The Birth of the F-Bomb by Jeffrey K. Walker

Jeffrey K. Walker is back today with the promised post on the Birth of the F-Bomb. Intriguing stuff – to be filed under the category ‘Who Knew’.

There’s an irresistible impulse amongst we humans always to overestimate the uniqueness of our own situation. In the USA, for example, we’re currently hyperventilating over the hideous partisanship and coarseness of our political discourse.

I call bollocks.

There’s really nothing worse than what the Jeffersonians and the Adams-Hamilton Federalists meted out to each other 200 years ago. Adams was labeled “a hideous hermaphroditical character” by a journalist hired by Jefferson. Adams responded by throwing said journalist in prison for sedition. The happy aftermath to this story is that the journalist, a Scotsman (not surprisingly) by the name of Callender, later turned on Jefferson and outed ‘The Author of the Declaration’ as ‘The Father of the Children of His Slave’ Sally Hemings. (Who was herself probably the half-sister of Jefferson’s deceased wife. It all got rather complicated in Ol’ Virginny.) 

So I for one believe things could get much worse.

The same sense that Our Time Is Utterly Unique applies to… the F-Bomb. My kids seem to think they invented the word f@ck in all its marvelous polygrammatical guises. I beg to differ, but until recently I’d kinda thought MY generation invented everyday use of the word f#ck. I was woefully mistaken. 

In fact, the first usage of the word f$ck in any kind of sexual sense appears to date to the early 14th century when a man from Chester in England is referred to in a writing as “Roger Fucke-by-the-Navele.” Which says something most hilarious about poor Roger’s sexual prowess, we may safely assume. The first use of the F-word in literature dates to a poem written by a Scotsman (not surprisingly) named William Dunbar: “Yit be his feiris he wald haue fukkit / Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane.” But since less than .0008% of the world’s population could even come close to understanding this, it’s kind of a “no harm, no foul” usage.

The first book of a fiction trilogy I’m writing came out in May [2017], set during and after the First World War. Doing research for these books, I discovered that the F-Bomb, as in the carpet-bombing usage of the word f$ck in each phrase of every conversation, was probably invented by millions of English-speaking soldiers slogging around the trenches during the First World War. (I stand ready to be disproven by all you U.S. Civil War or Napoleonic War authors out there.)

It seems to have become something of a Word of Universal Usage among the Brits, Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, Newfoundlanders, South Africans, and—belatedly—the Yanks. Its use even spilled over to the non-English speaking troops, including the Germans. By the end of the War, it was in the same league as “O.K.” in terms of worldwide currency.

I’ve spent much of the last 18 months in a deep dive into First World War soldier’s letters, memoirs, interviews, songs, cartoons, trench newspapers, poems, and novels. Much of this was consciously cleaned up by the former Tommies or doughboys or diggers for consumption back home in decent society. I then learned to decode the accepted replacement euphemisms or entendres. Some examples, by way of illustration:

• ‘Sod off/sod/sodding’ equivalent to f^ck off/f&cker/f&cking
• ‘Bugger/buggered/buggering’ equivalent to f&cker/f#cked/f&cking
• ‘Blooming’ equivalent to f&cking
• ‘Blessed’ equivalent to f#cked

You get the idea. And it quickly became obvious to me that in the trenches, about every fifth word seems to have been f^ck, f+cked, or f!cking. Or some combination or derivation thereof.

Here’s a few examples from widely popular soldiers’ songs, which grew ever more profane as the war dragged through its deadly, sausage-grinding 51 months. As a former aviator myself, I particularly like this Royal Flying Corps ditty derived from the children’s rhyme “Cock Robin.” Just the chorus will do:

All the pilots who were there

Said ‘Fuck it, we will chuck it.’

When they heard Cock Robin

Had kicked the fucking bucket.

Here’s one that made it into my book, set to the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Just because.

Kaiser Bill is feeling ill,

The Crown Prince, he’s gone barmy.

We don’t give a fuck for old von Kluck,

And all his bleeding army.

What I sensed from all these letters and memoirs that referred, either directly or indirectly, to the incredibly coarse language of the trenches is that the enlisted men and the officers took the regular use of f%ck as simply part of the background noise of the soldiering way of life. Just as they stopped hearing the near-constant thrum of artillery unless it was falling directly on them, profanity didn’t register. The hideous level of violence and the omnipresence of capricious death numbed the men to anything beyond getting by from day to day.

My favorite use of the F-Bomb? Actually, it’s not from the Great War at all. Rather, my F-Bomber Award goes to Al Pacino who, in his eponymous lead role in the 1983 film Scarface, scored the first recorded F-Bomb hat trick by using the word as verb, adjective and object of a proposition in an economical nine words: “Don’t f#ck with me you f@cking piece of f*ck.” <Mike drop>

Many thanks, Jeffrey. This gives me a whole new perspective on the F-Bomb!! As mentioned in the post on Other Voices, Jeff volunteered to share some of his blog posts with all my lovely readers at A Writer of History. For more information on Jeffrey’s novels, you can check Goodreads – where they all have great reviews. You can purchase them from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

None of Us the Same by Jeffrey K. Walker ~~ Fiery Deirdre Brannigan had opinions on everything. She certainly hated the very idea of war in 1914. Childhood pals Jack Oakley and Will Parsons thought it a grand adventure with their friends. But the crushing weight of her guilty conscience pushes Deirdre to leave Ireland and land directly in the fray. Meanwhile the five friends from Newfoundland blithely enlist. After all, the war couldn’t possibly last very long… 

They learn quickly how wrong they are and each is torn apart by the carnage in France. 

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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel, PARIS IN RUINS, is available on Amazon US, Amazon Canada, Kobo, and Barnes&Noble. An earlier novel, TIME AND REGRET was published by Lake Union. Mary’s other novels, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads or on her website www.mktod.com.