Just ahead of tonight's audio adventure a reminder that for The Mark Steyn Club's second birthday we relaunched our Tales for Our Time home page in Netflix tile style, with tales organized by category - thrillers, fantasy, romance, etc - which we hope will make it easier for you to find your favorite story. If it doesn't, please let us know. But you can access nearly thirty of our crackin' yarns here, and all previous episodes of our current adventure, The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, here.
I'm especially enjoying the correspondence on this tale. Saturday's picture-caption reference to "the wily Bosch" prompted London Steyn Club member Simon Croft to chastise our spelling:
As in "the wily Boches"; as compared with the Bosch fifth column in the Croft household which, though cunningly disguised as a washing machine, requires me to sit with my foot jammed against its door during use so as to prevent copious leakage.
Well, I see some dictionaries do give "Bosch" or "Bosche" as alternative spellings, but the word is French in origin - "Boche", contraction of "caboche", as in cabbage or blockhead. So "Boche" it is, as it was the last time it appeared in this space:
There were shouts from the crowd—'Alleman' and a word 'Khafiyeh' constantly repeated. I didn't know what it meant at the time, but now I know that they were after us because we were Boches and spies. There was no love lost between the Constantinople scum and their new masters. It seemed an ironical end for Peter and me to be done in because we were Boches.
I think the Germans have more widely recognized derogatory nicknames than any other nation: Boche, Hun, Jerry, Kraut and, for US and Canadian troops in the Second World War, Heinie. The lack of any widely circulated insults for, say, the Taliban is one reason why we've spent two decades running around Afghanistan and have nothing to show for it: In war, all aspects of national power need to be deployed, including pejorative terms for the enemy.
And with that welcome to Part Eleven of The Riddle of the Sands. In tonight's episode, Carruthers and Davies discover that someone is asking after the Dulcibella:
Then he paused and muttered 'Dooltzhibella,' scratching his head, 'that was the name. English?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Little lust-cutter, that is so; there was an inquiry for you.'
'Whom from..?'
'It was a lady who inquired,' whispered the fellow, sniggering. 'Oh, really,' I said, beginning to feel highly absurd, but keenly curious. 'And she inquired about the Dulcibella?'
'Herrgott! she was difficult to satisfy! Stood over me while I searched the books. "A very little one," she kept saying, and "Are you sure all the names are here?" I saw her into her kleine Boot, and she rowed away in the rain. No, she left no message. It was dirty weather for a young Fräulein to be out alone in. Ach! she was safe enough, though. To see her crossing the ebb in a chop of tide was a treat.'
'And the yacht went on down the river? Where was she bound to?'
'How do I know? Bremen, Wilhelmshaven, Emden—somewhere in the North Sea; too far for you.'
'I don't know about that,' said I, bravely.
'Ach! you will not follow in that? Are not you bound to Hamburg?'
'We can change our plans. It seems a pity to have missed them.'
'Think twice, captain, there are plenty of pretty girls in Hamburg. But you English will do anything. Well, viel GlĂĽck!'
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Eleven of The Riddle of the Sands simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
In today's episode Carruthers and Davies are sailing the Dulcibella from BrunsbĂĽttel, where the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal meets the Elbe, into the North Sea and the easternmost edge of the Frisian Islands:
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Please join me right here tomorrow evening for another episode of The Riddle of the Sands.
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11 Member Comments
I'll vote for this being a lazy langourous language fest, not a bore, redolent of its era, not ours.
Speaking of Huns and Krauts, Cole Porter wrote something about the many-named Germans right after World War I in a Broadway musical "Hitchy Koo" (1919). It's titled "When I Had a Uniform On." Speaking of language fests, feast on these rattling rhymes:
(verse)
Now since the Allied banners
Gave a lesson in good manners
To the Kaiser and crow princes
And von Hindenburgs, von Ludendorffs,
Von Felkenhayns, von Mackensens
Von Tirpitzes, von Klucks...
But while I watch the other fellows throwing up their hats
And crying that at last the world's safe for democrats,
For me the road seems rocky,
For they've stripped me of my khaki,
And since I've been mobilized...
(Refrain)
I find that life's not what it used to be
When I had my uniform on.
For all the lovely ladies fell for me
When I had my uniform on.
