Swearing in the Great War

[patrick Eggs]

when we were children our mother mentioned about the , soldiers word , but we never new what it was thanks for all of your info, after 70 odd years I will now pass the details on to my brothers,

Crimson Rambler

[Jim Hastings]

I remember my mother telling me that my granddad ( a GW veteran) used to tell her brothers (WW2/National Servicemen) that swearing had to "stay in the trenches"(as she quoted him) and not be brought into the house...

[squirrel]

In Spike May's book, The Band Rats,post WW1, he refers to his brother, who was a Drummmer in the Grenadier Guards, being reduced to the ranks from Lance Corporal for striking a Corporal with a flute after the Corporal had called him an "Idle b*****d".

The Officer hearing the account of events decided that while the Corporal was quite entitled to call the L/Cpl idle he was not entitled to call him a b*****d.

The broken flute was paid for with stoppages from pay for some considerable time.

[Guest exuser1]

Pre Great War I have a soldiers documents which list various charges one being swearing at the company cook in Hindustani

[squirrel]

I have a soldier's papers which show that he was "insultingly abusive" to a Corporal while on a troopship (48 hours confined to quarters). Wish they had recorded the words he used though!

[SiegeGunner]

He yelled the following unlawful obscenities to the policeman "You're only a bloody f...ing copper, I will put my f...ing mark on you"!

It even reached the ears of the Germans. I'm afraid I forget the source, but I noted down this quote from a German memoir:

"Wir hörten deutlich ...... die Tommys untereinander das bekannte 'bloody f*cking' fluchen."

"We could clearly hear ...... the Tommies' familiar 'bloody f*cking' swearing among themselves."

[sutton-in-craven]

hahaha love it Siege Gunner!!!

p.s. I'm sure Bugler (better spell it right this time!) Fisher would have been one of the Tommies the Germans overheard. Probably chomping at the bit to put his f...ing mark on the enemy!

[Muerrisch]

I rather took to Buglar the more I looked at it; how about Drummar, Fifar, Pipar and Trumpetar ............... a very high class act, under the Drum Majar and Bandmastar of course.

Why not?

[Muerrisch]

I have a soldier's papers which show that he was "insultingly abusive" to a Corporal while on a troopship (48 hours confined to quarters). Wish they had recorded the words he used though!

Was it not Mays who knew of a soldier with rough rider and farrier badges, who said he was "the only man in the army who shoed horses at the effing gallop"?

[SiegeGunner]

I'm sure Bugler (better spell it right this time!) Fisher would have been one of the Tommies the Germans overheard.

I think the Tommies in this case were Scottish, as the Germans also complained of having to listen to 'schwermütige Dudelsackmusik' (mournful bagpipe music).

[David_Blanchard]

Frederic Manning 'Her Privates We' is very liberal in its use of the ribald.

David

[squirrel]

Was it not Mays who knew of a soldier with rough rider and farrier badges, who said he was "the only man in the army who shoed horses at the effing gallop"?

Correct.

[Guest exuser1]

I have a soldier's papers which show that he was "insultingly abusive" to a Corporal while on a troopship (48 hours confined to quarters). Wish they had recorded the words he used though!

Interestingly the sheet with mine does , Hindustani for pig !

[Magnumbellum]

My dad's main claim to fame is that he was, he believes, the first person to use that word on television, during the 1976 fireman's strike on the BBC news.

The generally accredited first user of the F word on British television is the late literary critic Kenneth Tynan, not on television news, but in an arts programme discussion.

[connaughtranger]

Can it be possible that British soldiers in the Great War would resort to foul language? Surely not!

Cooke, in his history of the 9th Northumberland Fusiliers, relates the Battalion's march back to camp near Vlamertinghe:

"Slow progress was made, for often the men had to step off the granite setts (of the pavé) onto the earthy border of the road. It should have been earthy, but the liberal rains and the ceaseless traffic had turned it into a quagmire, and the frequent excursions into this brought forth sundry expressions of "Tut! Tut!" , "Bother!" and even "Dash!"

