WWII Marine Bravery and the 'F' Bomb: the Most Universal English Word

Even vice presidents use the word.

Frame from 'The Pacific' is based on the memoir of Robert Leckie

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - During WWII military service was a psychological but a verbal education for all sixteen million of us. The memoir of Robert Leckie, Helmet for my Pillow, is the account of a WWII Marine in the famed First Division who participated in the bloodiest and most gruesome fighting in Marine Corps history, without losing his ability to keep language above the board^[1].

Regarding the use of the 'F' bomb in the Second World War, it was used by many. The word is based on the German word ficken. According to the Urban Dictionary, ficken is the German word for the current 'F' word, "but as it is infinitive and not spoken usually in colloquial, only few in Germany use it as often as most Americans do." ^[2]

Still, it would be fair to assume that Robert Leckie would have lapsed into language that adequately described the Hellish surroundings his mind remembers of WWII.

Brian White with TalkWordy.com, said Leckie’s writing shows how different the tolerance for foul words was back then. "The worst he’ll write so far are words like bastard and raggedy-assed."^[3]

From Brian White's article:
"Always there was the word. Always there was that four-letter ugly sound that men in uniform have expanded into the single substance of the linguistic world. It was a handle, a hyphen, a hyperbole; verb, noun, modifier; yes, even conjunction. It described food, fatigue, metaphysics. It stood for everything and meant nothing; an insulting word, it was never used as an insult; crudely descriptive of the sexual act, it was never used to describe it; base, it meant the best; ugly, it modified beauty; it was the name and the nomenclature of the voice of emptiness, but one heard it from chaplains and captains, from Pfc.’s and Ph.D.’s — until, finally, one could only surmise that if a visitor unacquainted with English were to overhear our conversations he would, in the way of the Higher Criticism, demonstrate by measurement and numerical incidence that this little word must assuredly be the thing for which we were fighting."

The new HBO mini-series The Pacific was adapted in large part from Leckie's Helmet for my Pillow, along with E.B. Sledge's With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa and also the personal story of Medal of Honor recipient Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone^{[4] [5]}.

Marines like Robert Leckie and John Basilone represent a time when there was no ability to turn back. They were young yet so advanced for their ages and some, like Leckie, lived to tell the story. The fact that he remained eloquent and non abrasive is merely a symbol of the Greatest Generation, if I do say so myself!

^[1] Wikipedia page on Robert Leckie

^[2] The word 'ficken' from Urban Dictionary

^[3] Offstage obscenity - Brian White talkwordy.com

^[4] May-12-2010 : 'Manila John' Basilone, USMC - Robert O'Dowd Salem-News.com

^[5] Amazon.com: Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific [Paperback]

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