How common was profanity and sexually crude language among American soldiers in the Second World War?

by CookingStew

In many World War II movies and tv shows, American soldiers are often shown to be very profane and sexually crass.

This is seen in 'Saving Private Ryan', 'Band of Brothers' and particularly 'The Pacific'.

I also read an article online from containing excerpts from veterans who had seen 'The Pacific' and were slightly unsettled by the liberal use of 'fuck' and sexually aggressive remarks toward women.

Article in question: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/06/14/but-we-didnt-talk-that-way-by-randy-ark-staff-writer/

Thanks.

thefourthmaninaboat

I'd like to use this question to discuss swearing and profanity in the Royal Navy during WW2 - I know it doesn't quite answer your question, but I feel it's an interesting topic, that can shed light on British society at the time. Profanity was one of the many ways in which RN officers distinguished themselves from the ratings (enlisted in US parlance). Both ratings and officers enforced these norms, both seeing it as ways to protect their own identities. It also tended to split along class lines from outside the RN.

For the enlisted men, swearing was a near-universal part of the seaman's slang. The RN's other ranks had their own argot, filled with slang terms - the RN as a whole became the 'Andrew', the ship's captain was always 'The Old Man' or 'The Owner', while a sailor's girlfriend was a 'party'. Swearing fit neatly into this. Alec Guinness gave the quintessential example of this, describing his first days aboard HMS Raleigh:

There's a sailor telling a story as I write this. "Fuckin" has occurred 3 times every word of the story.

This also caused problems for authors and memoirists - in his semi-fictionalised account Very Ordinary Seaman, J P W Mallalieu had his characters use 'flicking' as a replacement. Similarly, British films about the navy tended to gloss over this aspect of naval culture, frequently to the displeasure of the seaman - one stated outright that Noel Coward's In Which We Serve "did NOT represent lower deck speech and manners". In this culture, not swearing marked you out as an outsider. Either you were an intruder from the upper classes, or you were a bit odd. Either way, you'd have a hard time fitting in. As a result, many of those who didn't swear before joining the navy ended up joining in.

Conversely, swearing on the upper deck was far rarer. Additionally, the upper deck used more refined profanity - think 'damn', rather than 'fuck'. Officers tended to hew to the social mores of the upper classes, within which swearing was frowned upon. As on the lower deck, anyone who broke this rule was somewhat excluded. This similarly tended to create a pressure towards the status quo. However, this situation was much less common than the inverse. The RN tended to only take men from the middle and upper classes as officers. These men were well aware of the taboo on profanity, and so were able to avoid any awkward faux pas. Working class men typically had to work their way up from the rates, and as such were much less common as officers. The RN's massive expansion brought on by the start of the war brought in many middle class men as Hostilities Only ratings, who had to undergo that process of adjustment.