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Remembered Today:

Special Order of the Day - Spelling Mistake?


Gareth Davies

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During the latest episode of Paxo's Great War a copy of FM Haig's famous backs to the wall Special Order of the Day was shown. I have taken a screen shot of the version of the SO shown by the Beeb and as you will see his rank is spelled 'Field-Marshall'. A quick look online came up with this http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/graphics/backstothewall.jpg which uses the more traditional (and correct) spelling 'Field-Marshal'.

Did the Beeb use a duff copy or was the original incorrectly spelled?

post-61373-0-19083500-1392808212_thumb.j

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It's correct on this one Click

Mike

Yes, that's the one in my link Mike.

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During the latest episode of Paxo's Great War a copy of FM Haig's famous backs to the wall Special Order of the Day was shown. I have taken a screen shot of the version of the SO shown by the Beeb and as you will see his rank is spelled 'Field-Marshall'. A quick look online came up with this http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/graphics/backstothewall.jpg which uses the more traditional (and correct) spelling 'Field-Marshal'.

Did the Beeb use a duff copy or was the original incorrectly spelled?

Hi

I presume the 'spelling' quality depends on who set up the document for printing and the 'proof reader' at the time. Certainly in documents that were typed up at various HQs there are spelling mistakes, indeed words like Very (light) are spelt 'verey', 'verry' and 'verrey' in official documents. This is not surprising really considering the number of 'typists' (of varying quality) that were needed to produce 'orders' (fairly rapidly) in a very large army. Indeed typewriters were also in short supply in the British Army at the start of the war and many were donated. They also had to be kept servicable and 'typewriter repair men' on motorbikes would have to travel around to service them (evidently 3 typewriters were the same cost as one motorbike).

Can we really criticise the spelling at the time, after all it is not unknown for us on the forum to be 'guilty' of it!

Mike

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Possibly a Canadian typist. According to Websters and others Marshall is an acceptable variant of Marshal more often used in North America.

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Can we really criticise the spelling at the time, after all it is not unknown for us on the forum to be 'guilty' of it!

Mike

Mike

Some spelling on the Forum is absolutely abysmal, but in more recent times it has not been Politically Correct to highlight the errors. Anyone daring to do so has the finger pointed and is labelled as pedantic.

Kevin

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Can we really criticise the spelling at the time, after all it is not unknown for us on the forum to be 'guilty' of it!

Mike

Mike, I don't think anyone is criticisng the spelling, I certainly wasn't.

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Possibly a Canadian typist. According to Websters and others Marshall is an acceptable variant of Marshal more often used in North America.

Possibly. But I am still curious as to which version was the original.

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Would the original not be a typed copy at GHQ, sent to printers. How many printers were used might determine the form of the "original" printed version. One problem with the images is also the absence of scale - does anyone know the size of paper used?

This has got me wondering about other methods of short run publication. Apparently Gestetner devised his first stencil based machines in the late 19th century, and gelatin based systems were also around. It would be interesting to know what equipment short of typesetting was in use at command level.

Keith

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The War Office certainly used Roneo stencil machines and some survived in MOD use right up into the 1970s so I would imagine that GHQ had Roneos. The problem is that the stencils have a limited life and the copies become poorer the more are made so it would have been necessary to retype the stencil from time to time (or possibly produce a whole lot in one go so that a number of Roneos could print in parallel.) So there could well have been a number of "originals"

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It would be interesting to be sure. As to the stencils, I agree, having cut quite a few myself in connection with matters outside my professional civil service career. In my department, again in the seventies the Gestetner seemed to be the machine of choice, but purchasing was a Departmental item so Government undoubtedly had both. it would certainly seem logical that GHQ would have these machines, but some evidence would be good to find. I have seen war diaries with copies of documents that looked to my unprofessional eye as if they might have been run off using gelatin based systems, certainly not from the ink based Roneo or Gestetner type of machine. Often light blue they could maybe have been umpteenth copies from pale blue carbon paper, if the coloured versions were about by then. They were certainly often flimsy enough to be carbon sheets.

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From memories of gelatine printing (encountered in the Scouts) the ink on the original meeds to be still wet when it is laid down on the gelatine bed which restricts the process to making a relatively small number of copies of material written with pen and ink. I have read accounts of this being used in both world was to print POW news letters etc as the quality was so low that it could not be used to forge travel documents, gate passes etc and so was tolerated by the camp authorities. I can imagine the process being used at company level for instructions, rotas etc.

