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The author, as a soldier himself, recalls a 'lecturette,' in Britain, while expecting the country to be invaded by Germans in 1940. His army squad was being instructed how to set booby traps. A thin wire was stretched from tree to tree, across a country road at the appropriate height, so that it could slice off the head of a motorcycle despatch rider. This was effectively demonstrated by a mock-up on film and just about everyone present, who were all generally good-hearted, genuine people, laughed. They were acting 'out of character.' But, after all, there was a war on.
The author recalls during the invasion at Salerno, in Italy, when there was a possibility that the British and American forces would be pushed off the beachhead, British soldier comrades told how they had gone on patrol and how in order to keep two German soldiers from shouting out, knifed them as they slept in their trucks. A Gurkha who was listening to the conversation immediately piped up. 'That's not fair! You should at least wake them up before you kill them!' Everyone thought it a huge joke. Today, looking back under peacetime conditions, it all seems terribly macabre and gruesome.
Lin Yutang is quoted as saying, 'Humour is the product of contentment and leisure.' Yet the British tommy was able to crack jokes even when faced with abysmal conditions. It is recorded that, in the defence of Hong Kong in December 1941, the men of the Middlesex Regiment 'never lost their sense of humour' (Lindsay, 1978; 136). Probably the Chinese Communist soldiers, on the 10,000 kilometre Long March, which lasted over a year in 1934-35, did not either, although their sense of humour was, no doubt, different. For instance, the Chinese soldiers used to sing, 'Don't fall behind, don't get wounded, don't get the eight silver dollars' (Lee, 1999). This can be likened to the English World War Two song, 'Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag ....'
But jokes can offend and one needs to be careful, in some countries especially, not to give the wrong slant to sexist jokes which can ruffle feathers. When talking to a Chinese, whose traditions value filial piety, you do not in the main tell mother-in-law jokes — although there are a few jokes about mothers and their relationships with sons-in-law. Again, in Chinese society, you do not say, where death is more or less a taboo subject, 'You're too slow for your own funeral', or 'He's got
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The author, as a soldier himself, recalls a 'lecturette,' in Britain, while expecting the country to be invaded by Germans in 1940. His army squad was being instructed how to set booby traps. A thin wire was stretched from tree to tree, across a country road at the appropriate height, so that it could slice off the head of a motorcycle despatch rider. This was effectively demonstrated by a mock-up on film and just about everyone present, who were all generally good-hearted, genuine people, laughed. They were acting 'out of character.' But, after all, there was a
war on.
The author recalls during the invasion at Salerno, in Italy, when there was a possibility that the British and American forces would be pushed off the beachhead, British soldier comrades told how they had gone on patrol and how in order to keep two German soldiers from shouting out, knifed them as they slept in their trucks. A Gurkha who was listening to the conversation immediately piped up. 'That's not fair! You should at least wake them up before you kill them!' Everyone thought it a huge joke. Today, looking back under peacetime conditions, it all seems terribly macabre and gruesome.
Lin Yutang is quoted as saying, 'Humour is the product of con- tentment and leisure.' Yet the British tommy was able to crack jokes even when faced with abysmal conditions. It is recorded that, in the defence of Hong Kong in December 1941, the men of the Middlesex Regement 'never lost their sense of humour' (Lindsay, 1978;136). Prob- ably the Chinese Communist soldiers, on the 10,000 kilometre Long March, which lasted over a year in 1934-35, did not either, although their sense of humour was, no doubt, different. For instance, the Chi- nese soldiers used to sing, ‘Don't fall behind, don't get wounded, don't get the eight silver dollars' (Lee, 1999). This can be likened to the En- glish World War Two song, 'Pack up your troubles in your
old kitbag ....'
But jokes can offend and one needs to be careful, in some coun- tries especially, not to give the wrong slant to sexist jokes which can ruffle feathers. When talking to a Chinese, whose traditions value filial piety, you do not in the main tell mother-in-law jokes — although there are a few jokes about mothers and their relationships with sons-in-law. Again, in Chinese society, you do not say, where death is more or less a taboo subject, 'You're too slow for your own funeral', or 'He's got
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