1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it mean?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Cultural mystery: given its seeming frequency, why are there so few
references in print to this practice, particularly in the twentieth
century?  With 16,000,000 WW2 veterans in 1945, and thousands interviewed
or writing their own accounts, why does GB seem to show only a dozen refs.?
 Censorship couldn't have been an issue.

I searched GB for "cigarette + hole + sergeant."  Likewise in
NewspaperArchive.  (Most hits were irrelevant to the topic.)

Some may recall my posts of yesteryear querying why "Yeah" (and spelling
variants) hardly ever appears in print before ca1900.  There's no such
problem with the far more notoriously "illiterate" _ain't_.



JL



On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 12:11 PM, Gerald Cohen <gcohen at mst.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Gerald Cohen <gcohen at MST.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it
> mean?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> My campus has an eminent military historian (Dr. John McManus) who
> specializes in WWII, and I asked him whether he ever came across
> mention of the cigarette internment/funeral in the course of his
> extensive conversations with WWII veterans.
>
> With his permission I now share his reply below.
>
> Gerald Cohen
> Missouri University of Science and Technology
> Rolla, MO 65409
>
> [Reply]:
>
> Jerry,
> I have heard reference to the six by six punishment many times.  This
> punishment was standard in those days for a multiplicity of infractions,
> not
> just the littering of a company street with cigarette butts.  In fact, this
> practice became infamous to later generations of basic trainees since by
> then the Army had discarded it as too draconian.  I must admit that I have
> never heard the word "butthole" used in this context though!  My suspicion
> is that by the time I spoke to WWII veterans many years later--or read
> their
> recollections--they all knew that the word had a much different connotation
> and thus did not use it in describing the six by six treatment.
> [....]
>
> John
>
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