It's interesting to note that photo copying had existed since the middle of the 19th century being originally devised to transmit diagrams by telegraph. The first machines contained a pendulum which swung back and forth over a piece of paper fed slowly under it on rollers. The tip of the pendulum on the transmitter had a single light sensitive cell that switched a current on or off so that when it passed over a black portion electric blips were sent. The receiving machine's pendulum had a pen lowered in response to a blip to make a mark on the paper so that, slowly, a copy was made of the original. More time was spent synchronising and aligning the two machines than in actually transmitting. However by WW1 faster and more reliable systems had been devised but still relatively bulky, cumbersome, slow and expensive. One wonders was any military use of the process made in WW1

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Would the original order of the day in Haig's handwriting really have been sent to a print shop at GHQ and then sent out as sheets of paper to those who needed to see it? Surely the Order of the Day would have been sent via the usual signalling telegraphy channels where it would be passed on through armies and divisions down to Battalion level, where battalion HQ clerks would receive it, write it down or type it out with carbon papers and give it to battalion commanders who would make arrangements for it to be read to the men? The message would have reached its destination(s) before the printer had even finished setting up the type.

I think that the printed versions we see here are souvenir versions published long afterwards to celebrate and remember the famous Order of the Day.

Tom

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Hi

I presume the 'spelling' quality depends on who set up the document for printing and the 'proof reader' at the time. Certainly in documents that were typed up at various HQs there are spelling mistakes, indeed words like Very (light) are spelt 'verey', 'verry' and 'verrey' in official documents. This is not surprising really considering the number of 'typists' (of varying quality) that were needed to produce 'orders' (fairly rapidly) in a very large army. Indeed typewriters were also in short supply in the British Army at the start of the war and many were donated. They also had to be kept servicable and 'typewriter repair men' on motorbikes would have to travel around to service them (evidently 3 typewriters were the same cost as one motorbike).

Can we really criticise the spelling at the time, after all it is not unknown for us on the forum to be 'guilty' of it!

Mike

I think you will find that in 1918 a typewriter was a person who used a typing machine.

Just as in 1950 a computer was a person who used a computing machine/ engine.

If so, just how a repair man would deal with said typewriter makes the bog mindle!

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I think you will find that in 1918 a typewriter was a person who used a typing machine.

Just as in 1950 a computer was a person who used a computing machine/ engine.

If so, just how a repair man would deal with said typewriter makes the bog mindle!

Actually when I first got involved with the beasts in 1967 a computing machine/ engine* was operated by a computor who used it to perform computations

And one version of the song "I don't want to join the army" has the line "living off the earnings of a lady typist" ( a euphemism for a much older profession) Typists (real ones) used typewriters which can be repaired.

* not the same as an Electronic Digital Processor or Computer

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1967!

My first experience was as a programmer on a Ferranti Mercury in c.1958, it filled a hall the size of a Scout Hut, inside a Faraday cage. Very clearly a descendant of the Colossus breed.

I see in my Concise OED that it agrees that typewriter is archaic for typist. Just how archaic I am not sure.

Avoiding further thread drift, the circumstances in which FM Haig dictated his Order made proof-reading a little hasty, I'll be bound.

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I have three original framed orders of the day from 23/3/1918, 7/9/1918 and the famous one of 11/4/1918 , they were printed in France by Army printing and stationery services.

and measure approx. eight and a half inches down and seven inches across and are all spelt 'Field- Marshal'.

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Just an observation but typists tend to type what they see therefore that could well extend to printers production. In which case the error lies with the originator of the document. That said, mistakes could be made by either a typist or printer which then begs the question; was it proof read before release?

That is assuming of course, that it wasn't produced by another nationality who decided to impose their own spelling rules as centurion has suggested.

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Blackmaria

Thanks for the size information. I suspect that Tom may well have the right of it in post 15, although a print run could presumably have been put in place simultaneously.

Keith

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I think the printed document used as a prop has been incorrectly copied. However, some typed signals use the Marshall spelling. The original order would have reached units this.

post-671-0-97013400-1393551785_thumb.jpg

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I think you will find that in 1918 a typewriter was a person who used a typing machine.

Just as in 1950 a computer was a person who used a computing machine/ engine.

If so, just how a repair man would deal with said typewriter makes the bog mindle!

Hi

There are some interesting pages in 'Battle tactics of the Western Front' by Paddy Griffith on 'Typewriters'. Pages 179-181 mentions Captain S G Partridge being appointed the head of an 'Army Printing and Stationary Depot' in 1914 and during the retreats it mentions a truckload of 'typewriters, latrine paper and stationary' following him round to various locations, this is a quote from WO95/4189 according to the source information. So the 1914 Army was not confused to what a 'Typewriter' was. Also used at the time appears to be 'typewriting machine', which would inevitably be shortened to 'typewriter' especially when putting in an indent. I suspect stores did not send 'typists' instead. Partridge was the man who in 1915 organised a mobile team of mechanics (getting motorbikes for them) to service these 'typewriters'. Indeed it mentions (on page 181, using official sources) that: "As late as 28 September 1916 he was fighting a rearguard battle and forbidding the mechanics to service privately owned typewriters..."

So I think at the time the 'typewriter' was considered a machine and not a person.

Mike

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Yes: whereas I am correct in stating that "typewriter" was a person who typed, the meaning had morphed by 1914.

The classifieds of the The Times demonstrate this: 1890 -1900 most typewriters are people; 1900-1910 either/ or; 1910 onwards the machine.

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