[Ads-l] hill to die on

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Ben requested citations illuminating the phrase "hill to die on".
While exploring this topic I became interested in the underlying
semantic notion of a hill depicted as an unimportant or arbitrary
military objective. The reaction elicited by this scenario is
intensified when numerous casualties occur during the battle for the
unimportant hill. The anguish is further heightened when the
conquerors of the hill unceremoniously relinquish it.

In 1938 the phrase "a worthless hill In Asia" was employed while
describing battles over an inconsequential military objective.

Date: August 11, 1938
Newspaper: Bergen Evening Record
Newspaper Location: Hackensack, New Jersey
Article: Guessing
Quote Page 26, Column 3
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
It has been nearly a month since Soviet and Japanese troops began
fighting over possession of a worthless hill In Asia, and still the
world knows virtually nothing but what the foreign offices of the
involved powers choose to announce.
[End excerpt]

In 1943 a columnist discussed Lt. Gen. George S. Patton's ability to
motivate soldiers to "die taking a hill".

Date: November 3, 1943
Newspaper: The Bedford Daily-Times Mail
Newspaper Location: Bedford, Indiana
Article: Leaves from a War Correspondent's Notebook
Author: Hal Boyle
Quote Page 6, Column 8
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
His subordinates would rather die taking a hill than to come back
alive to face the biting fury of his wrath for not. having taken it.
[End excerpt]

In 1949 a reporter wrote about his experiences during the battle for
Sugar Loaf Hill ("a beat-up worthless hill") in southern Okinawa in
1945.

Date: May 11, 1949
Newspaper: The Logan Daily News
Newspaper Location: Logan, Ohio
Article: Sugar Loaf Hill
Author: Ben Price (substituting for Hal Boyle)
Quote Page 4, Column 2
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
By the time it was over the division counted 2,662 dead and wounded
spent taking a beat-up worthless hill.
After it was over men sat in the mud and cried. Some prayed. Some just
sat, stunned by weariness.
[End excerpt]

In 1951 a Florida newspaper quoted an author who was imagining the
motivations of Civil War soldiers:

Date: October 21, 1951
Newspaper: St. Petersburg Times
Newspaper Location: St. Petersburg, Florida
Article: Times Veterans Column: 'Next Hill' Spirit Replacing Usual
Crusade Zeal, GIs Say
Author: Paul Mitchell
Quote Page 20, Column 2
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
The late Hervey Allen hit the right note in his Civil War novel,
"Action At Aquila," when he described the last bitter year of that
combat.
Soldiers on each side, he said, had long since forgotten the patriotic
fervor and crusading spirit that swept them into uniform in '61. Now,
they fought only for the ground they stood on, bled and died to take a
hill or a road junction, beyond which they cared little about.
[End excerpt]

In 1952 a short story contest entry was reprinted in an Illinois newspaper.

Date: December 14, 1952
Newspaper: Decatur Sunday Herald and Review
Newspaper Location: Decatur, Illinois
Article: Boys Dominate Top Winners in Annual Short Story Contest -
Third Prize - What Price Freedom
Author: Edward Catton
Quote Page 58, Column 4
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
As the soldiers crept stealthily up the hill. Bob did a lot of hard
thinking. What was he here for? Why had he and millions of others like
him been torn from their jobs or their schooling to come to this
out-of-the-way place and fight over a rice paddy or a rocky and
worthless hill?
On the face of it, it didn't make any sense at all. Why should he, Bob
Martin, an architectural student at the University of Colorado, care
whether the North Koreans or the South Koreans owned this hill? It was
ridiculous, he told himself.
[End excerpt]

In 1952 a letter from a U.S. soldier in Korea referred to the battles
fought over a hill nicknamed "Old Baldy".

