October 31, 2025 • 40 mins
In this episode we ask what is the current size of the 'Zone Rouge' and are there plans to clear it? We then look at the use of morphine to treat pain and was this misused? We then look at when Steel Helmets were first issued to British and Canadian troops, and end by asking what WW1 slang words are still in use today?
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SPEAKER_00 (00:10):
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And there are links on the mainOld Frontline website, and I'll
put one in the show notes too.
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Great War, and I'll be returningto that subject with a podcast
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(00:55):
I know that the German side ofthe Great War is something that
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(01:19):
and there are links to both ofthose again in the show notes.
Back in episode 37 of Questionsand Answers, we had a question
about men re-enlisting that dueto a slight misinterpretation on
my part, and I think the runnerdropped the message on the way
up the communication trench andI didn't quite read it properly.
A question was unfortunatelywrongly attributed to somebody,
(01:41):
and thanks to them for pointingthat out to me.
And that was in fact a questionfrom Sam Daly.
So thanks for that question,Sam.
For now, let's get down to thisweek's questions.
Our first question comes fromAngus Cole on email.
He asks what is the current sizeof the zone rouge in France, and
if applicable, Belgium, and whatimpact do these areas continue
(02:05):
to have on modern day lives inthose areas affected by them?
Also, are there plans to as faras you are aware, to try and
clear some of these areas foragricultural residential use
again, or are they considered tobe forbidden areas in
perpetuity?
Well, we've looked at thesubjects of the Zone Rouge on a
(02:25):
previous podcast.
In fact, the myth of the ZoneRouge.
So let's say what it is first.
Well, after the First World War,that vast area of France that
had been affected by those fouryears of combat which had been
devastated with villages andtowns and even parts of cities
smashed to oblivion bybombardments, roads and railways
(02:48):
and canals and bridgesdestroyed, torn up, and this
massive, massive acreage,hectarage of destruction had
cast this dark shadow over thatarea.
And to rebuild it, reclaim it,well that required government
assistance, a governmentprogramme, if you like, and to
classify the areas that wereaffected by all this, they were
(03:11):
designated by colours, and theworst affected, the ones that
had seen almost totaldestruction, were in the red
zone, the zone rouge, as theFrench called it.
And that classification thenhelped, I guess, planners to
look at this and see what couldbe done, see what assistance
could be given, and I think somepeople believe that the Zone
(03:32):
Rouge was something that wasclassified in perpetuity.
It wasn't.
Essentially, and we've got quitegood accounts of this, the Zone
Rouge technically ceased toexist in the 1930s because the
areas had all been declassified,some had not been rebuilt, so
there were areas in the Marneand in the Champagne and around
(03:53):
Verdun and other areas besides,even some on the Somme where
villages had not been rebuilt inthe same place or not been
rebuilt at all, and those areaswere cordoned off.
Now there are some reasonsbehind this, not just because
the land could not be reclaimed,although in several cases that
(04:14):
was obvious or it would bedifficult to do that.
But for example, at Verdun,there was there a desire to
commemorate, to memorialise, andone way to do that was to take
that sacred French battlefieldof the First World War, where so
many had died and so many hadfought, it became a kind of
(04:35):
symbol of French sacrifice andsteadfastness in the Great War,
then there was the desire topermanently preserve it.
So that landscape was forestedand the villages within it were
essentially abandoned, in somecases rebuilt elsewhere, but not
always.
So if we looked at what the ZoneRouge was just after the war and
(05:00):
what it had become by the eve ofthe next war in the late 1930s,
the vast majority of it had beenreclaimed.
Villages had been rebuilt,farmland had returned to
farming, there were cropsgrowing there, there was cattle
in fields, lives had returned tonormal two decades after the
Great War.
(05:20):
That didn't mean that therewasn't a legacy of the war with
munitions and gas and all kindsof equipment still coming to
light as farming became far moreindustrialized, and tractors
were able to plough the fieldsin a way that horse-drawn
ploughs hadn't, and this broughtup even more munitions and
(05:41):
caused casualties as a result ofthis.
So the legacy side of it wasstill there, but technically the
Zone Rouge had ceased to exist,and for a long time there was
really no talk of the Zone Rougebecause it was no longer there
as such.
There were these areas that youcouldn't go into at Verdun and
in the Champagne and the Marne,but these were areas that were
(06:03):
also military camps where modernmilitary training took place
small arms fire, mortars,artillery, but latterly in some
places they had tank firingranges there, and modern tank
armaments can also includedepleted uranium rounds, and
there were some areas wherethese had been fired and their
(06:25):
exact whereabouts were notknown, or they had been
discovered and they hadn't beenmoved, they were left in situ.
So it was considered toodangerous for the public just to
wander into these areas thathave been training grounds to
stumble across munitions thathave been used in live fire
exercises.
So quite a few of these areasthat were also crisscrossed with
(06:46):
trenches and mine craters andthe ruins of some of these
disappeared villages that hadbeen left, they had signs, they
had fences around them and signswith skull and crossbones on
there saying danger of death, donot enter.
And what we saw in the centenarywere a lot of journalists
joining up some of these dotsand thinking that those signs
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referred to the fact that thezone rouge, the red zone, still
exists, and they were warningpeople away from that.
Now, this again does not meanthat the dangers and the
problems which confronted thosewho tried to reclaim that zone
rouge after the war doesn't meanthat they've gone away far from
it, and there are many, manyrecorded examples of this, but
(07:31):
it doesn't really exist becauseif we look at a place like
Verdun, it was forested afterthe war.
The landscape was protectedreally by the plantation of
those trees because the rootsheld the ground together and
preserved vast, vast areas oftrenches, for example.
There had been a degree of somesurface level clearance, but
(07:52):
beneath of course there would beshells.
But really that is no differentthan the open farmland of the
Somme or Loose or Combray or anyother battlefield of the First
World War.
So living as I did at Corceletand walking the tracks and the
fields around that village wasno more or no less dangerous
than going into the forests atVerdun.
(08:14):
There was the same permanentdanger in the ground from
munitions from that period, andthe pollution of that ground by
all of the metals and the gasand the chemicals that had been
used in weaponry in the FirstWorld War was ever present in
the Somme in the same way thatit was ever present at Verdun as
(08:35):
well.
The levels might have beenhigher in consequence of the way
the landscape at Verdun waspreserved by a forest, but then
when you walk in that forest, asI did for the very first time in
the late 1980s, nature had takencontrol, had returned that
landscape to a naturalenvironment which was full of
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plant life, of animal life, ofbirds and everything else.
So it's not that these placesare barren, quite the opposite,
in fact, a bit like No Man'sLand during the Great War.
This was wilding on a massivescale.
So the wildlife in No Man's Landin fact prospered under those
conditions, not at the mud ofPasschenda, not at the
(09:20):
moonscapes of Thirty and allthose kind of things, but
generally on the static part ofthe front, it could be perhaps
the very opposite of what wethink of when we think of a
landscape of the First WorldWar.
Now, in terms of the work today,people living on that landscape,
they have to face the realitiesof living there.
(09:41):
And while in some countries likeBelgium, they have
archaeologists and there's EODclearance, munitions clearance
of ground to make it safe fornew developments to be built,
that isn't always the case inthe vast, vast areas of France
that had once been affected bythe First World War.
I remember in Corsolettewatching a house being built
there that I knew was about tobe built on top of a vast German
(10:04):
dugout where there would be ahuge amount of munitions in the
ground, and the people doing thebuilding had come from an area
outside the Somme, had noknowledge of the First World
War, didn't believe it untilthey started bringing up their
first buckets of grenades andmortars and shells and
everything else.
So it is an ever-present elementof life on these battlefields,
(10:26):
but the idea that there arethese forbidden zones where
nothing grows and life hasfinished and that they can never
be reclaimed is part of themythology of what that Zone
Rouge is today.
But I think it is again all partof that legacy more than a
century later, that stilldirectly connects us to the
(10:47):
First World War.
