Topic: Humour
Wangling, Scrounging, and Winning
R.H. Morrison; quoted in Vain Glory; A miscellany of the Great War 1914-1918, Guy Chapman, OBE, MC (Ed), 1937/1968
He was taught the three arts of war, so much more necessary than musketry, field engineering or tactics. Or were they, perhaps, part of tactics?
Wangling, Scrounging, and Winning. …
Wangling was the art of obtaining one's just due by unfair means. For instance, every officer and man of the B.E.F. had his allotted daily rations, his camp or billet, his turn for leave. In practice, to get these necessities, it was well to know the man who provided them and do him some small service—a bottle of whiskey, the loan of transport (if you had any) or of a fatigue party. Wangling extended to the lowest ranks. Men wangled from the N.C.O.s the better sorts of jam and extra turns off duty. …
Scrounging could be defined as obtaining that which one had not a shadow of a claim by unfair means. It was more insidious that as the Wangle, but just as necessary—men scrounged the best dug-outs off one another, or off neighbouring sections. N.C.O.s scrounged rum by keeping a thumb in the dipper while doling it out, Officers scrounged the best horse lines from other units. Colonials scrounged telephone wire to snare rabbits …
The Art of Winning. It may be defined as Stealing. More fully, it was the Art of obtaining that which one had no right to, for the sake of obtaining it, for the joy of possession. … Some say it was simply the primeval joy of loot, …
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