ccumbed to a veritable cult of the bayonet in the period before the war. It was regarded as the infantry weapon par excellence, the embodiment of the offensive spirit, and the bayonet charge as the surest indication of military elan among foot soldiers - the infantry equivalent of a cavalry charge.
In the realities of trench combat, as Jean Norton Cru has shown, the bayonet, despite its sinister appearance and exalted reputation, was little used and produced minor wounds in comparison to the effects of shrapnel and bullets. (46)
But it was a favourite for nicknames, the most famous of which is Rosalie, from a 1914 song far more popular among civilians than among soldiers. (47) The bayonet was known as la fourchette (the fork), and le cure-dents (the toothpick), as well as a tire-Boche and a tourne-Boche. In the last cases Boche, as the general slang term for the Germans, is substituted into existing phrases.
The former comes from tire-bouchon, a corkscrew, possibly a reference to the twisting movement that soldiers were taught to use in a bayonet thrust. The latter, tourne-boche, is formed from tournebroche, a kitchen spit for roasting meat and fowl in the fireplace. p> One of the most striking characteristics of slang is its inclination toward degradation rather than elevation, what Partridge following Carnoy has called dysphemism. (48) Niceforo calls it "l'esprit de degradation et de depreciation, "(" the spirit of degradation and depreciation ") and goes on to speak of slang as a form of assault directed at a higher class by an underclass. (49)
In its deliberate deformation of words, mispronunciation and taste for impropriety, slang may serve as the only act of rebellion allowed soldiers at war. While most mispronunciations of French place names were probably just that, a few are so wonderfully ironic that they must have been deliberate, such as the German deformation of Neufchatel to Neuschrapnell (new shrapnel). (50)
Fear, and the hatred it spawned, was directed above all toward the "powers that be," the perfidious and murderous ils (they) as Meyer calls them. (51)
The combat soldiers 'hatred of the rear, which certainly involved some envy as well as a sense of moral superiority, rested also on a sense of betrayal - the certainty that the powers, civilian or military, that ordered their lives cared little for them. As we will see, slang terms for rear echelon troops in French and German abound in animal and vegetal metaphors, constituting a figurative vilification of intelligence, courage, and manhood. p> The conviction that their lives were not valued emerges in numerous guises in the slang, including slang used for food, which was, naturally, a major preoccupation of troops who were often badly fed. The men exercised their traditional right to grumble about the food and create disparaging epithets to describe it, a custom going back to the "Grognards" of the Napoleonic Wars and beyond, and certainly continuing to our own time.
One of the staple rations in World War I was British canned beef, called "Bully" beef by the troops. ("Bully" is probably a corruption of the French bouillie, boiled). The Germans also called it "Bully," and liked it so well that they rarely returned from a trench raid without some, especially since German rations worsened as the war lengthened and the allied blockade cut off German resources.
By 1916, the staple of the German soldier's diet was a mixture of dried vegetables, mostly beans, that the Frontsoldaten called Drahtverhau (Barbed wire). Other German culinary delights included Stroh und Lehm (Straw and mud - yellow peas with sauerkraut), and Schrapnellsuppe (shrapnel soup - undercooked pea or bean soup).
Jam, essential for softening stale bread, was Heldenbutter (Hero's butter), Wagenschmiere (axle grease), and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ged @ chtnis-Schmiere (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Spread). (52) Some of these terms may refer specifically to the notorious turnip jam that became standard issue after the blockade and crop failures created severe sh ortages. Spread on ersatz bread made with sawdust and other fillers, it was neither appetizing nor nourishing. p> The French did not share their enemy's or ally's taste for "Bully". They referred to it as singe, (monkey), and boTte B grimaces, for the grimaces it produced. Other regular items in the French soldier's diet included schrapnells (undercooked peas or beans), and lentils, known as punaises (bugs).
They called a stew a rata, a shortened form of ratatouille, which in its general sense refers to a stew, not merely the vegetable stew which it designates in modern French. Rata however, also suggests the verb ratatiner (to shrivel or dry up), which may be a remark on the quality of army cooking. p> The use of slang as insult, as defensive and offensive weapon, reached its peak in the front line soldier'...
