Hinky Dinky

[Jonathan Lighter]

Nice point.  Since so many of the the American volunteers in the Lafayette Flying Corps
had signed up before America's entry into the war, they may have been more at home with French military terminology than most.  A large number of them transferred into the U.S. army beginning in April, 1917.

So it is possible that the "sous lieutenant" verse originated in the Air Service.

I have to doubt, however, whether anybody in the air would have had any interest in singing about the doings of the 77th on the surface of the earth.

Also, the choice of  "a Jew and a Wop" for attention, reflecting the routine (and usually undisguised)  bigotry of the age, must be intended to ridicule the 77th, since Jews and Italians generally appeared in pop culture as bumbling, sometimes sympathetic but usually amusing and cowardly characters.

In that context, the phrase "sous lieutenant"  is just too bland. Every division had a million of 'em.

JL


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