Date: April 10, 1953
Newspaper: The Abilene Reporter-News
Newspaper Location: Abilene, Texas
Article: Letter To the Editor - 'Why This War?' Son Asks; Mother Answers
Author: Mrs. Vera Beck of Anson
Quote Page 6D, Column 2 and 3
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
First we go up and take the hill and lose hundreds of men getting it,
and then give it back to the Reds. What is the point in it? Has the
world gone crazy or something?
[End excerpt]


Date: May 28, 1959
Newspaper: Oakland Tribune
Newspaper Location: Oakland, California
Article: 'Pork Chop Hill' Tells How it Was
Author: Theresa Loeb Cone (Tribune Drama Editor)
Quote Page 38, Column 1
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
Melodrama is minimized and the documentary approach is paramount in
"Pork Chop Hill," which traces the ordeals of a company under the
command of Gregory Peck. They have been sent to capture a seemingly
worthless hill from the Chinese reds and ordered to hold it against
overwhelmingly larger numbers.
[End excerpt]


Date: March 28, 1966
Newspaper: The Pittsburgh Press
Newspaper Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Article: Old Pro Salutes New: Writing Marines Live, Die Heroically
Author: Jim G. Lucas (Scripps-Howard Staff Writer
Quote Page 1, Column 2
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
"What is peace without freedom, or existence without future?
"Wave your banners of protest, student, and throw your paint and
rotten eggs, demonstrator, while we die on a hill for that freedom you
abuse."
[End excerpt]


Date: November 23, 1967
Newspaper: Lincoln Evening Journal
Newspaper Location: Lincoln, Nebraska
Article: It's Not That Kind of War
Quote Page 4, Column 1
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
The war in South Vietnam is not that kind of war. It has been dreary
slogging through rice fields, bruising marches through the underbrush
and then the hills, fighting and dying to take a hill known only by a
number.
[End excerpt]


Date: May 30, 1968
Newspaper: Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle
Newspaper Location: Clarksville, Tennessee
Article: Your silent tents of green, we deck with fragrant flowers
Author: Jim Charlet
Quote Page 15, Column 5
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
Then it's too late to question whether war is worth fighting or not,
or whether the hill is worth taking or not. This is the time of
commitment and the loyalty to the men on either side of the soldier
and all the love of his country is on the line.
[End excerpt]


Date: July 16, 1969
Newspaper: Rapid City Journal
Newspaper Location: Rapid City, South Dakota
Article: Sound Off (Letters to the Editor): Why?
Author: Bud Spargur
Quote Page 5, Column 2
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
Why does the War Department let hundreds of our young men die to take
a hill in Vietnam, and then pull out and let them take it over again?
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Mon, Mar 2, 2020 at 6:37 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From an interview with Aaron Sorkin about his Broadway adaptation of "To
> Kill a Mockingbird":
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/02/magazine/aaron-sorkin-interview.html
> "A specific anachronism I cut -- when I was told it was an anachronism --
> was a line where Jim said, 'That's not the hill I want to die on.' Which
> turns out to be a phrase that developed in World War II."
>
> I'm not sure how Sorkin and his researchers determined that this expression
> "developed in World War II." As noted by Wiktionary and some other online
> sources, there's a literal "hill to die on" in Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom
> the Bell Tolls" (1940):
>
> "If he had known how many men in history have had to use a hill to die on
> it would not have cheered him any..."
> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Citations:hill_to_die_on
>
> As for the figurative use of the idiom (variously expressed as "a hill one
> wants/chooses/is willing to die on," "a hill worth dying on," etc. -- often
> in the negative), the earliest I've found so far is from 1970.
>
> ---
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/45998912/hill-to-die-on/
> Los Angeles Times, May 20, 1970, p. IV4, col. 1
> "We all knew what hills we wanted to die on," explains under-35 delegate
> June Simmons, a graduate at USC working on her masters degree as a
> psychiatric social worker.
> ---
> Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1975, p. 25, col. 3 [ProQuest]
> Says [California State] Superintendent [Wilson] Riles: "I'm willing to
> fight for Early Childhood Education. I've been in education and politics
> long enough to know that you can't choose to die on every hill -- but this
> is one hill I'm willing to die on."
> ---
>
> (There are similar quotes from Riles in other articles from 1975-76.)
>
> Can anyone find earlier examples? The OED doesn't have it, nor do any other
> dictionaries I checked besides Wiktionary (which defines "hill to die on"
> as "an issue to pursue with wholehearted conviction and/or single-minded
> focus, with little or no regard to the cost").
>
> --bgz
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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