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Changing use of Language

Harold Pollins

It is only in recent decades that we have become used to the language of homosexuality. It was not always so. During the war, I was in the Queen’s Royal (West Surrey) Regiment. We wore shoulder flashes marked ‘Queen’s’ but any possible double entendre passed us by. Similarly I recall a lecture by an officer on regimental history. He described how, during a phase of the Italian campaign, three battalions of the regiment were taken out of the line and three other battalions of the regiment took their place. It was, he said, a unique occurrence. He phrased it thus: ‘A brigade of Queen’s was relieved by another brigade of Queen’s.’ No one in the audience saw anything odd in such a sentence. Today there would be a response.

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