December 23, 1915. 
LAND AND W A T E K 
PHRASEOLOGY OF THE FRONT. 
By Boyd Gable. 
H 
ULI.O Smithic ! Where's Dusty Miller to-day ? 
I 'ear "c'smountcchi lance stripe an' gone in 
in the Suicide Club. Is that right ? " 
" Ah wee. But to-day 'e ought to be 
about in Blighty again." 
" Blighty, eh ! 'As 'e stopped one then ? " 
" Ah, Nvec. Got a cushy one." 
" An' 'ow was it ? " 
'' They was straffin' us wi' Whizz-Bangs in the 
Daily 'Ate yesterday an' Dusty copped a lump o' H.E- 
;hrap that put 'is arm out o' action. But the Poultice 
\vallah found 'is soo-venier, so 'e ought to be all teek." 
Now that might be a sample of an ordinary scrap of 
conversation between two soldiers at the Front, and it is 
so ordinary that no one there would comment upon it. 
Yet it contains some specimens of the extraordinary 
jumble of slang that is common in the Army to-day — a 
slang to which the extremes of East and W'est have con- 
tributed, which in part has run back through Army phrase- 
ology into unlixedly remote periods and yet has been 
brought sufficiently up-to-date to tit the latest develop- 
ments of the present war. It is quite possible, or even 
probable, that Marlborough's men talked as we do to-day 
of " mounting " or " putting up the lance," for certain 
it is that the rank of lance-corporal which the one stripe 
on the sleeve denotes is a Unk with the past when lance 
and halberd were the weapons of the British N.C.O. 
And the " rookie " (recruit) of to-day strings words that 
joined the Army when it belonged to " John Company " 
in pre-Indian Mutiny days on to others so new-coined 
that they have not yet entered the pages of the most 
.modern and complete slang dictionary. ".Whizz-Bang " 
and " Suicide Club " and "Daily Hate " are likely to 
remain slang of the Army only but " straff" for instance 
is one that has already passed for ever into the country's 
slang. It has broken away from the German straffe 
by dropping the final syllable, and it has grown to a 
meaning much wider than ever it had in the original. 
A trench may be " straffed " by shell fire, or a soldier 
" crimed " (found guilty of an offence or crime) may 
get a " straffing " (reprimand, scolding) from the O.C. 
(officer commanding) as well as a dose of P.P. (Field 
Punishment), or being "reverted" (reduced back from 
" non-com." to the private). 
The delighted avidity with which " straff " was 
seized and adopted by "the troops," — the Army never 
speaks to itself of itself as " the Tommies," as " civvies " 
do, "civvies" being civilians, non-Army ; and in another 
sense and meaning civilian clothing — is an excellent 
instance of the happy knack the Service has of making a 
jest of anything that is meant to be profoundly deep and 
serious, of turning ponderous tragedy to mere farce. To 
" straff " or " gottstraff " a broken bootlace or a shower 
of rain, to call down on the most trivial matters, the 
most awful curse which an incensed Germany could invoke 
upon a hated England, to use so lightly that it meant 
nothing, the dreadful oath that Germany wore on its 
lapc' buttons, repeated in its prayers, and inscribed on 
its banners, appealed instantly and irresistibly to the 
Army. " Gott straffe England " was the most de- 
liberately dreadful curse the Germans could think upon. 
And the Army makes a mock of it. 
Another very fine specimen of this ingeniously 
flouting humour is seen in the name bestowed on the very 
very few survivors of " French's contemptible little 
Army." These men boast now and wear as their 
proudest right the title of " The Old Cpntemptiblcs." 
I hope, because I am very sure it would annoy him 
intensely, that the Kaiser knows how his scathingly con- 
temptuous insult has been twisted to the use it has, that 
to call a man an " Old Contemptible " is paying homage 
to what he has seen and been through, is admitting him 
to a rank and honour which no wealth cin buy and no 
King can bestow. 