Just this year, at the end ofthe ploughing season up on the
Red Ann Ridge, was a massivepile of unexploded ordnance,
British shells, German shells,grenades from several different
nationalities.
Quite staggering to see that.
It never stops, and every yearthat I'm there on those
battlefields, no matter whatpart of the front it is, it will
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always, always be there.
Certainly in my lifetime andprobably many lifetimes still to
come.
So check out that episode,Angus, and I'll put a link to it
in the show notes about the mythof the Zone Rouge, which will
hopefully tell you a little bitmore about that infamous red
zone.
So on to question number two,which comes from Carl Austin,
(11:33):
also on email.
Carl asks, I understand thatmorphine was issued as a pain
relief for serious wounds.
Was it carried by individualsoldiers for the purpose of
self-administration?
And bearing in mind that rum wasso likely to go astray, was
there ever a problem withmorphine being misused?
I've never heard of any issuesregarding this, but can't
(11:53):
believe that it wasn't abused asa coping mechanism.
Well morphine was certainly usedas a pain relief and it wasn't
given to individual soldiers.
Soldiers carried a filleddressing in their uniform with
some iodine in it, but notmorphine.
Morphine was initially thepreserve of medical officers of
(12:15):
the Royal Army Medical Corps whowould use it as and when
required treating the woundedthat were coming in off whatever
battlefield it was in that earlyphase of the First World War.
And of course, that early phasewas mobile from Mons to Lookato
to the Marne and the Ain, andthen the movement north to EAP,
(12:35):
which while there were trenchesdug by units at Eap, and we've
got photographs of them doingthat, it was still much more of
a mobile operation.
And in those battles, medicalofficers would be largely, I
think, using morphine that wasin liquid form that was then
available at dressing stations.
Regimental medical officerswould also possibly have had
(12:58):
morphine ampules which couldthen be used on the battlefield.
Now for a mobile war wherecasualties were perhaps not on
the scale that the First WorldWar rapidly turned into, that
administration of morphineprobably was okay.
But quickly people realised thereality of First World War,
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Great War combat, the new combatthat was being fought on these
battlefields in 1914, and oncethe war became static in 1915
and the great offensives beganthat year, then carrying
morphine as a liquid in a glassfile was not a very safe or
practical way of its use beingimplemented on a battlefield.
(13:42):
So while morphine would havebeen found in other forms at
base hospitals and casualtystations and indeed beyond on
the battlefield, what you startto hear about and read in the
accounts in the official historyof medical units is the
implementation of morphinetablets which were placed under
the tongue and dissolved andgave a dose of morphine.
(14:05):
And these were issued to medicalofficers on the front line,
regimental or battalion medicalofficers, who had a stretcher
bearer section who went out topick up the wounded, and they
were also given the power toadminister morphine via this
tablet form as well.
So they would be given probablya little box of these tablets
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and they'd take them out as partof their first aid kit and use
them when required on thebattlefield.
And they also carry thissomething we've spoken about in
a previous podcast, an indeliblepencil which made this kind of
blue writing, and they wouldwrite on the forehead and the
casualty card of the soldierbecause when a soldier was
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treated, they would have acasualty with their details on
what the wound was, what hadbeen administered at that point
in terms of treatment, and thatwas put into a rubberised pouch
that was then tied round one ofthe general service buttons on
the soldier's uniform so thatwhen they got to the next
treatment level, they knew whathad been done and what the wound
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appeared to be.
They would obviously reassessthat, but more importantly, they
knew in this case how muchmorphine or that a dose of
morphine had been given, becauseif that wasn't noted, then you
could overdose somebody onmorphine and potentially kill
them.
And it wasn't just pull on thecasualty, they would often write
that on the forehead of asoldier with an M on there to
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indicate one or more doses ofmorphine.
And I think these tablet formswere quite strong, so I'm not
sure they gave too many doses ofthem in one go.
Now, morphine on a battlefieldwhere there were so many
casualties would quickly becomea precious resource.
And what stretcher bearers andin particular medical officers
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had to do was prioritise its usebecause it would run out very
quickly if you just gave it toeverybody who had a wound that
had caused them pain.
So they looked at theseriousness of wounds, the
survivability of wounds, andthey used the morphine in that
way to control pain relief.
(16:11):
But there are also recordedexamples where medical officers
were confronted by soldiers withmultiple fatal wounds, wounds
that the soldier was never goingto recover for, and no amount of
treatment would save him, andthe soldier was in terrible,
terrible pain.
And at that point the medicalofficer has to make a terrible,
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godlike decision about whetherthis man lives or dies, or if
it's possible for him tosurvive.
Can he let him suffer in thisway?
And morphine gives him theability for that end for that
soldier to be more comfortablein terms of the patient's
welfare.
He can't save his life, but hecan make that end, that ending,
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free of pain.
And so young men who weremedical officers had to make
these kind of decisions, whichare incredible to us in the kind
of modern lives that we leadnow.
And it's something that clearlyhad an effect on them because I
remember reading some years agothat in the interwar period,
former medical officers who'dserved on the front line doing
(17:16):
exactly this kind of thing, thesuicide rate amongst those men
was artificially higher comparedto the rest of the typical
population of the same kind ofage and background.
Now, that is not necessarily akind of scientific indication of
the results of having to do thiskind of work and what effect
that might have on an individualwho was forced to do this using
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morphine in this way, but Ithink it gives us a bit of a
blink towards it and a bit of anunderstanding.
So this kind of begins toaddress the other aspect of your
question about the misuse ofmorphine.
Given its wide availability tomedical staff, could it be
misused?
Well, of course.
I mean, people traded all kindsof stuff in the Great War, and
(18:02):
while 1914 it seems thatmorphine was largely
administered by officers orsenior non-commissioned officers
with stretcher bearers, they hadaccess to morphine tablets and
they were ordinary privatesoldiers.
So it meant that those men didhave access to morphine.
Whether there was some kind ofillicit trade, I've not read
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anything about that.
Would we read anything aboutthat?
Because it's something that Iguess would exist on a level
beneath the official account ofthe Great War.
But in some of the crime-relatedpapers to do with the conduct of
the British Army behind thelines on the Western Front,
there are some hints of this,some hints of some kind of drug
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abuse, and morphine is the mostlikely candidate for that,
considering that it could bewidely available.
If you were that way inclined tomisuse drugs and you were on a
battlefield as a conscriptsoldier later on in the war, and
you come across the body of astretcher bearer and know that
in his haversack there's a loadof morphine.
Are you just going to walk pastand leave it there?
(19:08):
So there were circumstances inwhich morphine, I guess, could
be acquired and then misused,traded, sold.
I mean, who knows what?
I mean, this is a darker side tothe Great War that we don't know
enough about.
And I was thinking recentlyabout the papers of the military
police who operated behind thelines dealing with crime like
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this, not just drug related butalcohol related, damage to
property, all kinds ofnephriotous activities going on.
Because once you had a conscriptarmy conscripting men from 18 to
55, it conscripted a hugecross-section of the male
population, really good guys,but also some bad guys as well,
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who, as unwilling soldiers, asconscripts, carried on their
nephriotous activity in Kharkijust as they had done in civil
life as well.
And I must go back to thearchives at some point and see
if I can pull out some goodexamples of this, and we can do
a podcast about crime in theFirst World War because it is
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all part of that story.
So I can't give you a definitiveanswer to your question, Carl,
but I hope that shed a littlebit of light on this subject and
a subject of the misuse ofmaterial and the crime related
to that that hopefully we willreturn to in a future podcast
episode.
So thanks for that, Carl.
So on to question number three,and this one comes from Joe in
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Canada.
I was wondering when helmetswere first issued to British and
Canadian troops.
When did these troops start toadd divisional insignia to their
helmets?
And was that done during late1918 for troops going home or
was it done earlier than that?
Well, when the British Army andthe Empire forces, the
Commonwealth as it is today,went to war in 1914, no one had
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helmets.
Everyone was wearing servicedress caps, soft caps, because
that was the standard headgearof the day.