And in those days of glory, I was the beau
Of ev'ry doggone musical show.
Each night you'd see me supping somewhere
With a dainty little star upon my Croix de Guerre.
Into their inmost hearts, they'd let me strike
When I had a uniform on.
But now the war is o'er
They don't quite like me anymore
...and it's a bore.
Before they used to bound around me in millions,
But now, somehow, that I'm in civilians
They pass me by; Gee I wish that I
Could start another war.
Mark, this is one of the best, if not the best, of the readings you have done. It is my favorite, so far. The various voices are spot-on--I am enjoying myself immensely on this voyage. Please don't be put off by a few loyal, articulate, generally affable, but easily bored, Club members. This book is all that could be hoped for in a radio tale. By the way, "Reise" in "Gute Reise" is pronounce Rye-zuh, not Rice; just for future reference. Thank you, so much, for this.
As Mark perspicaciously observes: "the Germans have more widely recognized derogatory nicknames than any other nation: Boche, Hun, Jerry, Kraut and, for US and Canadian troops in the Second World War, Heinie. The lack of any widely circulated insults for, say, the Taliban is one reason why we've spent two decades running around Afghanistan and have nothing to show for it: In war, all aspects of national power need to be deployed, including pejorative terms for the enemy."
Actually, the left and leftish half of western countries label anyone who comes up with such a derogatory name for the enemy a "racist", "bigot" "Islamophobe" "white supremacist" etc. The derogatory names are now for whomever recognizes the enemy as such.
I remember that for a few months after 9/11, the BBC and other TV stations in the UK referred to the Taleban and Al-Qaeda as "right wing conservatives". This died out when they decided that Bush and Blair were the real villains in Afghanistan
"I think the Germans have more widely recognized derogatory nicknames than any other nation: Boche, Hun, Jerry, Kraut and, for US and Canadian troops in the Second World War, Heinie."
Robert Service, who was too old for active service in WW I but served as a stretcher-bearer removing wounded from the battlefield (which was probably as dangerous as being a combatant) also used the terms Hans and Fritz in this "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man". I think it is safe to say he heard soldiers using the terms. I wouldn't call the names derogatory exactly, any more than Jerry, except in the context, Here's an example from the poem "My Bay'nit":
When first I left Blighty they gave me a bay'nit
And told me it 'ad to be smothered wiv gore;
But blimey! I 'aven't been able to stain it,
So far as I've gone wiv the vintage of war.
For ain't it a fraud! when a Boche and yours truly
Gits into a mix in the grit and the grime,
'E jerks up 'is 'ands wiv a yell and 'e's duly
Part of me outfit every time.
Left, right, Hans and Fritz!
Goose step, keep up yer mits!
Oh my, Ain't it a shyme!
Part of me outfit every time.
Pejorative terms for our latter-day enemies do exist, it's just that the culture of the times doesn't allow them to be expressed in polite company. But, yes, that's part of the problem. If we can't call the terrorists **** ******* or ***** *****, the terrorists will have won.
PS: Back when the late Mohamed Morsi and his ilk were running Egypt (into the ground), living high on the hog (figuratively speaking), I took to calling them the MoBros. Just familiar enough to suggest contempt, without tipping over into any -ism or -phobia.
Thank you for this bit by Robert Service, Dan McGrew, The Shooting of.
"...shouting out the depths..." I don't know if this is true, but on stage at the oldest theatre in California, the Nevada Theatre, Mark Twain impersonator extraordinaire Chris LeGate said that when Samuel Clemens worked on a Mississippi riverboat; when the boat would approach shore, a line with one-foot markings was lowered to measure the depths. Someone would call out, "Mark four!", "Mark three!" and at two feet - right on the edge of danger before it was too shallow - "Mark Twain!" which LeGate, as Twain, said, "reminded me of me" and became his name.
Sol, I think it's fathoms (six feet), at least according to the Kingston Trio.
'Mark Twain, it's two fathoms deep below. Mark Twain, heave the gangplank. Start the show.
Mark Twain, play those banjos as we go down the Mississippi, 'round the Gulf of Mexico.'
That makes more sense, thanks - also a catchy song by The Kingston Trio.
Although I don't know why you'd want six feet in between notifications.