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Language usage

In 1946-7 I was a Personnel Selection Sergeant administering various tests to recruits. I was the Key Sergeant in a team consisting of two or three captains, three sergeants and two ATS typists. I was sort of in charge of the sergeants. Every fortnight new recruits would join the Primary Training Wing and we would give them tests. The crucial document we used was SP100, a form one of whose sides the recruits had to complete, under a sergeant’s supervision. The other side of the form contained spaces where the arithmetic results of the tests were recorded by the ATS secretaries. There was also a space where an officer, who interviewed the recruit after the process of testing was complete, would recommend to which branch of the army the recruit was suitable for transfer. The forms would then be sent to the War Office for some department or other to allocate the recruits to their substantive units.

The point of this story is this. The side of the SP100 form that recruits had to fill in included the usual kind of things. Name, age, nationality, education, hobbies, and so on. I remember one of the officers telling us, after he had interviewed one recruit, that in the space for ’Nationality’ the recruit had written ’Prostitute.’ The officer, whose job it was to go through the form with the recruits, asked him. ’What’s your nationality?’ he replied, ’Prostitute, sir.’ The officer persisted but kept getting the same answer. At last he asked, ’’Which country are you from?’ ‘Scotland. sir.’ ’That’s what nationality means, the country you come from.’ ’Oh. Sir. Sorry sir’, replied the recruit. ’I thought it meant religion.’

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