And there was no thought aboutinjuries to the head from
bullets or from shrapnel or fromshell fragments, because this
was going to be a war ofmovement, not a static war.
But very quickly, of course, aswe know from the history of the
Great War, that's exactly whatit turned into.
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So 1915, with trenches dugacross this vast landscape of
Flanders to northern France froma British and Empire
perspective, with men fromBritish regiments, Canadian,
Indian, and then increasinglyother nations as the war moved
on, with the arrival ofAustralian and New Zealand
forces and also South Africans,and by the latter two years of
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the war, men from all over thatBritish Empire serving on the
Western Front.
With that static war and men intrenches in holes dug in the
ground with shells going offabove them, the increase in head
wounds led to the development ofthe first steel helmets.
Not by the British, but actuallyby the French, who developed a
(22:05):
very basic steel skull capbasically that went underneath
the Kepi and gave some very,very limited protection against
shrapnel and bullets and shellfragments.
But this was something that wasdone provisionally.
The French then developed theAdrienne helmet that was the
first proper steel helmet usedon the battlefield of the Great
(22:27):
War, which was issued to Frenchsoldiers in 1915.
Quite a lot of British officersacquired them.
There's photographs of Churchillwearing them.
I used to own one to a Britishmedical officer that had a Royal
Army Medical Corps badge weldedonto the front of it.
But at the same time there wasthe development of a proper
steel helmet, a shrapnel helmet,as it was called at the time, to
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be issued to British and Empiresoldiers.
And they were ready in time forthe Battle of Luz in September
1915, but only small numberswere issued, and I don't believe
there are any photographs of anyordinary British soldiers
wearing the steel helmet at Luzin 1915.
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An added complexity to this withofficers is that they bought
their own kit so they couldorder a steel helmet from a
catalogue and have it sent tothem in the trenches of northern
France, and many did do this.
So some of the first helmets toarrive were private purchase
helmets that were bought byofficers and worn in the front
(23:32):
line.
Now some of those were decoratedwith insignia, sometimes painted
onto the helmet, the badge ofthe regiment or the unit that
they were serving in.
Sometimes badges were weldedonto these helmets.
You may have seen this in thefilm 1917, where some of the
characters in that are wearinghelmets with a cat badge welded
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on it.
This came under criticism frompeople who watched the film, but
actually it's quite correct.
This was done, and there's lotsof photographic evidence to show
this.
But more commonly, they began topaint them on there because they
found, I believe, that when youwelded a badge to a helmet, it
created a weak spot, and therewas this widespread belief that
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German snipers knew about this,and if they saw you standing in
a trench wearing a helmet with acat badge on it, they would aim
their sights on that cat badgeand the bullet would go straight
through and kill you instantly.
Now, whether that was true ornot, the adaptation of helmets
adding insignia was somethingthat then continued throughout
the rest of the war, and itdepended really on what unit you
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were in.
Now I suspect Joe that you'relooking at this from a Canadian
perspective, and there arewartime photographs,
particularly in 1918, ofsoldiers with divisional flashes
or their unit flash painted ontheir helmet, sometimes on the
back of the helmet rather thannecessarily the front.
This was also done in Britishdivisions and probably
(25:02):
Australian, New Zealandformations, South African
formations as well.
And this wasn't just about pridein your unit, your battalion,
your brigade, your division.
There was a practical reason forthis as well, because
increasingly as the war movedon, soldiers would remove
identification from about theiruniforms, so take off shoulder
(25:23):
titles, remove sometimes clothtitles that gave away what
regiment or corps they were partof, and that this idea of using
symbols to indicate what unitthey were a part of that would,
in theory, only be known to menwithin that formation was
something that was increasinglydone.
And there's quite a few books onbattle insignia showing how this
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developed.
There was no standardisation insome divisions of the British
Army, no insignia was used atall, and in others there were
very complex systems by whichthey painted helmets, put colour
flashes on the collars, the backcollars of uniforms and upper
sleeves, and all this kind ofstuff.
It's a fascinating subject, andagain, there's a lot of
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photographic evidence of allthat in contemporary images.
So you can find a lot ofinformation about this.
Now I know today these helmets,which are often erroneously
called brody helmets, that's nota phrase that you see being used
for them during the Great War,during the First World War
itself.
I think that's more of acollector's description of these
(26:27):
helmets.
They were a steel helmet or ashrapnel helmet, and one proudly
made in the city of Sheffield,which I used to once live close
to when I lived in SouthYorkshire, which was proud of
its steel industry, and theymade the vast majority of steel
helmets that were issued toBritish and Commonwealth troops
in the Great War.
(26:48):
But from a collector's point ofview, I know that the ones that
have got insignia painted onthem are highly prized, go for
huge amounts of money.
Over the years of collectingthis kind of material myself,
I've had a couple of examples ofthis with very nondescript kind
of rectangles or squares withsome colours on, and I wasn't
ever really entirely sure whatunit that some of these related
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to because the paint had oftenchanged colour and it was
difficult to match them up toany known documentation.
But what I have seenincreasingly since the time of
the centenary are helmets thatare quite clearly faked, in my
view, with some verystrange-looking insignia, or
insignia that's kind of too goodto be true, really, and doesn't
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match up with what we know thatthat division or regiment or
battalion or whatever actuallyused, and there's always this
kind of so-called provenancewith it that it's an exception
to a rule, and that temptscollectors to go after these
kind of things.
But coming back to the historyof steel helmets, first uses
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we've said, the Battle of Luz,September 1915, and then on the
Western Front, by the time ofthe Battle of the Centre Loire
Craters, which included Canadiansoldiers that were serving in
that part of Flanders at thattime, this was the first battle
on the Western Front in whichevery British and Commonwealth
soldier had a steel helmet, andfrom then onwards, from March
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1916 onwards, that was thestandard headgear of soldiers on
the front line.
Many men wore them behind thelines.
I've got plenty of photographsof guys that were out on rest
and went to studios to havetheir photographs taken, and
they're still wearing theirsteel helmet.
Some men didn't wear them.
I've spoken a lot about GeorgeButler, who was in the machine
gun corps.
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He thought they were scruffy, hewas a regular soldier, so he
wore the service dress cap withits stiffener in it for the
entire war, which cost him inApril 1918 because a shell went
off above his machine gunposition, killed the rest of his
crew, and badly wounded him inthe head, and he wouldn't have
been as badly wounded if he'dhave been wearing a steel
(28:56):
helmet.
So what you see as the war goeson is the widespread adoption of
these helmets, and by the timeof photographs of the Battle of
the Somme in the summer of 1916,everyone is clearly wearing
them, and they see that asanother way to protect
themselves on the battlefield.
But when the war becomes mobileagain, you see perhaps a
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relaxation of this.
And if you look at photographsof the last hundred days,
particularly in that summer of1918, there are perhaps fewer
helmets being worn by some men,and there was also a return to
the adaptation of uniforms thathave been discarded.
So the officers' tunics that hadtheir rank on the cuff that had
been discarded for the so-calledwind-up tunics, where you had
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the rank up on the epaulets ofthe uniform, so it couldn't
clearly be seen that you werenecessarily an officer.
But in 1918, a lot of officerson the front line went back to
wearing those cuff rank uniformsthat had been discarded perhaps
two years before, except inphotographs taken in England
when you were training.
I've gone slightly off the Kindof subject there as we often do,
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but there is a symbolism aswell, I think, with helmets that
goes beyond the battlefielditself, not perhaps exactly in
the same way as the German steelhelmet, the Stahlhelm, which was
very much a symbol of being aveteran and used on war
memorials right across Germany.
But I think in Britain that thesteel helmet did represent you
as a soldier.
So there was an organisationcalled the Memorable Order of
(30:25):
Tin Hats, the Moths, and theyused the steel helmet as their
symbol.
They had a little lapel badgethat you wore with a steel
helmet on it that said moth, andyou see helmets being used
widely in statuary and warmemorials, not just on figures
on those war memorials, butoften the helmets are arranged
(30:46):
in stone around the base of amemorial, including on
cemeteries as well.
