The Penguin Book of First World War Stories (44 page)

5
.
Rosyth
: naval base and dockyard on the south coast of Fife, built between 1909 and 1916.

6
.
Carlton House Terrace
: location of the German embassy in 1914.

7
.
Duke of York's steps
: the steps below the York Column, in London's Waterloo Place, Westminster.

8
.
semaphore
: optical telegraph or sign transmission with two flags or paddles, fixed to a series of relay-station towers to cover longer distances.

9
.
lamp-code
: a means of transmitting information with signal lamps. The flashes can convey even complex information, and were used in the British Royal Navy well into the twentieth century during periods of radio silence.

10
.
Marconi
: Guglielmo Marchese Marconi (1874–1937) developed the wireless radio-telegraph system, which he had patented in Britain in 1897.

11
.
Portland
: a prison and naval base on the Devonshire coast, surrounded by artificial breakwaters.

12
.
Franz Joseph
: Franz Joseph I (1830–1916), Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia since 1848.

13
.
Schoenbrunn Palace
: residence of the Austrian royal family in Vienna.

14
.
Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days
: from William Shakespeare's
Coriolanus
(Act V scene 6).

15
.
the constabulary at Skibbereen
: the Royal Irish Constabulary, one of Ireland's two police forces in the early twentieth century.

Included in Maugham's
Ashenden, Or, The British Agent
(1928), a cycle of short stories based loosely on Maugham's own experiences as an agent during the war.

1
.
cochon
: ‘swine'.

2
.
Allons, levez-vous
: ‘Come on, get up'.

First appeared in Buchan's
The Runagates Club
(1928), a collection of stories told by the members of the eponymous and fictitious London dinner club.

1
.
Generalstabsoffizier
: General Staff Officer in the German army.

2
.
Falkenhayn
: Erich von Falkenhayn (1861–1922), infantry general and chief of the German General Staff from 1914 to 1916. He was responsible for planning the German Western Offensive of 1915, and advocated total submarine warfare.

3
.
a place called Rosensee in the Sächischen Sweitz
: Rosensee, a lake in a mountainous region of Saxony (
Sächsische Schweiz
).

4
.
violet rays
: ultra-violet rays.

5
.
Junkers
: a German country squire.

6
.
capercailzie
: the wood-grouse, a large game bird found in mountainous regions.

7
.
Homburg
: Bad Homburg; a popular German spa.

8
.
Champagne
: in the autumn of 1915, the Allies resumed their offensive in Champagne.

First appeared in the
Century
, September 1915, and subsequently published in Kipling's
A Diversity of Creatures
(1917).

1
.
cassowary
: a large flightless bird.

2
.
Contrexeville
: a spa in Lorraine. The name here refers to the mineral water bottled in the town.

3
.
Hentys, Marryats, Levers; Stevensons, Baroness Orczys, Garvices
: popular novelists, widely read by the young: George Alfred Henty (1832–1902), Captain Frederick Marryat (1792–1848), Charles James Lever (1806–1872), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850– 1894), Baroness Emma Orczy (1865–1947) and Charles Garvice (1833–1920).

4
.
assegai
: spear used in South Africa, and the name of the tree whose timber is used in its manufacture.

5
.
Brooklands
: motor-racing track and aviation centre in Surrey, built in 1907.

6
. ‘
Laty
!': ‘Lady!'

7
.
Cassêe. Toute cassêe
: ‘Broken, all broken'.

8
.
Che me rends. Le mêdicin! Toctor!
: ‘I surrender. The doctor! Doctor!' The pilot speaks French and English with a German accent: ‘che' = ‘je', and ‘toctor' = ‘doctor'.

9
.
Ich haben der todt Kinder gesehn
: literally, ‘I have seen the dead children', but Mary Postgate's German is faulty: ‘
Ich habe die toten Kinder gesehen
' is correct.

First published in the
Century
in August 1917, and subsequently appeared in Aumonier's
The Love-A-Duck and Other Stories
(1921), and
Great Short Stories of the War
(1930), ed. H. C. Minchin. In his study
Aspects of the Modern Short Story
(1924), A. C. Ward claimed that the protagonist of the story, Mrs Ward, was ‘a shining symbol of all bereaved mothers – not of England only, but of all the warring nations, friends and enemies made one in grief'.

First appeared in
Argosy
in May 1927, then in Galsworthy's
Forsytes, Pendyces and Others
(1933).

1
.
Scott's first Polar book
: Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912), the most famous (and tragic) figure of the ‘heroic' age of Antarctic exploration; he reached the South Pole behind his Norwegian rival, Roald Amundsen (1872–1928). Scott died with four companions while trying to return to base after reaching the Pole.
He had published his account of the first National Antarctic Expedition (1901–4)in
The Voyage of the Discovery
(1905).

2
.
its lingering deadlock
: from mid-September 1914 onwards, the Allied and German armies were caught up in stalemate on the Western Front. With increasingly deep trench systems on both sides, the cratered and wired no man's land between them, the front hardly moved until the German spring offensive of March 1918.

3
.
‘Connais-tu le pays?' from
Mignon: the opera
Mignon
(1866), by Ambroise Thomas (1811–1896), is based on a character from Johann Wolfgang Goethe's novel
Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre
(1795–6). The aria referred to here is the French version of Goethe's poem from the novel, ‘Know you the land where the lemon-trees bloom'.

4
.
All the Drang – as the Germans call it
:
Drang
translates literally as ‘urge'; the reference is to the German literary
Sturm und Drang
movement (i.e. ‘Storm and Stress').

