Although French soldiers left in August 1914 eager to fight, their enthusiasm started to decline when the âwar of movementâ came to an end on the Western Front. As military operations stabilised into trench warfare, multiple unit papers were produced under the most difficult circumstances on or near the front line, sometimes literally in the trenches.1 Many of these magazines published a limited number of issues2 of only a few pages, handwritten or typed, and often illustrated. They were duplicated by makeshift means, using reprographic equipment such as jelly or spirit duplicators and sometimes small printing presses. The primary aim of these wartime journals was to entertain idle soldiers during their unoccupied time. Although there was an official Bulletin des armĂ©es de la RĂ©publique, of which one copy was delivered for every ten men,3 these more unofficial trench publications were regarded benevolently by the French military authorities.4 Because the poilus (French soldiers) were disgusted by publications adhering to the principle of the Union sacrĂ©e and continuously predicting the imminent collapse of the German army, they aspired to more authentic and sincere newspapers, produced entirely for consumption by soldiers on active service, and taking into account their state of mind.
For Australian soldiers, the political context was quite different. Australian troops arrived on the Western Front in 1916, two years after the French had begun fighting there. They nevertheless embraced trench journalism, as they already had while in the Middle East, and even before that on the troopships as they headed to war.5
A multitude of national armies and units wished to publish their own journals, many of which aimed at humour.6 While trench publications used humour as a way of coping with the horrors of war, and relied on imagination and creativity, they also could offer realistic narratives of the trench experience. They are therefore a useful resource for historians, offering unequalled insights into everyday life and death and revealing aspects of the mood of the time.7 For linguists wanting to research language in a time of war, these journals also claimed to encapsulate the real âspiritâ and language of the soldiers, as stressed by Phillip L. Harris, editor of Aussie: The Australian soldiersâ magazine: âI claim no credit for the success of Aussie. That belongs to the Diggers. Aussie was not a paper done for the Diggers, but by them. Thatâs why it reflects their spirit.â8
While there is a significant body of scholarship about trench journals that were produced during the First World War,9 and about the language of the soldiers during this conflict,10 no academic publication has focused yet on the image of the enemy as portrayed in these trench publications. For the amateur journalist, depicting the enemy was a challenging exercise, as they had to maintain a fine balance between hate and respect, reality and propaganda, and to do this in the context of a publication aimed at providing a humorous take on life in the trenches. As we will see later, in describing the enemy authors can often end up revealing more about themselves than about the enemy. Through a comparison of French and Australian trench journals, the purpose of this article is to decipher the ethos of the soldier as presented through language. The corpus used for analysis includes 13 issues of Aussie Magazine (AIF) printed in France, first in FlĂȘtre, then Fauquembergues11; and a range of French trench publications, including 3 issues of Bochophage (68th infantry regiment)12; and several issues of Rigolboche (10th division).13
Language and the Enemy
How do trench journals convey the image of the enemy? In a body of work largely characterised by the unique language and modes of expression of Australian diggers and the French poilus, a study of which words were used to describe the German soldiers can give valuable insight into how the enemy was portrayed and imagined. A careful reading of the journals, strengthened by a quantitative corpus analysis, can suggest some ways of answering the question of how the enemy was portrayed by soldier-journalists.
In order to understand French portrayals of the enemy in the First World War, depictions of the enemy in earlier soldier publications and propaganda also need to be considered. A strong heritage of hatred towards the Germans had existed in France since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Following the destruction of Napoleonâs Grande ArmĂ©e in 1814, the Prussian and Austrian armies invaded France (1814â15) and left permanent marks on the collective French psyche. The Franco-Prussian war (1870â71) was another trauma for the defeated French people, who had to concede most of the Alsace region and some parts of Lorraine to the Germans. The word Prussien, with its diminutive Prusco, bears witness to this traumatic experience. As stated by the TrĂ©sor de la Langue Française, this term conveyed the image of a hostile and threatening country.14 It was also a reminder of the brutality of Prussian troops and was associated with the âBarbarian hordesâ15 that invaded Gaul in December 406.16
For the French, the First World War was a defensive war, as Germany had declared war on France on 3 August 1914 and subsequently invaded Luxembourg, Belgium, and France. The enemy occupied French soil and threatened both civilians and the military. For the Australians, however, the First World War was joined as a British fight, with Australia sending an army to support the imperial cause. Australian soldiers fought far away from home, with their family not directly threatened by the enemy. Notably, there was a strong German presence in the Australian population. For instance, by the mid-nineteenth century, Germans were the largest non-British group both in Victoria (with 10,418 in 1861) and in South Australia (with 10,000 in 1851).17
Naming the Enemy
Both the French and Australian soldiers employed a wide range of terms for the enemy, among them nicknames....