Boche Quotes

*Appendix usually means "small outgrowth from large intestine," but in this case it means "additional information accompanying main text." Or are those really the same things? Think carefully before you insult this book.

GUILLOTINE, n. A machine which makes a Frenchman shrug his shoulders with good reason.

Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake, Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take, I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light. Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare Of flickering horror in the sectors where We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled, Or crawling on their bellies through the wire. "What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?" Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire: Why did he do it?... Starlight overhead-- Blank stars. I'm wide-awake; and some chap's dead.

My father died in 1912, of a heart b-blockage.” It was a kind of blockage, getting stuck in the heart with a butcher knife wielded by a cuckolded husband. “My mother didn’t like the rumbling from Germany, and decided to bring me to London.” To escape the scandal, not the Boche. “She died of influenza last year, God rest her soul.” Bitter, vulgar, and haranguing to the end, flinging teacups at Eve and swearing.

I began, I remember, because I felt I had to. I'd reached that modest height in my career, that gentle rise, from which I could coast out of gear to a soft stop. Now I wonder why not. Why not? But then duty drove me forward like a soldier. I said it was time for "the Big Book," the long monument to my mind I repeatedly dreamed I had to have: a pyramid, a column tall enough to satisfy the sky. Duty drove me the way it drives men into marriage. Begetting is expected of us, and in those days of heavy men in helmets the seed was certain, and wanted only the wind for a womb, or any slit; yet what sprang up out of those foxholes we fucked with our fists but our own frightened selves? with a shout of pure terror, too. That too—that too was expected; it was expected even of flabby maleless men like me. And now, here, where I am writing still, still in this chair, hammering type like tacks into the page, speaking without a listening ear, whose eye do I hope to catch and charm and fill with tears and understanding, if not my own, my own ordinary, unforgiving and unfeeling eye?...my eye. So sentences circle me like a toy train. What could I have said about the Boche, about bigotry, barbarism, butchery, Bach, that hasn't been said as repeatedly as I dreamed by dream of glory, unless it was what I've said? What could I have explained where no reason exists and no cause is adequate; what body burned to a crisp could I have rebelieved was bacon, if I had not taken the tack I took?

O Life, Life, let me breathe, --a dug-out rat! Not worse than ours the existences rats lead --Nosing along at night down some safe vat, They find a shell-proof home before they rot. Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys, And subdivide, and never come to death, Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth. "I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone." Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned; The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now. "Pushing up daisies," is their creed, you know. To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap, For all the usefulness there is in soap. D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup?

You haven’t met Boche yet, despite the fact that she was here before we went into hiding. She’s the warehouse and office cat, who keeps the rats at bay in the storeroom. Her odd, political name can easily be explained. For a while the firm Gies & Co. had two cats: one for the warehouse and one for the attic. Their paths crossed from time to time, which invariably resulted in a fight. The warehouse cat was always the aggressor, while the attic cat was ultimately the victor, just as in politics. So the warehouse cat was named the German, or “Boche,” and the attic cat the Englishman, or “Tommy.” Sometime after that they got rid of Tommy, but Boche is always there to amuse us when we go downstairs.

I'm just a Boche," I thought to myself; "I'm a Boche and I always have been." At that time in France, I did everything that a Boche does, both those actions he performs deliberately, conscious and proud of his Bocheness, and those that he does when he is well-nigh falling over backward in his attempts not to be taken for what he is. When I returned home I wished to write a little book for Rohwohlt entitled: The Adventures of a Little Boche in France It never came to anything because quite quietly the little Boches had turned into big Boches, and from then on it was difficult for the little ones to prove that they weren't the big ones.

cousin, or something.’ Vivien raised an eyebrow as she passed back Henderson’s glass. ‘Even people who’ve lived here their whole lives can’t get back into the area,’ she explained. ‘So people are sure to ask where you’ve come from.’ ‘The Boche are short of translators,’ Luc said. ‘It’s remarkably lucky that you turned out to speak such excellent German.’ Henderson knew that the presumption of using his family name was likely to stick in Luc Boyle’s throat and the couple clearly sensed that there was more to Henderson than met the eye, but they were ecstatic at the safe return of their grandchildren and apparently happy to let the matter slide. At least, for the time being. * Marc woke on a bare mattress in a musty room with sunlight shining through a crack in the roof and a puddle in the far corner. A burp sent acid surging up his throat and for a horrible instant he thought he was going to puke over his blanket. His head thudded as he looked around and saw PT’s boots on the floor beside him. Marc remembered the wine and a bumpy midnight ride in the back of the truck, but had no recollection of the building in which he’d awoken. If anything, the holey-roofed bedroom was a high point of the cottage. Green stalactites of mildew hung from the ceiling in the cramped hallway and damp seemed to be consuming the building

Je ne dis rien, je n'ai pas envie de discuter. Je me demande combien d'Allemands il va falloir tuer encore pour que cet enfant allemand ait une chance de ne pas devenir un boche, Il n'y est pour rien, ce gosse, et il y est pour tout, cependant. Ce n'est pas lui qui s'est fait petit nazi et c'est pourtant un petit nazi. Peut-Petre n'a-t-il plus aucune chance de ne plus être petit nazi, de ne pas grandir jusqu'à devenir un grand nazi. À cette échelle individuelle, les questions n'ont pas d'intérêt. C'est dérisoire, que se gosse cesse d'être petit nazi ou assume sa condition de petit nazi. En attendant, la seule chose à faire pour que ce gosse ait une chance de ne plus être petit nazi, c'est de détruire l'armée allemande. C'est d'exterminer encore des quantités d'hommes allemands, pour qui'ils puissent cesser d'être nazis, ou boches.

