"left, right" [was: Cadence]

[Wilson Gray]

When I was at the Army Language School, we saw a film in which Red Army
recruits were shown with a bundle of hay on the bottoms of their left feet
and a bundle of straw on the bottoms of their right foot, as they quite
clumsily - the bundles were bigger than the soldiers' feet, about the size
of small sheafs - tried to get the hang of marching.

It was a silent film from way back when and was by no means meant to
illustrate the training methods of the contemporary Red Army of the '50's
and '60's.




On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 1:21 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "left, right" [was: Cadence]
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 6/17/2014 11:41 AM, Bill Mullins wrote:
> >That is one of the more familiar chants from the "Jodie Cadence,"
> >which spread throughout the military service after Jackson devised
> >it to help a group of unco-ordinated recruits learn how to march in
> >1943 at Camp Barkley, Texas."
>
> In 1686 John Dunton wrote that "a wild Irish Man" in the military
> would be given bread for one pocket and cheese for the other, and
> then instead of left or right be commanded to turn toward bread or cheese.
>
> Joel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org