Military patois

[Rockdoc]

The O/C 24th Anti-Aircraft Section - Capt Hon Major R Halford-Thompson (SR) - or whoever he got to write up the War Diary had terrible handwriting, never bothered with puncuation and has burning ears in whichever part of the afterlife he now resides. I can't completely work out what he's written on 3rd August 1916, which goes something like:

Took fresh position on slopes of LA CROIX BLANCHE heights dug shelter took up gun crews hid lorries in donjas, combes etc.

Anyone come across a work like donja or donga before?

Keith

[At Home Dad]

Google is your amigo

donga - ditch of the type found in South African topography. (From Zulu, "wall"; this has become a mainstream word for such a feature.)

From Wiki's List of South African slang words

Hope it helps

Kind regards

[John_Hartley]

Ditch thingy. Crops up a couple of times in a guy's letter writing home from Gallipoli. Didnt know the SA origin - perhaps some of his comrades had served during the Boer War.

[Chris_Baker]

So the Section hid their lorries in ditches? Big ditches!

[Rockdoc]

Thanks, gents. I did try Google but it turned up nothing that appeared remotely related to what I was looking for. Sometimes the search terms need to be quite precise. I'm having a real struggle with this War Diary so I may be back......! It doesn't help that I don't have a military background so terms like "in action" don't mean what i expect them to mean. Range is another. I've literally just come across the term used, as far as I can tell, to indicate that an AA shell exploded close to the target aircraft and probably caused damage.

Chris, agreed they must have been big ditches but I've seen some of the roadside gutters in SA and they can be huge. It was common to see cars and vans stranded on the roads in Stellenbosch, with one or two wheels over the gutter in mid-air. They are needed because of the massive levels of run-off from the surrounding mountains so it isn't hard to imagine that these broad, Greek dongas had been eroded by fast-flowing temporary streams.

Keith

[melwar]

That's interesting because 'donga' is a word I'd use here in Australia to mean out the back of nowhere... "he's going camping out in the donga".

[NigelS]

This site is useful for searching for the more obscure words as it searches across a number of dictionaries (including some of the technical and specialised types) and also allows wildcard searches . The "reverse dictionary" feature is useful for anyone who doesn't mind a bit of a cheat in order to complete a crossword.

http://www.onelook.com/

NigelS

[bushfighter]

DONGAS and SPRUITS are great places to occupy for concealment - until it starts raining!

Harry

[Rockdoc]

Thanks, Nigel. Bookmarked! Harry, you sound like you have first-hand experience....!

keith

[truthergw]

Donga or nullah. What the Americans call a dry wash. I tend to think of them as a gully.

[dycer]

I note,no-one on the Forum reads early Wilbur Smith's Books,apart from me.

George

[SiegeGunner]

For some classic dongas, just watch the film Zulu Dawn

[John_Hartley]

The letter writer I mention uses the word a number of times and it's difficult to get a sense of how big a thingy he means. Certainly a big ditch at least.

"A young fellow named Smith and myself took upon ourselves to man the gully leading up to our trench from the donga."

[Rockdoc]

Sounds rather like he means the donga is the main channel and the gully is a feeder channel, John. For Capt Hon Maj Ralph Halford-Thompson to have hidden GS wagons in one or more of them suggests, as Chris Baker wrote earlier, that they are rather on the big side but also that they may have some scrub obscuring them from above. The Section did come under gun-fire on occasion and the Central Powers' aircraft were very active at this stage of the War (mid-1916) so they needed to be careful. Most records say that positions were taken up after dark, especially if they were anywhere near the front. When travelling, the guns are always recorded "in action" whenever they stop for the night, even if it isn't their destination, so they clearly felt quite vulnerable.

Keith

[John_Hartley]

Sounds rather like he means the donga is the main channel and the gully is a feeder channel

If he does (and I think you might be right, on reflection), then it perhaps ties in with Tom's alternative of "nullah".

In this case, the main channel would almost certainly have been Krithia Nullah. But there may be a contradiction in that Krithia Nullah always seems to be called a nullah (if you see what I mean). I'd have thought its name was well established by June 1915.

In another extract, he mentions rolling over the edge of the donga and dropping about 10 foot. So, I think I'm probably back to thinking very big ditch thingy.

John

[David B]

In the navy (RAN) donga referred to your sleeping quarters, that is when on shore posting

david

[Rockdoc]

John, my Concise Oxford dictionary defines nullah and donga in exactly the same way: a ravine or dry watercourse. Perhaps which you use depended on whether you were stationed in South Africa or India when you were a young soldier? Alternatively and given the fact that Halford-Thompson hid lorries in dongas it may be to do with shape. It could be that a donga has a flat bottom (U-shaped) and a nulla has a narrower one (V-shaped).

David, the online dictionary that was posted in this thread yesterday gives the Australian definition as a temporary shelter so that would fit.

Keith

[John_Hartley]

Keith

As far as I know, my man, a Territorial, had not served overseas before, although some of his comrades probably had been in South Africa. Since my last post, I've come across a war diary entry for his battalion which also uses donga (in terms of them becoming flooded during a very heavy rainstorm), so perhaps that's why it became the "official" word withn them, rather than nullah.

John

[truthergw]

We need to be cautious of trying to pin precise meanings to these words. Originally words in the indigenous language, picked up by the soldiery and adopted by them, not always reflecting the exact meaning of the original. Adopted semi-officially into the jargon of the trade. Officers who had served in India, South Africa and Egypt, as many senior officers had, would be aware of these words and I am fairly sure, would use them interchangeably, just as there is no hard and fast distinction between a ravine and a gully. We have had a similar discussion about the meanings of ' Jack Johnson' and ' Wooly Bear' etc. Slang or jargon is by its nature capable of a variety of applications.

[John_Hartley]

just as there is no hard and fast distinction between a ravine and a gully.

Particularly with the Gallipoli position of Gully Ravine.