These arc the modern additions to the Army lan- 
guage. There arc plenty others which have had to be 
coined to fit the conditions of the present wa.r. "The 
Suicide Club " denotes the bombing company, and. in 
grim jest, the risks attachinu to its work. 1' Tickler's 
Artillery " and the " Plum-and-Apple Shooters " are the 
trench mortars and mortarmen, because the first mortars, 
fired a home-made bomb manufactured from empty pots 
of Tickler's Plum and Apple Jam, a manufacturer' and a 
mixture served se\'en days a week for so many months 
that it will never be forgotten — or forgiven — by the Front." 
The F'ront is rapidly enriching its language with a 
selection of the commoner French words picked up and 
used in bargainings and conversations in the shops and 
estaminets (public-houses) and the reserve billets. W^here 
a word is learned verbally it follows roughly — very 
roughly sometimes — the French pronunciation, and 
" Ah wee " or " Aw wee " (oui) and " nong " and " bong " 
and ' compree " bid fair to supplant " Yes " and " No " 
and " Good," and "Do you understand?" in the Army's 
language. Where a word has been learned from print, 
the rule of phonetics has obtained and the " estaminet " 
on the inn sign board and the names of towns on the 
map are given full value for their spelling. It is rather 
amusing to find that the local inhabitants are cheerfully 
following our pronunciations and say " Wipers " and ' 
" Balool " (Balieul) and " no compree " as smoothly as 
the best of us. In the French, too, the Front has ex- 
tended widely the original meaning of words and " soo- 
venier " covers all sorts of things that could possibly be 
a present or souvenir from a cap badge to a loaf of 
bread or a bullet. The bullet or splinter which the ' 
Poultice-wallah or Linseed Lancer (doctor or " medical " 
or R.A.M.C.) extract from the person of a " casualtied " 
man is naturally and especially, and if he can obtain it 
literally " Lis souvenir." 
In adopting the French words the Front is only follow- 
ing the old fondness for " slinging the bat " (talking the 
language), which has enriched barrack-room language 
for generations with Hindustani words. The " wallah " 
(man, person, fellow) of India is tacked on to all sorts ol ' 
words. A foot-wallah (infantryman) a dooley (dhooli- 
stretcher) wallah, a dhoby-wallah (laundry man — although 
in France usually a woman back in rest billets) are still 
words used at the Front, although their use has not come 
generally to the " K.'s" It is still mainly in the old 
Regular Army regiments, too, that you hear such old 
Hindustani as " rooty " (bread) and " pawnee " (water), 
and " hitherao " (come here) and even there "pang"' 
and " low " (I'eau) are supplanting the older words. 
But there are some Hindustani words that are as common 
amongst the New and the Old Army. " Bhghty " and 
" a cushy one " are stock cj notations now throughout 
all branches of the Service. "Blighty" means. 
Home, and is a corniption from the Belattee oL 
India which means England or the country whence came 
the white troops. " Blighty " has no connection, as I 
have seen it suggested, with the Front's name for a place, 
wherein dwell the " blighters " who shirk enlistment or 
strike in munition works. The Front has some strongci 
names than " blighters " for these. 
Cushy, another word from India, in old barrack- 
roomese meant easy, or soft, or light, and a man spoke 
of " a cushy job " meaning a soft job or easy berth, or 
" a cushy non-com." for an easy-going, not-too-strict non- 
commissioned officer. But now the Front uses the word 
mainly in reference to " a cushy one " — that is, a light 
wound which will incapacitate a man and send him Home, 
and one man toasts another with " Here's to a cushy one," 
gladly wishing a wound despite its pain and risk as pre- 
ferable to the misery of active service and the possibility 
of death. Be sure Smithie told with considerable envy of. 
Dusty Miller having "stopped one" (been wounded— 
a missile, of course, being " stopped " by its human 
billet) and having got " a cushy one." " Teek " again 
is Hindustani and means " sound" or "right." 
Both "Smithie " and " Dusty Miller," by the way, 
are the names which a peculiar Army custom bestows 
automatically on every Smith and Miller. " Dusty " 
fits naturally and understandably enough to a Miller, 
But I do not know why the same rule should make 
every Clark a" Nobby "Clark, nor have I found a reason 
from any soldier I have asked except vaguely that a 
clerk is usually " nobby " or " a bit of a nob." 
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