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Chocolate Soldier

created by Cornflakes

(thing) by Cornflakes (1.8 y) (print)   ?   1 C! I like it! Fri Mar 29 2002 at 8:38:24

A battle reference which originated during 1894 in a play by George Bernard Shaw, known as 'Arms and the Man'. Capt Bluntschli, who was a character in the play, admits that he prefers to take chocolate rather than ammunition into battle, and is told "You are a very poor soldier -- a chocolate cream soldier". The play later became a musical and film called 'The Chocolate Soldier'.

The term was used by diggers at Gallipoli to describe members of the eighth brigade AIF who arrived in Egypt just after the Gallipoli campaign was over, and did not take part in any battles. Anzacs who arrived in Turkey after the worst battles had been fought were also labelled as 'chocs'. Diggers who had lived through the horror of war were in most cases unkind to new arrivals, who they thought 'wilted quickly in the heat', and so the chocolate soldier term became widespread. The label was abbreviated by World War 2 to 'chocko', used by AIF volunteers to describe those who had been conscripted.


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