War Diaries Talk

What does this term mean?

  • panjandrum by panjandrum

    Shelled intermittently all day with "White Hopes" and "Little Lillies".
    I can't find any information about these.

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    I would guess that they were slang names for shells like "coal box" and that the "white" might refer to the smoke colour. I'll move this into the WW1 Jargon area to see if anyone picks it up there.

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Starting a thread for people to post odd phrases and terms they come across while tagging

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  • inderelli by inderelli

    i came across Little Lillies too, wonder what they are?

    Posted

  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator in response to inderelli's comment.

    Interesting that the page you tagged says (of German shells) "their whizzbangs (little lillies) contained sulphur" so that tends to confirm they were a nickname for a type of shell. Maybe the shape of the burst reminded them of lillies? Come on, someone out there must know!

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  • Blackfriar by Blackfriar

    After some research, my husband found out that these were the nickname for prototype small tank-like armour. They are Little Willies, not Little Lillies.

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Little Willie was the nickname for a prototype tank yes but that doesn't make sense in this context where it specifically refers to them as whizzbangs and in another diary page where it says the Unit was "shelled" with them. So I don't think the two things are the same.

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  • davidreaney4aol.com by davidreaney4aol.com

    Auckland Star 4 June 1915 has an article entitled "Stricken Ypres" with a paragraph entitled "Guns with comedy names"........there is the The Pipsqueak, the Little Willie, The White Hope, The Mother and the Grandmother.The biggest howitzer is Archie used for anti-aircraft purposes.

    http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=AS19150604.2.59&e=-------10--1----0--

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  • MatthewIWM by MatthewIWM moderator

    Just raised this with an IWM expert on weapons - he has never heard of these terms before but suggested that White Hope might be related to a boxing term – there was a shell that was named after a black boxer and there is a boxing term ‘Great White Hope’ so maybe they nicknamed this shell the White Hope? He also says that usually German shells burst with black coloured smoke – so if they were bursting with white smoke it could indicate they were using captured ammunition or there had been some change in the production process.

    Matthew
    IWM

    Posted

  • simonedi by simonedi moderator

    since it pops up in a NZ article i wonder if they are names used more by those troops than brittish, ive never seen those terms in any texts before!

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  • davidreaney4aol.com by davidreaney4aol.com

    If you look closely at the Hohenzollern redoubt between Annequine and Haisnes on this map you will see Little Willie on one side and Big Willie on the other.

    http://www.1914-1918.net/maps/loos.jpg

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    In this context it specifically talks about being shelled with the items in question. I'm sure you are correct about the names of the geographical features but I don't think that's the right interpretation in this context any more than the fact that Little Willie was also the name of an experimental tank.

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  • davidreaney4aol.com by davidreaney4aol.com

    Heather

    I'm not sure what you're getting at.
    They reported being shelled by White Hopes and Little Willies.To my mind that means White Hope shells and Little Willie shells. As the Auckland paper reports these were the names of German guns. This is further reinforced by the annotations on the map ie the positions of Little Willie and Big Willie respectively.

    Regards

    D

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  • panjandrum by panjandrum

    A reminder ... the diary specifically mentions "Little Lillies", not "Little Willies". This appears several times.
    I suppose it is possible that the writer has mistakenly heard, and written, "Lillies" ... but it seems unlikely.

    Looking over the comments by others, there are too many references to "Lillies" for this to be a mistake.

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  • davidreaney4aol.com by davidreaney4aol.com

    I would suggest you're right P someone made a mistake.

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  • simonedi by simonedi moderator

    hopefully the IWM guys will come up with an answer, im certainly curious

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  • olems by olems moderator

    One of the diary pages in question, for reference: AWD0000rx8

    The mention of sulphur suggests a smoke shell, which would typically contain either a phosphorus or sulphur compound.
    Whizzbangs were shells from any high muzzle-velocity field gun, like the german 7.7 cm.

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  • davidreaney4aol.com by davidreaney4aol.com

    Thanks for posting that page Olems.

    Check out the way Wednesday 28th is written in the margin. the writers w's look like l's.

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  • Mel_Donnelly by Mel_Donnelly moderator

    I have now checked a number of trench maps and Little Willie and Big Willie are definitely the names of trenches that extend for some distance. So in the context of this discussion I don't think the diary is referring to a gun or the position of a gun. Hope that helps.

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator in response to davidreaney4@aol.com's comment.

    David - apologies I see what you were getting at now. I admit I am reading the names on the map you linked as names of geographical features (trenches then?) not as gun positions. However the newspaper article does seem to refer to weapons and I don't see how the context that is quoted several times here from diaries can refer to anything but nicknames for shells / guns even if Little and Big Willie were trench names, tank names or whatever. Don't think we've got to the bottom of this one yet!

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  • SarahtheEntwife by SarahtheEntwife

    Not quite jargon, but I'm on this page
    52d0568d3ae74026a30100d5

    and this is the second time the unit has been training in "equitation and _____"....I could swear that second word was "praying", but that seems pretty unlikely. Any ideas what it could be?

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Can you post a link from the page itself so we can see it and tell you what we think?

    Never mind - found it - I assume it's this one http://talk.operationwardiary.org/#/subjects/AWD0000348

    Tricky - I don't think it's a "p" at the beginning of the word if you compare the other "p"s on that page. Might be "grazing"?

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  • SarahtheEntwife by SarahtheEntwife

    Oo, grazing, that would make sense. How do I get the link to the page?

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  • HeatherC by HeatherC moderator

    Either copy the link completely from the browser bar at the top which is what I did, or click in the box you use to bring up the comments and hashtag area and click the "discuss this page on talk" link to actually put an image of the page on the left hand side of this thread so we can see it.

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