Aceldama – field of blood (Greek).
Adjutant – the battalion’s administrative officer.
Aid post – the battalion medical centre, home to the medical officer and stretcher bearers, and located in the front line; the Royal Army Medical Corps’s Advanced Dressing Stations were in the support lines, and behind them were Casualty Clearing Stations.
‘Archies’ – anti-aircraft guns and their fire
Area shoot – the bombardment of a set area of ground in order to deny its use to the enemy.
Aristophanes (c. 448–385 BC) – Greek comic playwright.
Asquith, Herbert Henry (1852–1928) – British prime minister 1908– 1916, and leader of the Liberal party.
Assyrians – the reference is to Byron’s poem, ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’: ‘The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold’.
Barbusse, Henri (1873–1935) – his novel of the war, Le Feu (translated into English as Under Fire in 1918), was first published in 1916. It was hailed during the war as the war novel and won the Prix Goncourt; Barbusse was a communist, who moved to Russia in 1918.
Barrage – artillery bombardment to create a screen, either to protect one’s own troops in an advance, or to block the movements of enemy troops.
Batman – officer’s servant.
Battalion colours on shoulders or back – seems to be a reference to the identification put on the backs of infantry tunics so that aerial observers could observe their progress.
Beaune – red wine from Burgundy.
BEF – British Expeditionary Force; the name given to the force sent to France in 1914 and retained by it for the rest of the war.
Belloc, Hilaire (1870–1953) – now best known for his comic verse for children, Cautionary Tales, but a prolific author and essayist. His son was killed serving with the Royal Flying Corps in 1918.
Bing Boys, The – a very popular musical comedy of 1916–17.
Boccherini, Luigi Rodolfo (1743–1805) – Italian composer and cellist.
bombing blocks – once an enemy trench had been occupied, units equipped with grenades (bombs) would position themselves at the ends of the occupied section to prevent adjacent enemy troops from regaining the lost section by advancing from the flanks.
Bombing officer – officer in charge of specialist grenade throwers.
Bottomley, Horatio (1860–1933) – Liberal Member of Parliament 1906–12, but lost his seat when he became bankrupt. His journal, John Bull, grew rabidly anti-German during the war. He returned to Parliament after the war, but was convicted of fraud and imprisoned.
Box respirator – replaced the gas mask and carried by all troops in forward areas from 1917; by passing air through a metal box containing chemicals it enabled air to be inhaled during a gas attack.
Boyau – French term for communication trench.
Breastwork – a trench which reached to chest height.
Brigade – normally three battalions strong, plus supporting troops, but could vary in size from two battalions to four.
Brigade-major – staff officer to assist the brigadier-general in commanding the brigade.
Brobdingnag – the second land, populated by giants, visited by Gulliver in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726).
Bully beef – tinned corned beef from Argentina, and eaten hot or cold.
Calcined – burnt to ashes.
Caliban – the deformed evil monster in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Cambridge Magazine – in which Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) published many of his poems during the war.
Chaplin, Charlie – the comic films of the British film star, who had been so successful in the United States, were massively popular at the front.
Chinese labourers – China did not enter the war until August 1918, but it contributed a Labour Corps raised in northern China from 1916, and by January 1918 nearly 100,000 Chinese had been sent to France. The pressure on shipping created by the German U-boat campaign combined with the need to transport the US army to Europe halted the scheme in March 1918.
Chloride of lime – used as a disinfectant in the trenches.
Clare, John (1793–1864) – poet of the English countryside from Northamptonshire.
Close support lines – trenches behind the front line were called support trenches.
Comines, Philipe de, or Philippe de Commines (1447–c.1511) – diplomat who served both Burgundy and France, and whose memoirs embracing his political and military life are remarkably modern, not least in their cynicism towards those he had served.
Communication trench – a trench at right angles to the front line, to allow movement to and from the front line.
Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille (1796–1845) – French landscape painter.
Corps commander – the highest command level with a fixed formation was the division, made up of three brigades, plus its own artillery, engineers, etc. As divisions moved round the front they were allocated to different corps, whose permanent troops consisted only of a headquarters and supporting troops; the corps was typically responsible for three divisions.
