It's Just Not Done, Old Boy.

[poliphilo]

There'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".

Comments

[shewhomust]

What I love anout those epithets is the continuity: didn't the French solfiers refer to thee Rnglish as 'goddams' during the Hundred Years' War>

[cmcmck]

I agree that 'fuck off' is more modern than WW1 so this is unlikely, but officers would certainly have sworn at men- he'd probably have told him to 'sod off', 'piss off' or 'bugger off'.

[cmcmck]

'Godons' They couldn't pronounce 'goddam'. :o)

[sovay]

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.

Stanhope in both the 1928 play and the 1930 film of Journey's End does not ever say "fuck" because it would not have been dramatically permissible, but he does swear at everyone around him almost constantly, which seemed realistic to me.

One of the early entries collected in Sapper Martin: The Secret Great War Diary of Jack Martin (2009)—December 30, 1916—sadly observes that the best soldiers' songs will almost certainly never get field-collected and published because "it is a fact that those which are the most typical, the most forceful, with the most 'character' and the most wit are easily the most unprintable."

American soldiers were known to their Aussie allies as "carksuckers"- presumably because that was a favourite word of theirs- and British soldiers as "fookers".

I hope the Hundred Years War is delighted.

Gordon L. Rottman's FUBAR: Soldier Slang of World War II (2011) is too late for your research purposes, but highly recommended by me on general principles. It's as sweary in multiple languages as you would expect, but it's also where I learned that German soldiers retreating from Russia after Stalingrad referred to the disastrous slog as das Napoleon-Gedächtnis-Rennen—the Napoleon Memorial Race. I still think that's funny.

[poliphilo]

I believe so.

[poliphilo]

There are reports of WWI soldiers being punished for using obscenities but I suspect these were aberrations- and most officers were wise enough to let the men swear at will.

It's infuriating that writers in the past- at least those who wanted to get into print- were prohibited from telling us how people actually spoke.

"The Napoleon Memorial Race" is good.

[poliphilo]

But how can we know? Soldiers in the Great War were certainly saying "fuck" and it's only a short step to "fuck off". I find it hard to believe they wouldn't have made it.

[razorbladeromance]

OMG LOL... I think soldiers DID swear.. it's just lost in the annals of time.

[cmcmck]

Dictionaries tend to source its origins a bit later.

[poliphilo]

Of course they did, but records are sparse to non-existent because it was taboo to put words like "fuck" into print.

[poliphilo]

Dictionaries are reliant upon printed sources and there can be a gap between people saying a thing and someone else writing it down- especially when the words in question are taboo.

[razorbladeromance]

<3 how they do that.