  175Coleman, A History of Cant, Vol. 3, 2009, pp. 256–7.

  176Brophy and Partridge, Songs and Slang of the British Soldier, p. v.

  177Fraser and Gibbons, p. v.

  178Brophy and Partridge, Songs and Slang of the British Soldier, p. 189.

  179Fraser and Gibbons, p. v.

  180Partridge, Words! Words! Words!, p. 183.

  181Partridge, Slang To-day and Yesterday, p. 260.

  182Collinson, Contemporary English, p. 103.

  183H. Hiddeman, Untersuchungen zum Slang des Englischen Heeres im Weltkrieg, (Emsdetten: H. & J. Lechte, 1938), p. 135.

  184The Observer, 7 November 1965, p. 26.

  185J. Green, Language!: 500 years of the vulgar tongue, (London: Atlantic Books, 2014), p. 378.

  186The Times, 1 November 2014.

  187J. Brophy, ‘After Fifty Years’, in Brophy and Partridge, The Long Trail, 1969 edn, p. 11.

  188Magazine advertisement, Home Chats, 5 September 1914, p. 436; The Ilford Guardian, 13 November 1914, p. 3 noted that the names ‘The Germanic War’, the ‘Pan European War’ and the ‘War of the Allies’ had all been tried, but were found to be insufficiently descriptive of the range of combatant nations.

  189Fussell, The Great War, 1977 edn, pp. 315–16.

  190Ibid., p. 188.

  191Ibid., p. 187.

  192Illustrated London News, 4 October 1914, p. 468.

  193Smith, Four Years on the Western Front, p. 23.

  194Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1960 edn, p. 105.

  195Moulton, Papers for Wartime, No. 31, 1915, p. 5.

  196The OED citations for this since 1978 all come from shooting contexts.

  197Quoted in Doyle and Schäfer, Fritz and Tommy, p. 191.

  198The War Illustrated, 15 January 1916, p. 519.

  199Postcard, On Active Service, 13 February 1915, author’s collection.

  200J. Jones, Diary, 10 March 1918.

  201The Derby Daily Telegraph, 25 September 1939, p. 6, recorded ‘as then, so now: “pain”, “oeufs”, “Coffee-or-lay”, “no bon”, “tray bon”, and “encore”, still make up the average soldier’s vocabulary’; What’s the Dope? A slang glossary published after 1939 included ‘Bosche’, ‘heavies’, ‘strafe’ and many more familiar terms, What’s the Dope? An encyclopædia of Army, Navy and Air Force abbreviations, etc. (Illustrated by Will Owen), London; Bognor Regis: John Crowther, (1944).

  202http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29757988 accessed 20 December 2016.

  203Partridge, Words! Words! Words!, p. 167.

  204Partridge, Quarterly Review, p. 359.

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