Hinky Dinky

[Jonathan Lighter]

The 92nd Infantry Division functioned entirely under US command in its 63 days on the front line.  The black soldiers hurriedly brigaded with the French Army in response to Ludendorf's breakthrough of March 1918 were four infantry regiments (369th, 370th, 371st, 372nd) that had been intended for a second black U.S. division, the 93rd, which was never actually organized into a unit.  The "93rd" depended on the French Army for rifles, helmets, rations, railway trains, signalmen, and engineers, not to mention machine gun and artillery support. Its troops nevertheless met with success in the Vosges and around Verdun.

Officers of all but one of the American Negro regiments were white. The exception was the 369th, whose officer corps was - audaciously for the time - considerably integrated.  As Laurence Stallings, the Marine veteran who'd been principal author of "What Price Glory?" wrote in 1963 (_The Doughboys_, ch. 19),

               Originally the 15th New York National Guards,...[t]heir armory had been a
               cigar store in Harlem and a dance hall above it, their recruiting surgeon                 Dr.  George Bolling Lee, whose grandfather had given up the military
               persuasion at Appomattox. This regiment had both white and Negro
               officers from the outset. The former were mainly Ivy Leaguers from Harvard,
               Yale, and Princeton,  the latter their equals from the intellectuals of a
               minority group in Northern cities.



Within the 92nd and "93rd," then, "sous lieutenant" was scarcely more likely to be part of everyday English than in any other AEF unit.

JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Hinky Dinky
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On Sep 23, 2004, at 6:42 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
> Subject: Re: Hinky Dinky
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
>> Yes. In fact, "sous lieutenant" was (and I believe still is) the
>> standard
>> designation in the French army for "second lieutenant" (or British
>> Great
>> War "subaltern.")
>
> Apparently a Canadian officer of this rank has both designations
> ("second",
> "sous") (it's a bilingual country).
>
>> It's just that "sous lieutenant" was not a usual term in the AEF ....
>
> I believe there were Americans who served under the French flag

The 92nd Infantry Division (Negroes), United States Colored Troops,
United States Army. Since the U.S. Army was Jim Crow, black American
soldiers were assigned to the French Army. That any of the black
soldiers held commissioned-officer rank within the French Army is
probably unlikely.

-Wilson Gray

> and who
> actually carried the rank "sous-lieutenant" (not in the 77th though,
> right?). [It would be a miracle if nobody ever made a joke like "I'm a
> sous-lieutenant. That means I get paid one sou a month." But maybe
> such a
> joke never caught on.]
>
>> Furthermore, the odd choice of words encumbers the stanza in singing;
>> just
>> compare the more tripping rhythm of the normal "second lieutenant" in
>> the
>> same slot.(Homer had to deal with similar considerations.) I suspect
>> the
>> stanza was bowdlerized for print in some way, represents some sort of
>> mistake, or else was hardly ever sung, or that it was totally
>> factitious.
>
> But wouldn't it be easier and more natural then to bowdlerize by
> replacing
> the bad word (whatever it was) with "second" instead of "sous"?
>
>> Given the temper of the '20s, when the stanza was published in a
>> songbook,
>> my guess is bowdlerization - not of a bawdy reference but of something
>> that today would seem pretty innocuous.
>>
>> In the mid-20s the Broadway comedy-drama "What Price Glory?" which
>> was the
>> first mildly realistic portrayal of American soldiers on stage, was
>> the
>> target of protests because it showed American soldiers cursing,
>> carousing,
>> complaining, questioning the value of the war and - wait for it! -
>> DRINKING!
>
> Then maybe "sous" appears as a euphemism or an error for the
> blasphemous
> "soused" (or even "sozzled")?
>
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>


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