So if you go to the originalentrance to Tynecott Cemetery,
where you would have walked inthrough that front gateway to be
confronted by this vast hillsideof the dead in that post-war
period, when that was allcomplete, the architect there
actually placed as kind ofalmost like curbstones, steel
(31:09):
helmets on the outside of thecemetery.
So the symbolism of the helmet,the shrapnel helmet, the steel
helmet, some erroneously call itthe Brody.
During the war, it was referredto by officers often as a battle
bowler.
It is very much part of theidentity of the British Tommy in
the Great War, whether thatTommy is from Britain or from
(31:32):
Canada or from one of the otherEmpire Commonwealth nations.
And I would refer you to one ofthe great friends of this
podcast, Peter Doyle, who'swritten extensively about
uniforms and equipment of theFirst World War.
And if you pick up one of hisbooks like Remembering Tommy or
What Tommy Took to War, that'llgive you quite a lot of good
insights into the use anddevelopment of steel helmets and
(31:53):
their adaptation by British andCommonwealth forces during the
Great War.
So thanks for that, Joe, and Ihope that's answered some
elements of your question andshed a bit more light on steel
helmets and the decoration thatwas made to them during the
Great War.
On to our fourth and finalquestion, which comes from Kevin
Tobin on Discord, which isanother way for you to submit a
(32:16):
question to the podcast.
Kevin asks, Are there any FirstWorld War slang words still in
use by people today?
Well, I'm going to refer you toPeter Doyle again because Peter
Doyle and Julian Walker wrote areally good book on this called
Trench Talk, which was firstpublished in 2012 and is still
widely available.
(32:36):
And there's a whole host ofmaterial about the language used
in the First World War, wordsthat became unique to the war,
words that were plucked out ofthe past to have a new meaning,
and how words and languagedeveloped as the soldier went
through his experiences in theFirst World War.
And first of all, slang is partof the verbal currency of
(32:57):
military service.
Slang is used in the militarytoday, it's been used probably
in every military that's everexisted in any time frame.
But in terms of the First WorldWar, where this vast army in
Britain is recruited frompre-war regular soldiers,
volunteers, and territorialsthrough to the creation of a new
army, Kitchener's army withvolunteers in 1914, through to
(33:21):
eventually a conscript army withthis vast cross-section of
British society going into themilitary, including by 1917-18,
a lot of women as well servingnot just in nursing roles, but
in military roles behind thelines on the Western Front and
other fronts besides.
So a lot of language isdeveloped and used through this
(33:43):
service, which then, of course,for those who survived the war
and go back home, becomes partof their verbal currency, their
day-to-day language that oftenwould help identify them to
others as someone who had servedin the war.
Because not necessarily by the1930s, not necessarily everybody
in your street is going to be aveteran of the Great War.
(34:04):
Even some who are the same ageas you might not have served,
might been medically unfit toserve, or had protected jobs,
whatever it was.
And this language is all part ofthat closed, almost secret
society of veterans that existedin that interwar period where
they spoke amongst themselves,talked about the war to each
other, and kept quiet prettymuch to everyone else.
(34:27):
So if we kind of think of somekey words, I mean we could
literally fill probably multiplepodcasts with this, but let's
have a look at a few examples ofthis.
And what we'll do is we'll lookat words which I think are still
pretty much used today.
Blighty.
I mean, people still refer todear old Blighty.
I'm heading back to dear oldBlighty when we do tours on our
coaches.
(34:48):
People say, Oh, it's great to beback in Blighty again.
And that is a phrase, of course,that existed before the First
World War, but becamepopularised with troops using
it.
There were magazines that had itin the title, there were books,
there was the popular song, TakeMe Back to Dear Old Blighty.
And what it is is a bit ofverbal currency from regulars in
(35:08):
India before the war, aderivation of an Indian word
meaning home.
So Blighty was home.
You were going back to Blighty,you were going home when you
were taking your discharge fromIndia to go back to your depot
to be released into civilianlife.
And that was a word that thenwas part of the language of the
soldier before the Great War andvery much during the Great War
(35:30):
and pretty much probably eversince, but one that is still
used by people today.
Another one is chatting.
We all like a chat.
We go to the pub to meet ourmates and have a chat, or we go
to a tea room and have a coffeeor a pot of tea and we have a
chat.
Chatting is something that wasdone by soldiers when they were
out of the line and they werecovered in body lice, and they'd
(35:50):
take off their uniform and thelice would often lay eggs in the
thick woolen seams, and theywould take a candle and run that
lit candle up the seams, poppingall the lice eggs, and it would
make this pop, pop, pop, pop,pop sign, and they would be
sitting there while they weredoing this, almost nonchalantly
talking to each other, chattingaway, having a chat, and that's
(36:12):
where that comes from, and westill chat to this day.
There's a part of this podcastcalled Trench Chat, where we
speak to people.
So chatting is still very muchpart of the modern language as
it was to the soldier of theGreat War.
No man's land.
Now this was a phrase thatalmost certainly existed before
World War I, but it becamesymbolic of the Great War and
(36:35):
that battlefield, that landscapeof the First World War, and it's
something that we use today inwith all kinds of meanings.
I remember when I moved back toKent after living in France,
there was a bit of a housingestate on the edge of the
housing estate where I wasliving.
They had a sign up because theydidn't want people to go into
this particular area of theestate, and they'd written no
(36:56):
man's land on it, indicatingthis was a place that you should
not enter.
So I think that's still part ofthe modern language, societal
language today.
And we see it in a lot of newsreports, particularly relating
to things like Ukraine and otherplaces where there's conflict
now.
Over the top, which was thephrase for going literally over
(37:17):
the top, going into action,climbing up the ladders, going
over the parapet, going into noman's land, making your attack,
that is a phrase that is stillused in all kinds of ways,
indicating that you're about todo something.
Come on, we're going to go overthe top and we're going to get
this task done.
And one that I'll end with,which I used to think about a
lot when we'd be going to andfro in the coaches, backwards
(37:38):
and forwards to the UK in in thedays long before the changes to
the border and Covid andeverything else.
People would often pick up a fewbottles of wine.
And I had friends when I livedin Kent before who would go over
and they'd pick up wine, they'dgo to one of the warehouses near
Calais and things like that, andthey would always talk about,
oh, I'm just heading over toFrance to get some cheap Planck.
(38:01):
And Planck is a piece of FirstWorld War verbal currency
because soldiers tried to speakFrench and they'd go into an
Estamina and they'd order abottle of white wine, Van Blanc,
and they couldn't say Van Blanc,so they would say vin Planck or
just Planck.
And Planck was really a word forcheap wine because soldiers were
(38:23):
not drinking the best claret orwhite wine or anything else when
they were behind the lines inthose Estaminaes during the
Great War, and Planck is a wordthat we still use when we go in
search of cheap wine in Frenchhypermarkets or whatever it is.
So I think Kevin there is awhole host of words out there.
There's stuff about this onYouTube, and I would thoroughly
(38:44):
recommend Peter Doyle and JulianWalker's book, Trench Talk, and
there are a few others besides.
There's some earlier ones fromthe interwar period where
veterans have outlined some ofthe words that they commonly
use.
And it's something you see inmuch of the literature memoirs,
fiction written by those whowere there.
So it's an important part of ourunderstanding of the Great War.
(39:06):
So thanks for that question,Kevin.
Thanks for all of the questionsthis week.
As usual, you can submit themvia the usual methods from email
to the Discord server, and thereare links to those in the show
notes for this episode.
And I'll see you again soon forsome more questions and answers
on the Old Frontline.
(39:31):
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with me, military historian PaulReed.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcore, you can follow the
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(39:52):
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And there are links on the mainOld Frontline website, and I'll
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We've got some new films comingup on the YouTube channel there
soon about the German side ofthe fighting at Eap during the
Great War, and I'll be returningto that subject with a podcast
here soon, hopefully, as well.
(00:55):
I know that the German side ofthe Great War is something that
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(01:19):
and there are links to both ofthose again in the show notes.
