No, it's not a grocery list. If you use these terms, you might be in the Royal Air Force, where eggs, cookies, and cabbages mean bombs, scrambled eggs are the gold braid on officers' hats, and fruit salad refers to the medal ribbons on uniforms.
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| Sir Winston Churchill's spectacles frame impressive fruit salad in this 1946 portrait by Douglas Chandor. [Source: Flickr] |
Even airplanes had nicknames. The Vickers Wellington Bomber was called Wimpy after J. Wellington Wimpy, the hamburger-begging character in Popeye cartoons. The Miles M.14 Magister was a a British two-seat basic trainer more commonly called a Maggie. Officers sometimes used them to hustle between air bases. The tough Avro Anson was affectionately known as Faithful Annie.
Dad sometimes spoke an RCAF version around the house. It didn't occur to us that our neighbours didn't call cutlery irons, and only Dad referenced ablutions (the area in barracks where airmen go to wash or use the toilet). File 13 meant a garbage can. His cursing was limited to the very British-sounding bloody hell! but Mom would take a dim view of such language. Idiots were clots (or twits) who warranted a clout to the side of the head.
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| Murray Fraser in Britain with chum Nobby Clark, 1945. "Nobby" was an all-purpose nickname for any "Clark" or "Clarke." Originally "clarks" (or "clerks") wore top hats as a sign of their trade, thus they were "nobs" because of their posh hats. Others think "nob" refers to the callouses and arthritic knuckles on clerks' hands. |
In the air force, you might come to grief if you screwed up too often and risked having a superior tear a strip off you. In extreme cases, that meant being demoted and having your rank stripes literally ripped from your uniform.
Air force lingo often stemmed from abbreviations and nicknames, but it could also mask harsh realities. Heaven forbid you should be an anchor by waiting too long to drop by parachute after your bus or kite (airplane) is shot up by bandits (enemy aircraft). You might be taken away by body-snatchers (stretcher bearers) via their blood-wagon (ambulance). Airmen in their Mae Wests (life jackets) who baled out into the drink (sea) were given Caterpillar Club pins by the manufacturer of their silk parachutes. If you were badly burned, you faced reconstructive surgery as part of the Guinea Pig Club of the Queen Victoria Hospital in Sussex.
If, however, you were killed in action, you bought it, were gone for six, or went for a Burton (after a Burton Ale commercial). Hedge-hopping or crabbing along was low flying, but in Canada hop the twig meant a fatal prang (crash).
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| [Source: Glossary of WWII R.A.F. Slang & Terminology]
Some terms were descriptive and creative, if not complimentary. A penguin was a ground officer with no operational experience -- a bird with wings that can't fly. They had mahogany spitfires (desks). The chain gang were aircraft hands given general duties, while the chairborne division were office personnel, or pencil pushers. Fish heads were in the navy, and brown jobs in the army. A half-pint hero liked to boast. Silly buggers fooled around and did not take their work seriously.
Plonk could refer to cheap Italian wine, but was also a fictional RAF character, A.C.2 Plonk, the lowest rank in the RAF. Don't confuse him with Pilot Officer Prune, the fellow in RAF safety manuals who demonstrated what can go wrong when instructions aren't followed. You would not want A.C.2 Plonk working on your plane, lest it wind up with hairy legs (aircraft undercarriage which fails to retract after take-off). A troublesome plane might become a hangar queen (un-serviceable) only good as a Christmas tree (airframe used for parts). Plonk might blame a gremlin (a mythical creature that lived on certain aircraft and caused mechanical failures at the most inconvenient times and then could not be located as the source of the problem).
Not surprisingly, RAF banter remains rich fodder for comedians. A Monty Python sketch captured it remarkably well: "Top hole. Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how's your father. Hairy blighter, dicky-birded, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie." Some of it is genuine, but it's really sheer nonsense meant to ridicule the upper-class RAF slang and stereotypes. Nevertheless, some have tried to translate it! More recently, British comedians Armstrong and Miller have added a twist to RAF-speak in a series of sketches featuring two dim-witted WWII spitfire pilots who speak like today's inane teenage girls. Hilarious!  RAF Pilots Armstrong (right) and Miller in another tight spot. "And I'm not even lying!"
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