Crome, John (1768–1821) – Romantic painter and founder of the Norwich school.
Counter-mines – when enemy mining activity was detected, tunnels would be dug in its direction, and mines placed to destroy the enemy’s mines.
Craunch – to crunch or crush.
Crump – shell burst of a heavy shell.
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) – Italian poet, the first part of whose great work, The Divine Comedy, was devoted to a journey to hell (Inferno) and was frequently cited as a metaphor for the battlefield.
Desdemona’s handkerchief – in Shakespeare’s Othello, the handkerchief of the beautiful Desdemona is wrongly interpreted by Othello as evidence of his wife’s infidelity with Cassio.
Dixie – large iron cooking pot, used for bringing hot rations to the front line.
Dressing station – see Aid Post.
Drive – a horizontal passage in a mine.
Duckboard – slatted flooring made of wood used for the bottoms of trenches or to make paths across muddy ground.
Dynasts, The – a verse drama in three parts, published between 1904 and 1908, written by Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), whose poetry Blunden much admired.
Eclympastere – god of sleep, associated with Morpheus, the god of dreams, in Geoff rey Chaucer’s poem of 1369, ‘The Book of the Duchesse’, line 167.
Egg bomb – small grenade, which could be thrown further but had less killing power than an ordinary grenade.
Estaminet – small combination of café and pub, found in French villages, which served alcohol, basic food and coffee.
Fascine – bundles of tightly bound branches or faggots used to fill holes in the ground or to build up trenches.
Field punishment – punishment given in the field, which prevented having to withdraw the off ender from service with his unit and could also be exemplary for those with whom he served; the most notorious was Field Punishment Number 1 which required the offender to be tied to a wheel for a set number of days.
Field Service Pocket Book – published in 1914 (with amendments in 1916), and issued to all officers and non-commissioned officers; it dealt with sanitation, communications, arms, pay, clothing, discipline, etc.
Field telephones – were the most reliable means of communication at the front, although the wire was often cut by shell fire, and their messages could be intercepted by the enemy. Messages sent by wireless could be picked up by anybody listening for them, and so had to be encoded; this often made them too slow for immediate tactical use. Moreover, in the First World War wireless sets were too heavy to be man-portable.
Fire-step – a step on the side of the trench facing the enemy, on which soldiers stood to see the enemy and shoot at him.
Flammenwerfer – German for flame-thrower.
Flannel mask – in 1915 the first forms of gas mask were cloths soaked in bicarbonate of soda, or urine if that was not available; they were replaced by gauze pads soaked in castor oil.
Flying pig – bomb fired from trench mortar (qv).
Foot, the – i.e. the infantry.
Footballs – bombs for trench mortar (qv).
Freiligrath, Ferdinand (1810–76) – Blunden was wrong to give him the aristocratic ‘von’, and Freiligrath’s revolutionary and liberal leadings meant that he spent much of his life in exile from Germany. A lyric poet, he also translated Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson and Shakespeare into German.
Fullerphone – a British device used to transmit telegraphic messages via a weak electrical current over telephone lines; its messages were much harder to intercept than those sent by field telephone and by 1917–18 it was preferred to the latter.
grenades – used in the trench fighting of siege warfare in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries regained popularity in trench warfare from 1915; often called ‘bombs’, and the best known British variety was the Mills bomb.
Gunpits – sunken gun positions, which provided some protection from counter-battery fire and could be more easily covered in camouflage netting to prevent detection from the air.
Henry, O. – the pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862–1910), American short-story writer.
Herbert, George (1593–1633) – Church of England priest, metaphysical poet and hymn-writer.
house – or housey housey; better known today as bingo.
Hudson, W. H. (1841–1922) – born in Argentina of US parents, he moved to Sussex in his later years; naturalist and novelist; author of Green Mansions (1904).
Il Penseroso – a pastoral poem written in 1645 by John Milton.
Islands – self-contained positions with all-round defence, forward of the front line.