Back in episode 37 of Questionsand Answers, we had a question
about men re-enlisting that dueto a slight misinterpretation on
my part, and I think the runnerdropped the message on the way
up the communication trench andI didn't quite read it properly.
A question was unfortunatelywrongly attributed to somebody,
(01:41):
and thanks to them for pointingthat out to me.
And that was in fact a questionfrom Sam Daly.
So thanks for that question,Sam.
For now, let's get down to thisweek's questions.
Our first question comes fromAngus Cole on email.
He asks what is the current sizeof the zone rouge in France, and
if applicable, Belgium, and whatimpact do these areas continue
(02:05):
to have on modern day lives inthose areas affected by them?
Also, are there plans to as faras you are aware, to try and
clear some of these areas foragricultural residential use
again, or are they considered tobe forbidden areas in
perpetuity?
Well, we've looked at thesubjects of the Zone Rouge on a
(02:25):
previous podcast.
In fact, the myth of the ZoneRouge.
So let's say what it is first.
Well, after the First World War,that vast area of France that
had been affected by those fouryears of combat which had been
devastated with villages andtowns and even parts of cities
smashed to oblivion bybombardments, roads and railways
(02:48):
and canals and bridgesdestroyed, torn up, and this
massive, massive acreage,hectarage of destruction had
cast this dark shadow over thatarea.
And to rebuild it, reclaim it,well that required government
assistance, a governmentprogramme, if you like, and to
classify the areas that wereaffected by all this, they were
(03:11):
designated by colours, and theworst affected, the ones that
had seen almost totaldestruction, were in the red
zone, the zone rouge, as theFrench called it.
And that classification thenhelped, I guess, planners to
look at this and see what couldbe done, see what assistance
could be given, and I think somepeople believe that the Zone
(03:32):
Rouge was something that wasclassified in perpetuity.
It wasn't.
Essentially, and we've got quitegood accounts of this, the Zone
Rouge technically ceased toexist in the 1930s because the
areas had all been declassified,some had not been rebuilt, so
there were areas in the Marneand in the Champagne and around
(03:53):
Verdun and other areas besides,even some on the Somme where
villages had not been rebuilt inthe same place or not been
rebuilt at all, and those areaswere cordoned off.
Now there are some reasonsbehind this, not just because
the land could not be reclaimed,although in several cases that
(04:14):
was obvious or it would bedifficult to do that.
But for example, at Verdun,there was there a desire to
commemorate, to memorialise, andone way to do that was to take
that sacred French battlefieldof the First World War, where so
many had died and so many hadfought, it became a kind of
(04:35):
symbol of French sacrifice andsteadfastness in the Great War,
then there was the desire topermanently preserve it.
So that landscape was forestedand the villages within it were
essentially abandoned, in somecases rebuilt elsewhere, but not
always.
So if we looked at what the ZoneRouge was just after the war and
(05:00):
what it had become by the eve ofthe next war in the late 1930s,
the vast majority of it had beenreclaimed.
Villages had been rebuilt,farmland had returned to
farming, there were cropsgrowing there, there was cattle
in fields, lives had returned tonormal two decades after the
Great War.
(05:20):
That didn't mean that therewasn't a legacy of the war with
munitions and gas and all kindsof equipment still coming to
light as farming became far moreindustrialized, and tractors
were able to plough the fieldsin a way that horse-drawn
ploughs hadn't, and this broughtup even more munitions and
(05:41):
caused casualties as a result ofthis.
So the legacy side of it wasstill there, but technically the
Zone Rouge had ceased to exist,and for a long time there was
really no talk of the Zone Rougebecause it was no longer there
as such.
There were these areas that youcouldn't go into at Verdun and
in the Champagne and the Marne,but these were areas that were
(06:03):
also military camps where modernmilitary training took place
small arms fire, mortars,artillery, but latterly in some
places they had tank firingranges there, and modern tank
armaments can also includedepleted uranium rounds, and
there were some areas wherethese had been fired and their
(06:25):
exact whereabouts were notknown, or they had been
discovered and they hadn't beenmoved, they were left in situ.
So it was considered toodangerous for the public just to
wander into these areas thathave been training grounds to
stumble across munitions thathave been used in live fire
exercises.
So quite a few of these areasthat were also crisscrossed with
(06:46):
trenches and mine craters andthe ruins of some of these
disappeared villages that hadbeen left, they had signs, they
had fences around them and signswith skull and crossbones on
there saying danger of death, donot enter.
And what we saw in the centenarywere a lot of journalists
joining up some of these dotsand thinking that those signs
(07:08):
referred to the fact that thezone rouge, the red zone, still
exists, and they were warningpeople away from that.
Now, this again does not meanthat the dangers and the
problems which confronted thosewho tried to reclaim that zone
rouge after the war doesn't meanthat they've gone away far from
it, and there are many, manyrecorded examples of this, but
(07:31):
it doesn't really exist becauseif we look at a place like
Verdun, it was forested afterthe war.
The landscape was protectedreally by the plantation of
those trees because the rootsheld the ground together and
preserved vast, vast areas oftrenches, for example.
There had been a degree of somesurface level clearance, but
(07:52):
beneath of course there would beshells.
But really that is no differentthan the open farmland of the
Somme or Loose or Combray or anyother battlefield of the First
World War.
So living as I did at Corceletand walking the tracks and the
fields around that village wasno more or no less dangerous
than going into the forests atVerdun.
(08:14):
There was the same permanentdanger in the ground from
munitions from that period, andthe pollution of that ground by
all of the metals and the gasand the chemicals that had been
used in weaponry in the FirstWorld War was ever present in
the Somme in the same way thatit was ever present at Verdun as
(08:35):
well.
The levels might have beenhigher in consequence of the way
the landscape at Verdun waspreserved by a forest, but then
when you walk in that forest, asI did for the very first time in
the late 1980s, nature had takencontrol, had returned that
landscape to a naturalenvironment which was full of
(08:57):
plant life, of animal life, ofbirds and everything else.
So it's not that these placesare barren, quite the opposite,
in fact, a bit like No Man'sLand during the Great War.
This was wilding on a massivescale.
So the wildlife in No Man's Landin fact prospered under those
conditions, not at the mud ofPasschenda, not at the
(09:20):
moonscapes of Thirty and allthose kind of things, but
generally on the static part ofthe front, it could be perhaps
the very opposite of what wethink of when we think of a
landscape of the First WorldWar.
Now, in terms of the work today,people living on that landscape,
they have to face the realitiesof living there.
(09:41):
And while in some countries likeBelgium, they have
archaeologists and there's EODclearance, munitions clearance
of ground to make it safe fornew developments to be built,
that isn't always the case inthe vast, vast areas of France
that had once been affected bythe First World War.
I remember in Corsolettewatching a house being built
there that I knew was about tobe built on top of a vast German
(10:04):
dugout where there would be ahuge amount of munitions in the
ground, and the people doing thebuilding had come from an area
outside the Somme, had noknowledge of the First World
War, didn't believe it untilthey started bringing up their
first buckets of grenades andmortars and shells and
everything else.
So it is an ever-present elementof life on these battlefields,
(10:26):
but the idea that there arethese forbidden zones where
nothing grows and life hasfinished and that they can never
be reclaimed is part of themythology of what that Zone
Rouge is today.
But I think it is again all partof that legacy more than a
century later, that stilldirectly connects us to the
(10:47):
First World War.
Just this year, at the end ofthe ploughing season up on the
Red Ann Ridge, was a massivepile of unexploded ordnance,
British shells, German shells,grenades from several different
nationalities.
Quite staggering to see that.
It never stops, and every yearthat I'm there on those
battlefields, no matter whatpart of the front it is, it will
(11:11):
always, always be there.
Certainly in my lifetime andprobably many lifetimes still to
come.
So check out that episode,Angus, and I'll put a link to it
in the show notes about the mythof the Zone Rouge, which will
hopefully tell you a little bitmore about that infamous red
zone.
So on to question number two,which comes from Carl Austin,
(11:33):
also on email.
