It's Just Not Done, Old Boy.
Feb. 14th, 2020 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThere's a low-level debate going on in the Telegraph- and perhaps elsewhere- about the swearing in Sam Mendes' 1917. In today's paper Nicolas Tolstoy says it's inconceivable that an officer would have told a private soldier to "fuck off" because it was drummed into him at Sandhurst that officers don't swear at their men.
Really? I can see that rule being observed in peacetime in the notoriously puritanical 1950s, but among battle-wearied men at the front in World War I?...
Unfortunately there are no survivors around to settle the question for us.
I did a bit of research- and while I can't answer the question about officers saying "fuck" I did find some interesting bits and pieces. For instance in the book Digger Dialects- a dictionary of Australian army slang published in 1919- W.H. Dowling (mis-spelling in the interests of decency) recorded that American soldiers were known to their Aussie allies as "carksuckers"- presumably because that was a favourite word of theirs- and British soldiers as "fookers".
Really? I can see that rule being observed in peacetime in the notoriously puritanical 1950s, but among battle-wearied men at the front in World War I?...
Unfortunately there are no survivors around to settle the question for us.
I did a bit of research- and while I can't answer the question about officers saying "fuck" I did find some interesting bits and pieces. For instance in the book Digger Dialects- a dictionary of Australian army slang published in 1919- W.H. Dowling (mis-spelling in the interests of decency) recorded that American soldiers were known to their Aussie allies as "carksuckers"- presumably because that was a favourite word of theirs- and British soldiers as "fookers".