Jocks – soldiers in Scottish regiments.
Keep – an independent position in a trench system which could resist attack from any direction.
Kitchener, Field Marshal Lord (1850–1916) – the secretary of state for war was drowned on 5 June 1916, when HMS Hampshire was sunk in the North Sea, en route for Russia.
Kite balloon – an observation balloon, with a basket below for the observer, controlled by a cable attaching it to the ground.
Kluck, Alexander von (1846–1934) – commanded the German 1st Army at the start of the war. Placed on the right wing, it confronted the British Expeditionary Force in the German invasion of Belgium and France, and played a key role in the battle of the Marne in early September. Kluck was wounded in March 1915 and never received further active employment.
Knife-rests – portable barbed wire entanglements on X-shaped frames.
Krupp – the German armaments firm, based at Essen, and producer of artillery, shells, railways and ships; headed in the First World War by Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.
La Fontaine, Jean de (1621–1695) – French author of fables inspired by Aesop.
Lazarus – a reference to the miracle told in St John’s Gospel, chapter 11, verses 10–16, in which Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead after four days.
Lewis gun – a light machine gun, with a cylindrical drum for a magazine, developed in the United States, and widely used by the British army from 1916.
Liaison officers, artillery – officers seconded from artillery formations to serve with the infantry and act as a link between the two arms.
‘Live and let live’ – the name given to the informal but widely accepted routine of trench warfare, so that neither side engaged in hostile activity against the other, or if it did it did so according to a predictable timetable and pattern.
Lyddite – high explosive used in shells.
Lytton, Neville – Neville Stephen Bulwer-Lytton, 3rd Earl Lytton (1879–1951), painter and Olympic tennis player, served with 11th Royal Sussex Regiment, before moving to the Press Bureau, where he was responsible for looking after foreign correspondents; published a book after the war, The Press and the General Staff (1920), which contains accounts of the 11th Royal Sussex in 1916.
Maltese cart – a two-wheeled horse-drawn cart.
Maria Marten, or Murder in the Red Barn – a very popular but anonymous Victorian melodrama based on an actual murder in Polstead, Sussex, in 1827.
Marvell, Andrew (1621–78) – English metaphysical poet and Member of Parliament.
Mess corporal – the senior servant in the officers’ mess.
Mess president – the officer responsible for the organization and ceremonial in an officers’ mess.
Mills bombs – a form of grenade, shaped like a pineapple, and ignited by removing a pin and pulling a lever.
Minenwerfer – or mine thrower in German; a form of trench mortar which threw bombs also known as footballs, Christmas puddings or plum puddings, etc
Mixen – archaic word for dunghill.
Montague, C. E. (1867–1928) – English journalist with the Manchester Guardian. Although he disapproved of the war, he enlisted in 1914 at the age of 47. After he was commissioned, he acted as the BEF’s escort to important visitors to France. His principal (and critical) book on the war is Disenchantment (1922), but he also treated the subject in his other writings, including Fiery Particles (1923) and Rough Justice (1926).
Montreuil – town close to the northern French coast, it was home to the BEF’s General Headquarters.
Muffled mallets – driving in posts at night (e.g. for barbed wire) could generate considerable noise and so alert the enemy; the mallets were therefore wrapped in cloth to deaden the sound.
Nash, John (1893–1977) – self-taught artist and younger brother of Paul Nash, himself an artist. He served with the Artists’ Rifles 1916–18, and became an official war artist in the latter year.
Number Nine – pill issued to relieve the constipation caused by frontline diets.
OAS – appears to be an abbreviation for ‘on active service’.
Orderly officer – officer appointed for the day to perform inspections and other duties, including visiting the men while they were eating.
Oysters – regimental nickname.
Parados – a bank of earth built behind a trench to give cover from reverse fire.
Parallel – a trench or tunnel (in the case of mines) parallel to the front to be attacked.
Periscope – widely used in trench warfare to enable the enemy to be observed without having to raise the head above the parapet of the trench.
Pigeons – carrier pigeons were used to carry communications, especially by attacking units isolated from fixed telephone lines by their advance.