Carl asks, I understand thatmorphine was issued as a pain
relief for serious wounds.
Was it carried by individualsoldiers for the purpose of
self-administration?
And bearing in mind that rum wasso likely to go astray, was
there ever a problem withmorphine being misused?
I've never heard of any issuesregarding this, but can't
(11:53):
believe that it wasn't abused asa coping mechanism.
Well morphine was certainly usedas a pain relief and it wasn't
given to individual soldiers.
Soldiers carried a filleddressing in their uniform with
some iodine in it, but notmorphine.
Morphine was initially thepreserve of medical officers of
(12:15):
the Royal Army Medical Corps whowould use it as and when
required treating the woundedthat were coming in off whatever
battlefield it was in that earlyphase of the First World War.
And of course, that early phasewas mobile from Mons to Lookato
to the Marne and the Ain, andthen the movement north to EAP,
(12:35):
which while there were trenchesdug by units at Eap, and we've
got photographs of them doingthat, it was still much more of
a mobile operation.
And in those battles, medicalofficers would be largely, I
think, using morphine that wasin liquid form that was then
available at dressing stations.
Regimental medical officerswould also possibly have had
(12:58):
morphine ampules which couldthen be used on the battlefield.
Now for a mobile war wherecasualties were perhaps not on
the scale that the First WorldWar rapidly turned into, that
administration of morphineprobably was okay.
But quickly people realised thereality of First World War,
(13:19):
Great War combat, the new combatthat was being fought on these
battlefields in 1914, and oncethe war became static in 1915
and the great offensives beganthat year, then carrying
morphine as a liquid in a glassfile was not a very safe or
practical way of its use beingimplemented on a battlefield.
(13:42):
So while morphine would havebeen found in other forms at
base hospitals and casualtystations and indeed beyond on
the battlefield, what you startto hear about and read in the
accounts in the official historyof medical units is the
implementation of morphinetablets which were placed under
the tongue and dissolved andgave a dose of morphine.
(14:05):
And these were issued to medicalofficers on the front line,
regimental or battalion medicalofficers, who had a stretcher
bearer section who went out topick up the wounded, and they
were also given the power toadminister morphine via this
tablet form as well.
So they would be given probablya little box of these tablets
(14:26):
and they'd take them out as partof their first aid kit and use
them when required on thebattlefield.
And they also carry thissomething we've spoken about in
a previous podcast, an indeliblepencil which made this kind of
blue writing, and they wouldwrite on the forehead and the
casualty card of the soldierbecause when a soldier was
(14:46):
treated, they would have acasualty with their details on
what the wound was, what hadbeen administered at that point
in terms of treatment, and thatwas put into a rubberised pouch
that was then tied round one ofthe general service buttons on
the soldier's uniform so thatwhen they got to the next
treatment level, they knew whathad been done and what the wound
(15:08):
appeared to be.
They would obviously reassessthat, but more importantly, they
knew in this case how muchmorphine or that a dose of
morphine had been given, becauseif that wasn't noted, then you
could overdose somebody onmorphine and potentially kill
them.
And it wasn't just pull on thecasualty, they would often write
that on the forehead of asoldier with an M on there to
(15:29):
indicate one or more doses ofmorphine.
And I think these tablet formswere quite strong, so I'm not
sure they gave too many doses ofthem in one go.
Now, morphine on a battlefieldwhere there were so many
casualties would quickly becomea precious resource.
And what stretcher bearers andin particular medical officers
(15:51):
had to do was prioritise its usebecause it would run out very
quickly if you just gave it toeverybody who had a wound that
had caused them pain.
So they looked at theseriousness of wounds, the
survivability of wounds, andthey used the morphine in that
way to control pain relief.
(16:11):
But there are also recordedexamples where medical officers
were confronted by soldiers withmultiple fatal wounds, wounds
that the soldier was never goingto recover for, and no amount of
treatment would save him, andthe soldier was in terrible,
terrible pain.
And at that point the medicalofficer has to make a terrible,
(16:31):
godlike decision about whetherthis man lives or dies, or if
it's possible for him tosurvive.
Can he let him suffer in thisway?
And morphine gives him theability for that end for that
soldier to be more comfortablein terms of the patient's
welfare.
He can't save his life, but hecan make that end, that ending,
(16:54):
free of pain.
And so young men who weremedical officers had to make
these kind of decisions, whichare incredible to us in the kind
of modern lives that we leadnow.
And it's something that clearlyhad an effect on them because I
remember reading some years agothat in the interwar period,
former medical officers who'dserved on the front line doing
(17:16):
exactly this kind of thing, thesuicide rate amongst those men
was artificially higher comparedto the rest of the typical
population of the same kind ofage and background.
Now, that is not necessarily akind of scientific indication of
the results of having to do thiskind of work and what effect
that might have on an individualwho was forced to do this using
(17:39):
morphine in this way, but Ithink it gives us a bit of a
blink towards it and a bit of anunderstanding.
So this kind of begins toaddress the other aspect of your
question about the misuse ofmorphine.
Given its wide availability tomedical staff, could it be
misused?
Well, of course.
I mean, people traded all kindsof stuff in the Great War, and
(18:02):
while 1914 it seems thatmorphine was largely
administered by officers orsenior non-commissioned officers
with stretcher bearers, they hadaccess to morphine tablets and
they were ordinary privatesoldiers.
So it meant that those men didhave access to morphine.
Whether there was some kind ofillicit trade, I've not read
(18:25):
anything about that.
Would we read anything aboutthat?
Because it's something that Iguess would exist on a level
beneath the official account ofthe Great War.
But in some of the crime-relatedpapers to do with the conduct of
the British Army behind thelines on the Western Front,
there are some hints of this,some hints of some kind of drug
(18:46):
abuse, and morphine is the mostlikely candidate for that,
considering that it could bewidely available.
If you were that way inclined tomisuse drugs and you were on a
battlefield as a conscriptsoldier later on in the war, and
you come across the body of astretcher bearer and know that
in his haversack there's a loadof morphine.
Are you just going to walk pastand leave it there?
(19:08):
So there were circumstances inwhich morphine, I guess, could
be acquired and then misused,traded, sold.
I mean, who knows what?
I mean, this is a darker side tothe Great War that we don't know
enough about.
And I was thinking recentlyabout the papers of the military
police who operated behind thelines dealing with crime like
(19:32):
this, not just drug related butalcohol related, damage to
property, all kinds ofnephriotous activities going on.
Because once you had a conscriptarmy conscripting men from 18 to
55, it conscripted a hugecross-section of the male
population, really good guys,but also some bad guys as well,
(19:53):
who, as unwilling soldiers, asconscripts, carried on their
nephriotous activity in Kharkijust as they had done in civil
life as well.
And I must go back to thearchives at some point and see
if I can pull out some goodexamples of this, and we can do
a podcast about crime in theFirst World War because it is
(20:13):
all part of that story.
So I can't give you a definitiveanswer to your question, Carl,
but I hope that shed a littlebit of light on this subject and
a subject of the misuse ofmaterial and the crime related
to that that hopefully we willreturn to in a future podcast
episode.
So thanks for that, Carl.
So on to question number three,and this one comes from Joe in
(20:36):
Canada.
I was wondering when helmetswere first issued to British and
Canadian troops.
When did these troops start toadd divisional insignia to their
helmets?
And was that done during late1918 for troops going home or
was it done earlier than that?
Well, when the British Army andthe Empire forces, the
Commonwealth as it is today,went to war in 1914, no one had
(21:00):
helmets.
Everyone was wearing servicedress caps, soft caps, because
that was the standard headgearof the day.
And there was no thought aboutinjuries to the head from
bullets or from shrapnel or fromshell fragments, because this
was going to be a war ofmovement, not a static war.
But very quickly, of course, aswe know from the history of the
Great War, that's exactly whatit turned into.
