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Updated: May 17, 2025
It was a common thing for them, we are told, on capturing a prisoner, to address him as "Schweinhund" or "Verdammte Engländer," or by some other good-humoured phrase of the same kind. I regret to say that some Englishmen were so deficient in the sense of humour that, instead of taking this in the spirit in which it was offered, they bitterly resented it.
Bidding his men be silent, Wilmshurst demanded the surrender of the Germans in the dug-out. Hearing a British officer's voice one of the Huns replied defiantly: "We no surrender make to a schweinhund Englander. We food haf for six week, an' you cannot hurt us." "Can't we, by Jove!" replied Wilmshurst. "Sergeant, bring along that box of bombs."
At Hanover I was dumped down at a Red Cross centre below the station to await the ambulance. I could not resist replying in German: "Yes, sister, I am one of those Schweinhund Englanders!" To my surprise she seemed quite embarrassed, and hastily answered me that they did not say that now.
As I went down the stairway toward the library the last thing I heard him say was: "Schweinhund!" which sounds pretty bad. Tooter and I walked in on the Earl and his secretary, and told them of the bad break Holmes had just made, which caused the Earl to lie back in his chair and roar, though Tooter was more concerned about the social disgrace of having been caught with the tea sample.
It was at this point that Savaroff, who had been regarding us with the half-stupid stare of a man who has newly recovered consciousness, staggered up unsteadily from his chair. His half-numbed brain seemed suddenly to have grasped what was happening. "Verfluchter Schweinhund!" he shouted, turning on me. "So it was you, then " He got no further.
I cannot, indeed, recall a single instance of an Englishman who properly appreciated the joke of being called a "Schweinhund" by a man he had never seen before. You will seek in vain through the literature of prisoners of war for a returned soldier who tells the story of the names he was called with the glee that it deserves.
"Tell Lieutenant Muller to get the men under arms. Where's my sword? Hans, you black schweinhund, bring me my boots, and take care that there are no centipedes in them, or "
My German is scanty, and I reflected. "'Schweinhund' will do, I think," I answered after consideration. "A thousand thanks." The face disappeared, and the hair was pulled after it. I waited. I could hear nothing distinctly, but in a moment Schneider came running quickly and stiffly down the creaky ladder from the door.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself looking into the face of a German officer who was amusing himself by kicking the youth. "Awake, are you, Yankee pig?" the officer greeted him. "It's time. I had half a mind to give you a bayonet thrust and put you to sleep forever. You needn't tell me how you came here. I know. You're the schweinhund that escaped two days ago.
And yet, no doubt, the Germans enjoyed the joke thoroughly, and would have been surprised to find it quoted in the Observer as an example of the decadence of the German Army. Perhaps, however, the "Schweinhund" joke does not afford an entirely fair comparison. It is a simple joke, whereas in the Greenwood joke there are two elements.
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