Pill-box – small fortification built of reinforced concrete, and particularly favoured by the Germans in sectors where the water table was high and so militated against trench construction.
Pine-apple gas – chlorine gas, used in 1915, smelt of a mixture of pineapple and pepper.
Pine-apple shells – a German mortar bomb with a wind-vane.
Pioneer – a military labourer, especially important in trench warfare for the construction of field fortifications and communication systems.
Pisgah – according to the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 34, verse 1, Moses was commanded by God to view the Promised Land from Mount Nebo or Pisgah.
Plum puddings – trench mortar bombs.
Power buzzer – a reliable signals system, widely used in 1917; it worked through earth induction and therefore its messages could be easily picked up by enemy listening posts.
Press Bureau – set up at the BEF’s General Headquarters, and subordinate to the Directorate of Military Intelligence.
Quartermaster – the officer responsible for supplies of food and clothing within a battalion; normally commissioned from the ranks and therefore likely to be older than other officers of his rank.
Red Cross barge – the evacuation of casualties by barge gave the wounded a smoother and more comfortable journey than was likely on the roads of northern France.
Red-hatted cranks – seems most likely to refer to the Military Police (or Red Caps from the red covers to their caps); staff offi cers had red bands to their caps, but were normally referred to as ‘red tabs’, because of the red gorget patches on their tunics.
Reserve line – the third line of trenches, behind the front line and the support line.
Revet – to face the wall of the trench with supporting material – stakes, wood, Sandbags, etc – to hold the earth in place.
RFs – an abbreviation for the Royal Fusiliers.
Ribbons – medal ribbons were worn on the left breast of the tunic.
Rifle-grenade – the rifle was used as a launcher for grenades, so enabling greater accuracy at longer ranges with heavier payloads.
Rockets – were typically used for signalling when other forms of communication were inoperable; for example to indicate the progress of an attack to those in support, and to call for artillery fire (as in SOS – qv).
RTO – Railway Transport Officer; effectively an army station master.
rum – issued as a ration to troops in the front line, and especially valued before an attack.
Runners – used to communicate between units, carrying either written or oral messages; especially important for units which had attacked and needed to get messages back across no man’s land.
Salient – a part of the line which jutted out, and so had flanks exposed to the enemy; with a capital ‘S’ it denoted the Ypres salient.
Sap – used as a verb or noun in siege warfare to denote digging outwards from a trench; so a sap could be a trench dug forward into no man’s land or a link between a trench and another emplacement.
Sautteau, Albert – French poet.
Screw pickets – or corkscrew pickets, designed to be screwed into the ground so as to avoid noise, and to support barbed wire.
Service, Robert (1874–1958) – Scots poet who found fame in Canada, with his ballads about the gold miners of the Yukon. He served with the Canadian Red Cross during the war, and published The Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man in 1916.
Shrapnel – shell named after its inventor, Henry Shrapnel; filled with metal balls, it was exploded by a time fuse and scattered its balls in a lethal arc.
Singer’s Naaimaschinen – the Flemish for Singer’s sewing machine.
Smith, Willie – presumably a cricketer, given Blunden’s enthusiasm for the game. Willie Smith (1885–1964) played for Derbyshire in 1913; William Charles Smith (1877–1946), known as the ‘Razor’, was an off-break bowler for Surrey.
S.O.S. – or ‘save our souls’, the distress signal in morse code originally used at sea. In the trenches it was used by forward units wanting immediate supporting fire from artillery or machine-guns; the signal was normally given by rocket.
Spanish Onions – regimental nickname.
The Spoon River Anthology (1915) – short, free-form poems by the US poet Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950), describing the life of a fictional small town in Illinois.
Steel trees – created to camouflage snipers.
Sterne, Laurence (1713–1768) – Anglican clergyman and novelist, whose best known work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, is full of military references and anecdotes.
Stick-bomb – German cylindrical hand grenade, with a wooden handle designed to aid its throwing.
Sunlight Zeep – Flemish for Sunlight soap.
