OPeration Dragoon D+2 nead Frejus Fr. L-141 was shunted off to flush out some germans in the Frejus area. we halted for more orders, when a little girl came up to see the American Gis. A buddy got oout his phrase book to axk for eggs! It had the singular euf for one egg. The french don,t use that miuch. He tries it any way. The proper way is to aks for eggs sounds llike( Le zoo) We did not know it at that time.
so he gives euf- no response so he euf eufs ! She shakes her head and goes home and cmoes back with a pup ! The buddy says NO euf euf ! She says as she ppoints to the pup euf euf and shakes her head yes. He could not refuse her offer.
How ever, when he saw she would miss her pup he gave it back before we left.
That one belongs in the Reader's Digest under Humor in Uniform. You should submit that. Euf, Euf...
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In our phrase book we learned hoow to say How are you, comin talley vu ? and also learned that it was different in the Soouth of France. Como sava ?
Later when we got further north when one would ask HOw do you say it in southern France we,d say comin tallley vu, ya all !
Ah, a bit of hearty laughter au francais, ya'll
Paul: Its funny the way some of the foreign language words got "basterdized" into
the G.I. language. Like (mugi ?) for food or eating, like (Parti?) for getting to hell out
of a place, and (beacaup ?) for many. Took me years to get it out of my vocabulary as
people back home couldnt understand what I was saying. Also certain "bad words" we
commonly used added to them which for a while caused me much embarasment for a
while until I got civilized again. My Dad who was a badly wounded ETO vet and sent
back home prior to me, would just look at me with a smile and shake his head, like "no",
but it kind of shook up the rest a bit. Didnt take too long to get civillized again though..
I believe you were with the 36th Div. Seems like the 36th, the 45th and our 3rd Div
were kind of brother outfits many times in many places.. Joe
It is the reproduction of the textbook of the American soldier landing in France. that I bought in France .
That is great. Reading it made me feel like I was back in French class!