Rape Town, Gangster's Paradise (GP) and more

[Wilson Gray]

On Apr 26, 2004, at 1:15 AM, Jerome Foster wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jerome Foster <funex79 at CHARTER.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Rape Town, Gangster's Paradise (GP) and more
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> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Wilson Gray" <hwgray at earthlink.net>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2004 8:43 PM
> Subject: Re: Rape Town, Gangster's Paradise (GP) and more
>
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at EARTHLINK.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: Rape Town, Gangster's Paradise (GP) and more
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>>
>> On Apr 25, 2004, at 9:17 AM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>
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>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
>>> Subject:      Re: Rape Town, Gangster's Paradise (GP) and more
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>>> --
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>>>
>>>> "SHORT ARM INSPECTION ... My military friend here gave me this."
>>>
>>> "Short arms" means handguns (pistols, revolvers, etc.) AFAIK. There
>>> is
>>> of
>>> course a double-entendre. I don't know that "short arm" by itself has
>>> currency as a serious (even slangy-serious) anatomical term, but
>>> probably
>>> it's been used humorously in the military, following the inspection.
>>>
>>> Then of course there's "short arms, deep pockets" which is unrelated
>>> (I think).
>>>
>>> -- Doug Wilson
>>>
>>
>> Having served in the US Army in the 'Fifties and 'Sixties, I can say
>> that, in our military, the "short-arms inspection" is just an empty
>> joke, having to do with the "fact" that anyone thus inspected and
>> found
>> to have VD is given a shot of penicillin in his left testicle with a
>> hypodermic having a square needle the size of a railroad spike. Call:
>> "Short-arm inspection!" Response: "Square needle in the left nut!"
>> followed by general laughter. During Basic Training, it was used as a
>> tension-breaker, ritualized to the extent that, normally, only the
>> response was used, since the term "short arm" was totally meaningless,
>> having long since lost its currency, if it ever had any, in the US
>> Army. Would a red-blooded, gung-ho, American infantryman - Call:
>> "Infantry! Queen (yes, it is somewhat incongruous) of battle! What is
>> the meaning of 'infantry'?! Response: "Kill!!" - refer to his penis as
>> "short"? In the words of Noam Chomsky, "I think not." Regular soldiers
>> carry only some form of long arm, e.g. carbine, rifle, machine gun,
>> for
>> which the general term is "weapon," hence, "weapons inspection" as the
>> sole term, devoid of any secondary meaning.
>> After I'd been in the Army about two years, I came to know an armorer
>> and heard the term, "long arm," allowing me to intuit the meaning of
>> "short arm."
>>
>> -Wilson
>>
>
> As a former red-blooded (though not very gung ho) infantryman of WWII
> I can
> attest to the use of "short arm inspection" as a real practice. Once a
> week
> or so during basic training we lined up, wearing raincoats only and a
> medic
> went down the line and we had to "milk it down" presumably if we had a
> venereal disease some evil liquid would be exuded from the penis. The
> equivalent practice for Wacs (Women's Army Corps) was, perhaps
> apocryphally,
> known as "foxhole inspection." It very obviously was a play on weapons
> inspection when our long weapons, rifles, were checked for dust and
> rust.
>
> J. Foster, ex-rifleman
>

Good God, man! Had the Army no shame?!;-) This is the kind of story
that, in the immediate post-WWII period, I would have been too young to
hear. No doubt, for maximum discomfort, the inspections were held in
the company street, regardless of the weather. Was there a formal
series of movements, as is the case wrt the ordinary weapons
inspection?  Pondering the possible combos of commands and movements
has me LOL! Though there were still WAC's in my day, "foxhole
inspection" is completely new to me. Rather, it was said that WAC
sergeants, when calling the troops to attention, demanded to "hear [the
relevant number of] pussies snap as one!"