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Argot & Image: World War I Frederic Winkowski. Trench Talk/Trench Life: A Beginner's Guide to World War One. New York: Glitterati, 2017. 176 pp. Cloth $25.00
A PRECIOUS BOOK ON MY SHELVES, surviving many relocations and downsizings of my library, is The Long Trail. What the British Soldier Sang and Said in 1914-1918. First published by Eric Partridge in 1930, augmented further in subsequent editions, and updated by John Brophy in 1965, it is the product of two wartime volunteers. Frederic Winkowski's handsomely bound and produced Trench Talk/ Trench Life, illustrated graphically and cleverly by him from period images now beyond copyright, does not refer anywhere to Partridge and Brophy.
Although Winkowski's attractive and informative book, the latest of many he has illustrated, is subtitled A Beginner's Guide to World War One, and covers soldier argot from France and the United States as well as "Blighty," Australia and New Zealand, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey and Russia among other nations are omitted. Perhaps another volume, or volumes, will follow. Still we can...