MAURICE. And I wanted to join you. I got in the queue to buy a ticket. ROSALIND. All right, so what happened? MAURICE. It's not what happened ... It's what could happen. Now. ROSALIND. What are you talking about, Maurice? MAURICE. January, 1951. This time, I attend the play. And I see you across the theater. (He looks to her. She remains still unmoved) MAURICE. This time, we make eye contact. And afterwards, we meet in the back. By the bar. (She doesn't move.) This time I say, "Did you enjoy the performance?" (She stares at him. Says nothing.) «Gielgud is excellent, don't you think? (Beat.) ROSALIND. Yes, very lifelike. Very good. MAURICE. And the incredible thing is we're both there, watching him. Experiencing the very same thing. Together. ROSALIND. It is incredible. MAURICE. Boch watching. ROSALIND. And when Hermione died, even though it was Leontes' fault, I felt for him. I truly did. MAURICE. Come, poor babe: I have heard, but not believed - ROSALIND and MAURICE. The spirits o' the dead May walk again. MAURICE. And they do. I love that Hermione wasn't really dead. That she comes back. ROSALIND. (Sympathetically.) No, Maurice. She doesn't. Not really. MAURICE. Of course she does. ROSALIND. No. MAURICE. Then how do you explain the statue coming to life? ROSALIND. Hope. They all project it. Leontes projects life where there is none, so he can be forgiven. MAURICE. But don't you think he deserves to be forgiven? ROSALIND. Do I forgive myself? MAURICE. What? For what? (Beat.)

An angry buzzin’ start to build among us. We cuss out the Boche proper, swearin’ to take revenge for all they done, for each and every one of these terrible wounds we see before us. A soldier sittin’ on the ground look up, his eyes so weary there ain’t enough sleep in all the world to take the tiredness from them. ‘We did the same to them,’ he say quietly. Ain’t no boastin’ in his voice, no anger, ain’t much of anythin’ at all, only a long, drawn-out emptiness.

Linguists holding bullhorns hollered, “A bas les Boches! A bas les Marcon! Down with the Boches! Down with the Macaronis! Vive la France!” A mortar crew with the 18th Infantry fired a special shell the size of an ostrich egg. It soared 200 feet into the night, detonated with dazzling pyrotechnic sparkle, and unfurled an American flag, which floated to earth; given a clear target at last, French gunners replied with eager fire.

They had understood that Paris must be abandoned, so as to save it from destruction. But to surrender, to turn all France over to the boches, to desert Britain and give up the promised aid from America?—c’était la honte, la trahison! Some stood with tears running down their cheeks. Lanny thought, it was as he had said to Kurt, the French body had been separated from the head, and the body was paralyzed.

El general Douglas Haig, que dirige el ataque desde su cómoda retaguardia y cada noche dobla los calzoncillos antes de acostarse, se encoge de hombros. A mí que me registren. Él ha observado escrupulosamente lo que se enseña en las mejores academias del ramo: previa preparación artillera, toda una semana diluviando metralla sobre las posiciones enemigas y carga final a la bayoneta. No es culpa suya si la mitad de los proyectiles no ha estallado (por defecto de fabricación), ni si la mitad de las alambradas estaban tan intactas como los boches que brotaban por docenas de sus madrigueras, las ametralladoras por delante, en cuanto escampó.

July I The British plan is this: a million shells to cut the Boche wire. Shoulder your seventy-pound pack as usual. Go over the top. Walk towards the German lines, they'll all be dead by now. Keep walking til you hit Berlin. In four and a half hours, fifty thousand Britons and Canadians are shot. That afternoon, the British plan is revised: do everything as before. But this time, run. Abe is killed walking. Rudy is killed running.

…it’s come over me clear that the last two or three years that in a group killing of a man, in a mobbing, the event reaches a point where all rationale is gone; such a term as “anarchist” and “traitor” or “Boche” or “Englander Schwein” disappears and they babble hysterically only one or two epithets, in our language usually a tenor of “Son of a Bitch” with a bass of “Cocksucker”. Since some of the finest blood of the human family goes this way poets and painters have a right to try to employ it or at least not kid themselves about what actually happened at Golgotha. Since I’ve talked with men who were in the trenches and since I’ve seen race riots I am suspicious that the sponge of vinegar on the spear is a faked legend and what probably happened, if the historicity of Jesus is ever established, is that they cut off his genital organ and stuck it in his mouth….

You cannot pursue greatness and comfort at the same time.

The real, true spring had arrived, the chestnut trees were in blossom, and the Boche could do nothing about it.