evolution of an "old saying"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Instructive because it has a known author and canonical form, one writer
cites it in two different (inaccurate) versions, and the latest, not the
earliest, version  is the most specific, yet so poeticized as to be the
least comprehensible.

1905  Lieut.-Gen. Sir Ian Hamilton _A Staff-Officer's Scrap-Book_ (London:
Edward Arnold) v: On the actual day of battle naked truths may be picked up
for the asking; on the following morning, they have already begun to get
into their uniforms.

1944 H. A. De Weerd _Great Soldiers of World War II_  (N.Y.: Norton) 7:
This is particularly the case in military history, a fact that has led to
the old saying: "Truths can be seen wandering about the battlefield naked on
the night after an encounter, but by the next morning they are all in
uniform!"

1946 S. L. A. Marshall _Bastogne_  (Wash., D.C.: Infantry Journal Press)
vi:  General Sir Ian Hamilton...remarked: "On the day of battle truthsstalk
naked. Thereafter they put on their little dress uniforms."

1956 H. A. De Weerd in _Saturday Review_ (Dec. 22) 26: There is an old
saying: "Truth can be seen wandering about the battlefield naked on the
night of an encounter, but by morning it has put on a uniform."

2001 Jon T. Hoffman _Chesty: The Story of Lieutenant General Lewis B.
Puller, USMC_ (N.Y.: Random House) xii: Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons,
emeritus head of the Marine history program, once pithily observed: "Truth
stalks naked across the battlefield at midnight, but with the coming of
dawn, assumes the uniform of a field marshal."

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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