Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 November 29

= November 29 =

Acrimony between French and British soldiers in WWI
I was watching the Peter Jackson documentary They Shall Not Grow Old and one of the veterans was talking about how the British troops had no animus towards the German POWs, but a great disdain towards their French allies. I remember Robert Graves mentioning something similar in his memoir Goodbye to All That. Since both these accounts were contemporary, neither feels the need to elaborate, but it strikes me as very curious from a modern vantage point. Was it true? Was it widespread? Was it a cultural thing, or a historical thing, or a Protestant v Catholic thing? Was it just that fact that German POWs were a rare encounter, while Brits were regularly encountering French troops and couldn't converse with them and there was just a lot of a culture clash? What's the deal? Dr-ziego (talk) 08:24, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The British and the French have a long history of bad blood, going back many centuries, and well before the Reformation. Various wars between the two. And while they're not at war anymore, there is still suspicion. When the Chunnel was being built, there were some who didn't like it, as it raised the theoretical possibility of France invading Britain. It also turns up in pop culture. Peter Sellers' inspector Clouseau was said to be a knock at the stereotyped quality of French police work. And Monty Python made fun of that situation from time to time. Remember the thing about a man with a tape recorder up his nose, playing the French national anthem? The English and Germans might be culturally more similar, lacking that Latin flair that the French have. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:30, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Further reading on the subject: 1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke (2015), a preview is here. Alansplodge (talk) 13:39, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * For a shorter read, this British newspaper article, Friend or foe? The French are both. Alansplodge (talk) 13:46, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Frenchman to King Arthur: "I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed, animal-food-trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!" Clarityfiend (talk) 23:36, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
 * France–United Kingdom relations discusses the history of this. France and the UK almost came to blows a few times in the late 19th century over colonial rivalries. This is perhaps a bit of opinion, but in my reading it seems the animosity towards France might have been a bit more concentrated in the British upper classes, which included most of the officer corps. Haig famously treated French commanders with barely-veiled contempt, while conversely, "Desperate Frankie" was admired by the British rank-and-file, which contributed to him being chosen as commander of the multi-national Allied Army of the Orient. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 07:51, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
 * BTW how did Franchet d’Esperey got to be KCVO? because of his doing during Boxer rebellion?Gem fr (talk) 08:23, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Did he actually receive the honor, or was he lying to ingratiate himself with French? The cited source is a book not digitized on Google Books, and there isn't much biographic detail I can find on him with some Web searching. There's probably more information in the French language but I'm no help there. He's not listed in any of the articles in Category:Royal Victorian Order as far as I can see. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 04:55, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * He would have been awarded the honor at the occasion of a visit from the Royal monarch to President Poincaré in early 1914 ( French source). It must have been related with his commandment during the Boxer rebellion: Student Encyclopedia which, although of modest rank as a lieutenant-colonel he was already been made knight in the Légion d'honneur earlier. --Askedonty (talk) 13:55, 4 December 2019 (UTC)