(21:23):
So 1915, with trenches dugacross this vast landscape of
Flanders to northern France froma British and Empire
perspective, with men fromBritish regiments, Canadian,
Indian, and then increasinglyother nations as the war moved
on, with the arrival ofAustralian and New Zealand
forces and also South Africans,and by the latter two years of
(21:45):
the war, men from all over thatBritish Empire serving on the
Western Front.
With that static war and men intrenches in holes dug in the
ground with shells going offabove them, the increase in head
wounds led to the development ofthe first steel helmets.
Not by the British, but actuallyby the French, who developed a
(22:05):
very basic steel skull capbasically that went underneath
the Kepi and gave some very,very limited protection against
shrapnel and bullets and shellfragments.
But this was something that wasdone provisionally.
The French then developed theAdrienne helmet that was the
first proper steel helmet usedon the battlefield of the Great
(22:27):
War, which was issued to Frenchsoldiers in 1915.
Quite a lot of British officersacquired them.
There's photographs of Churchillwearing them.
I used to own one to a Britishmedical officer that had a Royal
Army Medical Corps badge weldedonto the front of it.
But at the same time there wasthe development of a proper
steel helmet, a shrapnel helmet,as it was called at the time, to
(22:50):
be issued to British and Empiresoldiers.
And they were ready in time forthe Battle of Luz in September
1915, but only small numberswere issued, and I don't believe
there are any photographs of anyordinary British soldiers
wearing the steel helmet at Luzin 1915.
(23:12):
An added complexity to this withofficers is that they bought
their own kit so they couldorder a steel helmet from a
catalogue and have it sent tothem in the trenches of northern
France, and many did do this.
So some of the first helmets toarrive were private purchase
helmets that were bought byofficers and worn in the front
(23:32):
line.
Now some of those were decoratedwith insignia, sometimes painted
onto the helmet, the badge ofthe regiment or the unit that
they were serving in.
Sometimes badges were weldedonto these helmets.
You may have seen this in thefilm 1917, where some of the
characters in that are wearinghelmets with a cat badge welded
(23:53):
on it.
This came under criticism frompeople who watched the film, but
actually it's quite correct.
This was done, and there's lotsof photographic evidence to show
this.
But more commonly, they began topaint them on there because they
found, I believe, that when youwelded a badge to a helmet, it
created a weak spot, and therewas this widespread belief that
(24:16):
German snipers knew about this,and if they saw you standing in
a trench wearing a helmet with acat badge on it, they would aim
their sights on that cat badgeand the bullet would go straight
through and kill you instantly.
Now, whether that was true ornot, the adaptation of helmets
adding insignia was somethingthat then continued throughout
the rest of the war, and itdepended really on what unit you
(24:40):
were in.
Now I suspect Joe that you'relooking at this from a Canadian
perspective, and there arewartime photographs,
particularly in 1918, ofsoldiers with divisional flashes
or their unit flash painted ontheir helmet, sometimes on the
back of the helmet rather thannecessarily the front.
This was also done in Britishdivisions and probably
(25:02):
Australian, New Zealandformations, South African
formations as well.
And this wasn't just about pridein your unit, your battalion,
your brigade, your division.
There was a practical reason forthis as well, because
increasingly as the war movedon, soldiers would remove
identification from about theiruniforms, so take off shoulder
(25:23):
titles, remove sometimes clothtitles that gave away what
regiment or corps they were partof, and that this idea of using
symbols to indicate what unitthey were a part of that would,
in theory, only be known to menwithin that formation was
something that was increasinglydone.
And there's quite a few books onbattle insignia showing how this
(25:45):
developed.
There was no standardisation insome divisions of the British
Army, no insignia was used atall, and in others there were
very complex systems by whichthey painted helmets, put colour
flashes on the collars, the backcollars of uniforms and upper
sleeves, and all this kind ofstuff.
It's a fascinating subject, andagain, there's a lot of
(26:06):
photographic evidence of allthat in contemporary images.
So you can find a lot ofinformation about this.
Now I know today these helmets,which are often erroneously
called brody helmets, that's nota phrase that you see being used
for them during the Great War,during the First World War
itself.
I think that's more of acollector's description of these
(26:27):
helmets.
They were a steel helmet or ashrapnel helmet, and one proudly
made in the city of Sheffield,which I used to once live close
to when I lived in SouthYorkshire, which was proud of
its steel industry, and theymade the vast majority of steel
helmets that were issued toBritish and Commonwealth troops
in the Great War.
(26:48):
But from a collector's point ofview, I know that the ones that
have got insignia painted onthem are highly prized, go for
huge amounts of money.
Over the years of collectingthis kind of material myself,
I've had a couple of examples ofthis with very nondescript kind
of rectangles or squares withsome colours on, and I wasn't
ever really entirely sure whatunit that some of these related
(27:11):
to because the paint had oftenchanged colour and it was
difficult to match them up toany known documentation.
But what I have seenincreasingly since the time of
the centenary are helmets thatare quite clearly faked, in my
view, with some verystrange-looking insignia, or
insignia that's kind of too goodto be true, really, and doesn't
(27:34):
match up with what we know thatthat division or regiment or
battalion or whatever actuallyused, and there's always this
kind of so-called provenancewith it that it's an exception
to a rule, and that temptscollectors to go after these
kind of things.
But coming back to the historyof steel helmets, first uses
(27:54):
we've said, the Battle of Luz,September 1915, and then on the
Western Front, by the time ofthe Battle of the Centre Loire
Craters, which included Canadiansoldiers that were serving in
that part of Flanders at thattime, this was the first battle
on the Western Front in whichevery British and Commonwealth
soldier had a steel helmet, andfrom then onwards, from March
(28:15):
1916 onwards, that was thestandard headgear of soldiers on
the front line.
Many men wore them behind thelines.
I've got plenty of photographsof guys that were out on rest
and went to studios to havetheir photographs taken, and
they're still wearing theirsteel helmet.
Some men didn't wear them.
I've spoken a lot about GeorgeButler, who was in the machine
gun corps.
(28:35):
He thought they were scruffy, hewas a regular soldier, so he
wore the service dress cap withits stiffener in it for the
entire war, which cost him inApril 1918 because a shell went
off above his machine gunposition, killed the rest of his
crew, and badly wounded him inthe head, and he wouldn't have
been as badly wounded if he'dhave been wearing a steel
(28:56):
helmet.
So what you see as the war goeson is the widespread adoption of
these helmets, and by the timeof photographs of the Battle of
the Somme in the summer of 1916,everyone is clearly wearing
them, and they see that asanother way to protect
themselves on the battlefield.
But when the war becomes mobileagain, you see perhaps a
(29:16):
relaxation of this.
And if you look at photographsof the last hundred days,
particularly in that summer of1918, there are perhaps fewer
helmets being worn by some men,and there was also a return to
the adaptation of uniforms thathave been discarded.
So the officers' tunics that hadtheir rank on the cuff that had
been discarded for the so-calledwind-up tunics, where you had
(29:39):
the rank up on the epaulets ofthe uniform, so it couldn't
clearly be seen that you werenecessarily an officer.
But in 1918, a lot of officerson the front line went back to
wearing those cuff rank uniformsthat had been discarded perhaps
two years before, except inphotographs taken in England
when you were training.
I've gone slightly off the Kindof subject there as we often do,
(30:01):
but there is a symbolism aswell, I think, with helmets that
goes beyond the battlefielditself, not perhaps exactly in
the same way as the German steelhelmet, the Stahlhelm, which was
very much a symbol of being aveteran and used on war
memorials right across Germany.
But I think in Britain that thesteel helmet did represent you
as a soldier.
So there was an organisationcalled the Memorable Order of
(30:25):
Tin Hats, the Moths, and theyused the steel helmet as their
symbol.
They had a little lapel badgethat you wore with a steel
helmet on it that said moth, andyou see helmets being used
widely in statuary and warmemorials, not just on figures
on those war memorials, butoften the helmets are arranged
(30:46):
in stone around the base of amemorial, including on
cemeteries as well.
