Читать книгу The Lost Tommies - - Страница 7

There was a touching naivety among the officers and men who had marched to war as ‘Pals’ and volunteers; the depth of patriotic feeling and the urge to rush off to war to defend Mother England may seem extraordinary today. But this was an era of the great British Empire and there was enormous pride and loyalty to King and country. Men were proud to be British ‘Tommies’, a curious term for British soldiers that many believe has its origins in a story that underlines the blood and sacrifice that for most Britons back then made Great Britain and its empire ‘Great’. The term ‘Tommy Atkins’ was being used as a generic description of British troops early in the eighteenth century. But one account of how First World War troops came to be known as ‘Tommies’ was that it was appropriated from the story of a British soldier named Tommy Atkins who had died in a battle in Flanders, Belgium, in 1794. The story went that the Duke of Wellington was inspecting badly wounded soldiers after a battle. One of the wounded men was named Tommy Atkins. It was the stuff of legend that Tommy, asked if he was in pain, reassured the Duke: ‘It’s all right, sir. It’s all in a day’s work.’ Tommy’s stiff upper lip just before he died was seen as exemplifying the best of British courage and dogged persistence against terrible odds.

Perhaps, as the notable historian Richard Holmes has more soberly suggested, the real derivation was an 1815 War Office publication which used the name of ‘Private Tommy Atkins’ as an example to show soldiers how to fill out their Soldiers Pocket Book.⁸

Whatever the true reason, the term ‘Tommy’ or ‘Tommies’ became a well-known generic and affectionate name for British soldiers throughout the war.