First published in April 1919, in
Strand Magazine
. During the war women temporarily replaced men in the home economy and public-service sectors. The version of the text reproduced here appeared in Lawrence's collection
England, My England
(1922).

1
.
Thermopylae
: a narrow mountain pass, site of a famous battle in
480 BC
in which the ancient Greeks, led by the Spartans, successfully held back an army of Persian invaders in a desperate last stand.

2
.
Coddy
: the nickname is ambiguous, since it implies that Thomas resembles a fish, but may also refer to the abbreviation ‘cod' for ‘codswallop' and reflect negatively on his conversation.

3
.
The Statutes Fair
: a fun-fair.

4
.
on the qui-vive
: on the look-out.

5
.
I'm afraid to, go home in, the dark
: an allusion to the song ‘I'm Afraid to Come Home in the Dark' (1908), by Egbert van Alstyne and Harry Williams. In it, a husband explains his nightly absences to his newlywed wife by claiming that he has had to stay at the club, not daring to venture out after dark.

Written in 1926, and taken from the author's short-story collection of the same title, which first appeared in 1934. It is one of two stories addressing the First World War. The other, ‘Fräulein Schwartz', relates the story of an elderly German spinster who experiences the war in London lodgings and is bullied into suicide by her hostile fellow lodgers.

1
.
Caporals
: the American cigarette brand, Sweet Caporals.

2
.
Bon Dieu! Mais dêpeˆchez-vous donc!
: ‘Good God! Hurry up!'

3
.
Jaeger trench-helmets
: a close-fitting woollen cap of the balaclava type. Jaeger, the British knitwear company, offered a range of products for the forces during the First World War.

First published in the author's
The Thirteen Travellers
(1921).

1
.
Duke Street
: Tom is taking his walk in the prosperous neighbourhoods of Mayfair, Soho and Marylebone in the London Borough of Westminster. Bond Street and Oxford Street were then prominent shopping streets. Mayfair and Marylebone were well-to-do residential and commercial areas, while Soho was one of London's less respectable areas, with many public-houses, restaurants and brothels; it was frequented particularly by artists and intellectuals.

2
.
Victoria
: the area around Victoria station in the Borough of Westminster; it consisted mainly of commercial buildings and social housing.

3
.
DT
: delirium tremens, caused by alcohol abuse.

4
.
Blackfriars
: an area south-west of the City of London, bordering the river Thames.

5
.
pi—
: pious, but used in a derogatory fashion.

6
.
the East End
: notorious for its sub-standard accommodation and the poverty of its inhabitants.

7
.
East-End Settlement
: the charitable settlement movement enabled future clergymen to experience the problems of the poor at first hand. Originating at Oxford University, the first settlement, a forerunner of community centres, opened in Bethnal Green in 1884, and in the following two years four more opened in London and one in New York.

8
.
vieux jeu
: ‘old hat'.

9
.
Oxford House
: the Bethnal Green settlement.

10
.
Rubicon
: ‘to cross the Rubicon' means ‘to take a significant step, or momentous decision'.

11
.
Marcella
: a novel by Mary Ward –‘Mrs Humphrey Ward' (1851– 1920)–published in 1894. Marcella, the novel's socialist heroine, falls in love with a conservative landowner.

First appeared in
Pan
in July 1921, and exists in two versions: the short story, and a one-act play, published by Gowans and Grey in 1922. The story appeared in
The Best British Short Stories of 1922
(1923), eds. Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos.

1
.
Nothing in his life
: from William Shakespeare's
Macbeth
(Act I scene 4).

2
.
She wore a tam
: tam-o'-shanter, a Scottish cap.

First published during the author's lifetime in the
Nation
, March 1922, then in her collection,
The Dove's Nest
(1923).

First published in the author's collection,
Truth Is Not Sober
(1934).

1
.
Journey's End
: a highly successful play by R. C. Sherriff (1896– 1975), first performed in 1928. It is set in March 1918 and explores the relationships between a group of infantry officers, sharing a dugout on the front line prior to a major German offensive. In the most emotional scene of the play, the protagonist Stanhope watches helplessly as his friend Raleigh dies in his arms from a shrapnel injury. Sherriff had served as a captain in the British army during the war.

2
.
They shall not grow old …
: the best-known lines of Robert Laurence Binyon's (1869–1943) poem ‘To the Fallen', first published in
The Times
, 21 September 1914; often referred to as the ‘Ode of Remembrance'.

3
.
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
: from ‘In Flanders Fields', a
war poem by the Canadian officer John Alexander McCrae (1872–1918). It became famous even during the war and remains one of its most frequently quoted poems.

First published in the
Saturday Evening Post
as ‘Wave No Banners' on 15 December 1962; subsequently appeared in Graves's
Collected Short Stories
(1965).

1
.
We'll keep the Red Flag Flying Still
: correctly, ‘We'll keep the red flag flying here'; from the anthem of the British Labour Party, ‘The Red Flag', by Irish socialist James Connell (1852–1929).

2
.
Ivan Orfalitch
: not an authentic Russian name, but used in the sense of ‘the next man in Russia' or ‘my opposite number in Russia'.

3
.
amachoor propaganda
: amateur propaganda.

4
.
nappoed
: killed –‘nappoo' was a common term for ‘gone', ‘dead' or ‘done for' among the soldiers; from the French expression
il n'y a plus
, ‘there is nothing left'.

5
.
Delville Wood
: the battle of Delville Wood was a subsidiary attack of the Somme offensive, lasting from July to September 1916.