Support line – the line between the front line and the reserve line in a network of trenches.
Tank – a code name. Tanks were first used by the British at Flers on the Somme on 15 September 1916. The tank of the First World War was a weapons system still in evolution, with a low speed and a poor power to weight ratio; it was employed in support of infantry as a mobile gun platform and wire-crusher. Its weight made it of limited utility in the mud of the Ypres battle, and it was prone to mechanical problems wherever it was used.
Teniers, David the younger (1610–1690) – Flemish artist, the most distinguished of a family of painters.
Tennyson’s oracle – Song: Who can say, from the early poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892).
Three-o-three – .303 inches was the calibre of the short magazine Lee-Enfield rifle, the standard infantry weapon of the British army.
Thule – in ancient Greek literature a distant land, far to the north.
Tivolies, The – the British army in the First World War embraced two acting traditions in providing its own entertainment. Regiments serving overseas in the colonies during the nineteenth century organized their own recreations and sports. After 1914 those who entered the army from civilian life brought with them the traditions of the musical hall as the basis for amateur dramatics at the front. Several divisions had their own entertainment troupe.
Tomlinson, H. M. (1873–1958) – British writer, born in the east end of London, who worked as a shipping clerk, and then travelled the world. During the war he worked as an official war correspondent, until joining The Nation, which opposed the war, in 1917. His best known book about the war was All our Yesterdays (1930).
Traverse – partitions built in trenches, either with sandbags or by constructing the trench on a zig-zag line, to prevent enfilading fire and to contain the effect of shell-bursts.
Trench catapult – the advent of trench warfare in 1914–15 prompted the reintroduction of the catapult for short-range, high-trajectory fire; versions using rubber slings were largely ousted by the mortar, but others using metal springs lasted into 1916.
Trench feet – feet could suffer from frost-bite as a result of standing in freezing cold water; the condition was occasionally treated as a crime in order to ensure that soldiers did their best to avoid the complaint and to prevent it being the basis for malingering.
Trench mortar – the mortar, like the grenade, was a weapon of siege warfare revived by trench fi ghting; it fired a bomb from a trench at high elevation, the angle opening out the chances of the projectile falling in the enemy trench. Because the flight was slow and irregular, the path of the bomb could be observed by both sides.
Trench tramway – the fixed nature of trench warfare facilitated the construction of light railway lines along which heavier equipment could be conveyed up to the front.
Tristram – the hero of the novel by Laurence Sterne (qv).
Twelve-inch rail gun – very heavy guns fired large shells over long ranges (up to 20 miles or so), but were proportionately heavy. Rails both prevented damage to the roads and gave the guns a firm base from which to fi re.
Very cartridge – invented by Samuel W. Very, the Very light was fired from a pistol and used both to illuminate no man’s land at night and to signal; also (wrongly) spelled as Verey.
Waves – an infantry tactical formation in line abreast, designed to follow the barrage of the artillery and keep close to its protection.
West Spring Gun – a form of trench catapult which used a mechanical spring to fire grenades; patented in October 1915, it was formally dropped in July 1916.
Whizzbang – a light shell fired from a field gun; the name referred to the sound of its flight (which was much faster and more direct than a mortar) and its near immediate explosion.
Wilsonian – Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), president of the United States 1912–1921, projected a vision of the post-war world, resting on the League of Nations, international arbitration, and the rights of self-determination, which captured the hopes of those who fought in the war.
Windy bombs – ‘windy’ was trench slang for being afraid; it is not clear whether these were grenades used when the Germans themselves were afraid or which caused fear.
Wooden trolley lines – light lines designed to move equipment and supplies mechanically to the front, rather than having to be carried by men.
YMCA with triangles – a facetious reference to the red triangle, the sign of the Young Men’s Christian Association, which opened clubs behind the front for the sale of tea, coffee and biscuits.
Young’s Night Thoughts – Edward Young (1683–1765) wrote a poem in blank verse, published in nine parts between 1742 and 1745, called ‘The Complaint: Or night-thoughts on life, death and immortality.’