“THE BOCHES”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 2

“THE BOCHES”

TERM OF COLD HATRED AND CONTEMPT USE BY GENERAL WAVELL. IN APPEAL TO FRENCH TROOPS IN SYRIA. General Wavell is a stylist as well as a soldier, and nothing could have been more direct and effective than his message and appeal to the French troops in. Syria, recalling "the memory of the victory won together over these same Bodies twenty years ago." Twice in his brief message occurs the phrase “the Bodies”—-and it is, of course, the right one for the context. To the French and Belgians who fought against them in the last war, or who saw their ways when they were in occupation of the soil of France and Flanders, the Germans are eternally “the Bodies.” It is a term that carries a hard, unyielding hatred as well as contempt, whereas the “Fritz” of the English officer or the “Jerry” of the “other ranks” (in this war almost universal, by the way, in all ranks and services from this side of the Channel) had an almost friendly touch of derision about it. There is nothing friendly about “the Bodies"; it rings with a cold, undying bitterness. It was the right word to use to the French in Syria. It is a queer word the origins of which have been discussed before now in “Miscellany”; there is, of course, the famous and somehow entirely convincing tale of the Frenchman who, when asked "Why do you call the Germans ‘Bodies’,” replied simply, “Well, what else could you call them?” It seems to come from the French “caboche,” which once meant a pate or noddle and now appears to mean a squarehead of the authentic Boche variety. If it is to be qualified at all it carries with it one unfailing adjective (which General Wavell did not use) —“sale.” And anyone who has ever heard a Frenchman or, better still, a Frenchwoman from the occupied territories of the last war refer to "les sales Bodies” will know why Petain can preach himself blue in his aged face, or talk about “honour” till the cows come home, without bringing a great deal of the real France one inch nearer effective co-operation with the hated hardheads from the other side of the Rhine.