[Scalyback]

Can it be possible that British soldiers in the Great War would resort to foul language? Surely not!

Cooke, in his history of the 9th Northumberland Fusiliers, relates the Battalion's march back to camp near Vlamertinghe:

"Slow progress was made, for often the men had to step off the granite setts (of the pavé) onto the earthy border of the road. It should have been earthy, but the liberal rains and the ceaseless traffic had turned it into a quagmire, and the frequent excursions into this brought forth sundry expressions of "Tut! Tut!" , "Bother!" and even "Dash!"

Officers near by or select hearing? I vaguely and vauge at that, remember a Welsh language programme on the Great War. It inferred that the Welsh non_conformist lads picked up a dirty mouth. Searving with the devil English was the cause!

[ss002d6252]

The story of the 6th DLI is quite reserved in description of language it uses "There had been no talking in the ranks nor any sound except the beat of ammunition boots on the pavé, but when this shell screamed overhead and burst, ejaculation in the good old Durham tongue could be heard passing cheerily up the length of the column."

[CarylW]

In a letter from 2nd Lt Aylmer Templar Wales South African Infantry

"C" Coy. 2nd Regt. written to his mother, dated 5th of July 1916, 12 days before he died at Delville Wood

He writes:

.....Where we are there is a tame magpie, it came and woke our fellows up by climbing over them swearing. I think it has been learning English from the troops here.....

[squirrel]

Anonymous poem....

As Private Thompson used to say,

He couldn't stand the War;

He cursed about it every day

And every night he swore;

And, while a sense of discipline

Carried him on through thick and thin,

The mud, the shells, the cold, the din

Annoyed him more and more.

The words with which we others cursed

Seemed mild and harmless quips

Compared to those remarks that burst

From Private Thompson's lips;

Haven't you ever heard about

The Prussian Guard at X Redoubt,

How Thompson's language laid them out

Before we came to grips?

[wainfleet]

It doesn't seem to have been a class or rank thing. Graves in GTAT remarks on having to control his "unrestrainedly foul language" when back on leave at his parents'. Presumably his fellow-officers weren't bothered by it. Swearing probably seems fairly inconsequential when you might be killed at any moment, without any warning. In a world where everyone was in the same boat, few people would bother to object. Back in civilian life, no longer surrounded by comrades-in-arms, one would revert to the restraint one had been brought up with.

As an aside (not wanting to go off topic), the social unacceptability of swearing continued up to the 70s and 80s, as older members here will know, but I wonder if it's possible for anyone under thirty to understand this, given the seeming absence of any restraints, self-imposed or otherwise, on the public use of "bad language" today.

I strongly suspect that Cooke of the 9th NF was being ironically reserved in his report of what was said. Any ex-soldier would have known what he really meant.

[connaughtranger]

A P Herbert put his feelings into words in his poem about General Shute

"For **** may be shot at odd corners,

And paper supplied there to suit,

But a **** would be shot without mourners

If someone shot that **** Shute"

He also noted that Shute's ".....Staff advisors consisted entirely of turds"

The width and depth of officer's knowledge of foul language was probably close to par with the men's

[connaughtranger]

Do you realise that you have censored one of Britain's greatest war poets?! Wonder if that ever happened during the war?

[squirrel]

The width and depth of officer's knowledge of foul language was probably close to par with the men's

But their sentence construction and grammar would have been appreciably better perhaps?

Would the "F" word have been more socially acceptable if they had substitited a "PH" for the "F"?

[phil andrade]

But their sentence construction and grammar would have been appreciably better perhaps?

Would the "F" word have been more socially accepetable if they had substitited a "PH" for the "F"?

Officers differed from men : they pronounced the "G" at the end of "F-----g".

Phil (PJA)

[DPas]

There seem to be quite a few "soldier's songs" from the period which use the F word, sh t, etc. For example:

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education/tutorials/intro/trench/songs.html