German guards as "goons"

[Jonathan Lighter]

As both HDAS and OED point out, British, Commonwealth, and American POWs - mainly fliers - held by the Germans in WWII customarily referred to members of the German military as "goons."  While the popularity of the term comes ultimately from the use of "goon" as a synonym for both "thug" and "idiot," here is a first-hand report suggesting that the British introduced the POW usage via an intermediary phrase:

  1979 Eric Williams _The Wooden Horse_ (rev. ed.) (London: Collins) 12: Most of us responded to our guards' correctness with derision and contempt. We never called the Germans anything but goons. This soubriquet originated in a doggerel dinned into us during operational flying training: _Beware of the hun in the sun - beware of the goon in the moon_.

  RAF pilot Richard Hilary's well-known memoir, _The Last Enemy_  (London: Reynal & Hitchock, 1942), ch. 5, tells how, in the Battle of Britain, Hilary "learned within a few seconds the truth of the old warning, 'Beware of the Hun in the Sun.'"

  Murray Peden, who flew with the RCAF, recalled, "The flight rooms...were bedecked with solid black models of German aircraft and with exhortative wall posters.
  "One of these posters, which had no application to our future circumstances as [night bombing crews]...showed an unsuspecting...British pilot serenely flying ahead...while off to the side a German aircraft and pilot...made ready to launch a cowardly attack upon him from out of a tropically blazing sun. The prominent Caption:

  BEWARE OF THE HUN IN SUN,

  was followed by three hand-lettered responses, obviously composed by meditative aircrew _literati_. gifted linguists all:

  I. UND BE VATCHING ALSO, KINDER, FUR DAS GOON IN THE MOON!
  II. VY ZO? - IS NEIN KRIS KRINGLE?
  III. BALLZ - CONZENTRATE ON DER ARTIFIZZIAL HORIZON-DEIDEN!" (_A Thousand Shall Fall_ [1979; rpt. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1998], p. 172.)

  JL




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