Re: World War One


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Posted by andy bolger on May 07, 2003 at 22:18:35 from 213.122.227.247 user beardbiter.

In Reply to: Re: World War One posted by Peter H on May 07, 2003 at 17:53:10:

I take it that Mixed Moss wont be publishing my article “Sisterhooking Good: the semiotics of sailor talk and class solidarity in the works of AR” then?
If I had a betting shop Peter H is the kind of customer I’d welcome; never mind the odds just go for the pretty colours. Just imagine that we had the birth certificates of 100 children born say in 1920. We could have all sorts of interesting bets on how long they would live expectancy, what educational qualifications they would get, what their income would have been at age 50 etc.. So long as I could base my bets on information about their fathers’ occupation and Peter didn’t I think I would make a healthy profit.
The term “officer class” seems a pretty accurate ( if rather circular) term for people who were likely to enter WW1 as officers. You have to admit (if you want to remain in touch with reality as it is usually understood) that a boy from a public school was much more likely to become an officer than one from an elementary school but “much more likely” doesn’t mean each and every. But to point this out isn’t to sneer; that would be pretty bad taste considering we were discussing the death rate in the trenches.
Of course AR could have made BB come from any background he wanted but he didn’t. If we want to play the game of speculating on his history so we are stuck between the two options of treating him as a real person and considering what would be the most likely scenario or inventing a fanciful history and trying to make it plausible. And those of you that want BB not to be a member of the officer class had better get your imaginations going and tell us a story that we can believe. Otherwise I’ll be boring and point out that James Turner (Oxford) and Molly Blackett (daughters at boarding school, private income, servant) were clearly from the officer class and as most people, then as now, married from within their own class it is reasonable to assume, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that BB was also form that class. Furthermore, the message on Kanchenjunga shows that Molly and Bob were childhood friends if not sweethearts, which suggests to me that he was one (or more) of the following: local, a family friend, a friend of Jim’s from school or another sort of summer visitor. He is never mentioned by any of the local people,(or does Slater Bob give him a mention?) nor is he connected by Nancy and Peggy to any local places. If he was a family friend summer visitor etc., he was likely to have belonged to a similar class to the Turners. So I think that unless somebody wants to tell us the story of how Molly Blackett befriended and married the dashing young poacher or radical working class journalist I’ll continue to be boring and believe that he was a member of the “officer class”.


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