So if you go to the originalentrance to Tynecott Cemetery,
where you would have walked inthrough that front gateway to be
confronted by this vast hillsideof the dead in that post-war
period, when that was allcomplete, the architect there
actually placed as kind ofalmost like curbstones, steel
(31:09):
helmets on the outside of thecemetery.
So the symbolism of the helmet,the shrapnel helmet, the steel
helmet, some erroneously call itthe Brody.
During the war, it was referredto by officers often as a battle
bowler.
It is very much part of theidentity of the British Tommy in
the Great War, whether thatTommy is from Britain or from
(31:32):
Canada or from one of the otherEmpire Commonwealth nations.
And I would refer you to one ofthe great friends of this
podcast, Peter Doyle, who'swritten extensively about
uniforms and equipment of theFirst World War.
And if you pick up one of hisbooks like Remembering Tommy or
What Tommy Took to War, that'llgive you quite a lot of good
insights into the use anddevelopment of steel helmets and
(31:53):
their adaptation by British andCommonwealth forces during the
Great War.
So thanks for that, Joe, and Ihope that's answered some
elements of your question andshed a bit more light on steel
helmets and the decoration thatwas made to them during the
Great War.
On to our fourth and finalquestion, which comes from Kevin
Tobin on Discord, which isanother way for you to submit a
(32:16):
question to the podcast.
Kevin asks, Are there any FirstWorld War slang words still in
use by people today?
Well, I'm going to refer you toPeter Doyle again because Peter
Doyle and Julian Walker wrote areally good book on this called
Trench Talk, which was firstpublished in 2012 and is still
widely available.
(32:36):
And there's a whole host ofmaterial about the language used
in the First World War, wordsthat became unique to the war,
words that were plucked out ofthe past to have a new meaning,
and how words and languagedeveloped as the soldier went
through his experiences in theFirst World War.
And first of all, slang is partof the verbal currency of
(32:57):
military service.
Slang is used in the militarytoday, it's been used probably
in every military that's everexisted in any time frame.
But in terms of the First WorldWar, where this vast army in
Britain is recruited frompre-war regular soldiers,
volunteers, and territorialsthrough to the creation of a new
army, Kitchener's army withvolunteers in 1914, through to
(33:21):
eventually a conscript army withthis vast cross-section of
British society going into themilitary, including by 1917-18,
a lot of women as well servingnot just in nursing roles, but
in military roles behind thelines on the Western Front and
other fronts besides.
So a lot of language isdeveloped and used through this
(33:43):
service, which then, of course,for those who survived the war
and go back home, becomes partof their verbal currency, their
day-to-day language that oftenwould help identify them to
others as someone who had servedin the war.
Because not necessarily by the1930s, not necessarily everybody
in your street is going to be aveteran of the Great War.
(34:04):
Even some who are the same ageas you might not have served,
might been medically unfit toserve, or had protected jobs,
whatever it was.
And this language is all part ofthat closed, almost secret
society of veterans that existedin that interwar period where
they spoke amongst themselves,talked about the war to each
other, and kept quiet prettymuch to everyone else.
(34:27):
So if we kind of think of somekey words, I mean we could
literally fill probably multiplepodcasts with this, but let's
have a look at a few examples ofthis.
And what we'll do is we'll lookat words which I think are still
pretty much used today.
Blighty.
I mean, people still refer todear old Blighty.
I'm heading back to dear oldBlighty when we do tours on our
coaches.
(34:48):
People say, Oh, it's great to beback in Blighty again.
And that is a phrase, of course,that existed before the First
World War, but becamepopularised with troops using
it.
There were magazines that had itin the title, there were books,
there was the popular song, TakeMe Back to Dear Old Blighty.
And what it is is a bit ofverbal currency from regulars in
(35:08):
India before the war, aderivation of an Indian word
meaning home.
So Blighty was home.
You were going back to Blighty,you were going home when you
were taking your discharge fromIndia to go back to your depot
to be released into civilianlife.
And that was a word that thenwas part of the language of the
soldier before the Great War andvery much during the Great War
(35:30):
and pretty much probably eversince, but one that is still
used by people today.
Another one is chatting.
We all like a chat.
We go to the pub to meet ourmates and have a chat, or we go
to a tea room and have a coffeeor a pot of tea and we have a
chat.
Chatting is something that wasdone by soldiers when they were
out of the line and they werecovered in body lice, and they'd
(35:50):
take off their uniform and thelice would often lay eggs in the
thick woolen seams, and theywould take a candle and run that
lit candle up the seams, poppingall the lice eggs, and it would
make this pop, pop, pop, pop,pop sign, and they would be
sitting there while they weredoing this, almost nonchalantly
talking to each other, chattingaway, having a chat, and that's
(36:12):
where that comes from, and westill chat to this day.
There's a part of this podcastcalled Trench Chat, where we
speak to people.
So chatting is still very muchpart of the modern language as
it was to the soldier of theGreat War.
No man's land.
Now this was a phrase thatalmost certainly existed before
World War I, but it becamesymbolic of the Great War and
(36:35):
that battlefield, that landscapeof the First World War, and it's
something that we use today inwith all kinds of meanings.
I remember when I moved back toKent after living in France,
there was a bit of a housingestate on the edge of the
housing estate where I wasliving.
They had a sign up because theydidn't want people to go into
this particular area of theestate, and they'd written no
(36:56):
man's land on it, indicatingthis was a place that you should
not enter.
So I think that's still part ofthe modern language, societal
language today.
And we see it in a lot of newsreports, particularly relating
to things like Ukraine and otherplaces where there's conflict
now.
Over the top, which was thephrase for going literally over
(37:17):
the top, going into action,climbing up the ladders, going
over the parapet, going into noman's land, making your attack,
that is a phrase that is stillused in all kinds of ways,
indicating that you're about todo something.
Come on, we're going to go overthe top and we're going to get
this task done.
And one that I'll end with,which I used to think about a
lot when we'd be going to andfro in the coaches, backwards
(37:38):
and forwards to the UK in in thedays long before the changes to
the border and Covid andeverything else.
People would often pick up a fewbottles of wine.
And I had friends when I livedin Kent before who would go over
and they'd pick up wine, they'dgo to one of the warehouses near
Calais and things like that, andthey would always talk about,
oh, I'm just heading over toFrance to get some cheap Planck.
(38:01):
And Planck is a piece of FirstWorld War verbal currency
because soldiers tried to speakFrench and they'd go into an
Estamina and they'd order abottle of white wine, Van Blanc,
and they couldn't say Van Blanc,so they would say vin Planck or
just Planck.
And Planck was really a word forcheap wine because soldiers were
(38:23):
not drinking the best claret orwhite wine or anything else when
they were behind the lines inthose Estaminaes during the
Great War, and Planck is a wordthat we still use when we go in
search of cheap wine in Frenchhypermarkets or whatever it is.
So I think Kevin there is awhole host of words out there.
There's stuff about this onYouTube, and I would thoroughly
(38:44):
recommend Peter Doyle and JulianWalker's book, Trench Talk, and
there are a few others besides.
There's some earlier ones fromthe interwar period where
veterans have outlined some ofthe words that they commonly
use.
And it's something you see inmuch of the literature memoirs,
fiction written by those whowere there.
So it's an important part of ourunderstanding of the Great War.
(39:06):
So thanks for that question,Kevin.
Thanks for all of the questionsthis week.
As usual, you can submit themvia the usual methods from email
to the Discord server, and thereare links to those in the show
notes for this episode.
And I'll see you again soon forsome more questions and answers
on the Old Frontline.
(39:31):
You've been listening to anepisode of the Old Frontline
with me, military historian PaulReed.
You can follow me on Twitter atSomcore, you can follow the
podcast at Old Frontline Pod.
Check out the website atoldfrontline.co.uk where you'll
find lots of podcast extras andphotographs and links to books
that are mentioned in thepodcast.
(39:52):
And if you feel like supportingus, you can go to our Patreon
page, patreon.com slasholdfrontline, or support us on
buymea coffee atbuymeacoffee.com slash
oldfrontline.
Links to all of these are on ourwebsites.
Thanks for listening, and we'llsee you again soon.
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