Even more striking, because it is so rarely seen, is a montage of film clips of that time in which a group of women is trundled through the streets on a cart marked les poules à boche while a soldier chucks one of them under the chin.Hair shorn on these occasions was never kept.
A thought occurred: Had Eliot actually meant "damn'd Locke" or, on the eve of war, had he written "damn'd boche," a slur on his German hosts?
But those centuries did not have cameras — particularly the 35-millimetre cameras carried by journalists — recording these events, from start to finish, as "hard news," which is to say the kind that editors believe is reality, and readers honor by storing yellowing newspapers in attics: "BOCHE BAYONET BELGIAN BABIES".
He wrote at the time: "Had the Boche [Germans] not shown marked signs of deterioration during the past month, I should never have contemplated attacking the Hindenburg Line.
The answer, according to Ian Hislop and Nick Newman's entertaining The Wipers Times, is bring out a satirical newspaper taking swipes at everyone from the top brass to the "Boche".
He tried to struggle up, but was unable to do so and, reassuring him, I made him comfortable, arranging a pillow out of a Boche pack.
As we reached the tanks, however, the Boche hailed shrapnel upon us and we commenced rapidly to have casualties… Up the road we staggered, shells bursting around us.
As his keeper, Private Reid of Canada's 13th Royal Highlanders, would write later: "He came through a Boche barrage – 3kms in 10 minutes.
We know where that will lead, to the classic British 20th century Boche-bashing.
It was unclear whether Mr. Boche made an attempt to pay, but Gelder did not survive; on Tuesday, Mr. Boche dissolved in tears upon seeing a picture of his son at the altar at the Morales home.
During the Nazi occupation of Paris it was home to the local Gestapo headquarters and was nicknamed Avenue Boche.
