Today’s word of the day, thanks, partly, to the Old English Wordhord (https://oldenglishwordhord.com/2024/01/08/wodheortness/), is wood. But I’m not thinking of the wood that you are probably thinking of. This is an adjective that is described by Dictionary.com as “archaic,” meaning that contemporary speakers of English probably don’t use the word this way. This wood means “wild, as with rage or excitement; mad; insane” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/wood). The website provides some etymology: “First recorded before 900; Middle English wod(e), wodde, Old English wōd; cognate with Old Norse ōthr ‘mad, frantic’; akin to German Wut ‘rage,’ Old English wōth ‘song’ (because it was due to inspired madness.”

Etymonline echoes the above: “’violently insane’ (now obsolete), from Old English wod ‘mad, frenzied, from Proto-Germanic *woda- (source also of Gothic woþs ‘possessed, mad,’ Old High German wuot ‘mad, madness,’ German wut‘rage, fury’), from PIE *wet– ‘to blow; inspire, spiritually arouse;’ source of Latin vates ‘seer, poet,’ Old Irish faith ‘poet;’ ‘with a common element of mental excitement’ [Buck]. Compare Old English woþ ‘sound, melody, song,’ Old Norse oðr ‘poetry,’ and the god-name Odin.” The connection between madness and songs or poetry reminds one of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The lunatic, the lover and the poet / Are of imagination all compact (5.1.7-8).

The word on the Old English Wordhord website is actually wodheortness, which means “madness” or “Insanity.” We actually have an example of this word, in the form wedenheortness, in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Book 2, chapter 5. Bede writes of King Eadbald, “he was troubled with frequent fits of madness” (http://www.heroofcamelot.com/docs/Bede-Ecclesiastical-History.pdf). We can find the word in Middle English in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde: “He sodeynly mot falle in-to wodnesse” (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/257/257-h/257-h.htm; Book 3, line 794).

On this day in 1916, the last of the British troops left the Gallipoli peninsula, ending one of the most disastrous escapades of World War I.

The Battle of Gallipoli, or the Battle of the Dardanelles, began in February of 1915. The Entente Powers (England, France, Russia) wanted to weaken the Ottoman Empire by occupying the Dardanelles Straights from which they could bombard the Turkish capital. When the attempt to force the Straights failed, the British decided to invade Turkey with what at the time was the largest amphibious invasion in history.

Unfortunately for the British, the invasion was a disaster, even though they stayed for eight months. By the time the Brits left, both sides of the battle had experienced somewhere near 250,000 casualties: “Officially, the dead included 2,700 New Zealanders, 8,700 Australians, 9,700 French, 21,000 British and 80,000 Turkish soldiers. So by the time this ten-month First World War campaign ended, about 120,000 men had died. And the wounded numbered around 260,000. The Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs put the figures higher, recording nearly half a million casualties” (https://www.onthisday.com/articles/gallipoli-guts-glory-and-defeat).

One political leader who lost his position because of the Battle of Gallipoli was Winston Churchill. Yes, that Winston Churchill. He was the First Lord of the Admiralty and had pushed the Gallipoli campaign. Many blamed the defeat on him. He, on the other hand, blamed a lack of support for the plan. The failure was also especially painful for the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), who felt that they were used as cannon fodder by the British command. Some historians assert that the failure of the Gallipoli campaign gave the Australians and the New Zealanders a sense of their own, separate identity.

Years later, in 1971, Eric Bogle (born in Scotland but immigrated to Australia) wrote a folk song about Gallipoli that became famous, called “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.” The song has some historical inaccuracies and even an anachronism, but it reflects the attitude of many towards Gallipoli, and really to all wars. In fact, Bogle claimed that it was really more about Vietnam than about WWI. The song originally had eight verses, but Bogle later cut it down to five, and at the end it incorporates a couple of lines from the 1895 Australian folksong “Waltzing Matilda,” by Banjo Paterson.

Here are a link to the song on YouTube and the lyrics:

Now when I was a young man, I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover
From the Murray’s green basin to the dusty outback
Well, I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in 1915, my country said “son
It’s time you stopped rambling, there’s work to be done”
So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun
And they marched me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As the ship pulled away from the quay
And amidst all the cheers, the flag-waving and tears
We sailed off for Gallipoli

And how well I remember that terrible day
How our blood stained the sand and the water
And of how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk, he was waiting, he’d primed himself well
He showered us with bullets and he rained us with shell
And in five minutes flat, he’d blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia

But the band played Waltzing Matilda
When we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

And those that were left, well we tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks, I kept myself alive
Though around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I woke up in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well I wished I was dead
Never knew there was worse things than dyin’

For I’ll go no more waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and free
To hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The legless, the armless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve, to mourn, and to pity

But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared

Then they turned all their faces away
And so now every April, I sit on me porch
And I watch the parades pass before me
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reviving old dreams of past glories
And the old men march slowly, old bones stiff and sore
They’re tired old heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, “what are they marching for?”
And I ask myself the same question

But the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men still answer the call
But as year follows year, more old men disappear
Someday no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard
As they march by that billabong
Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?

(Source: LyricFind; Songwriters: Eric Bogle; The Band Played Waltzing Matilda lyrics © Music Sales Corporation, O/B/O DistroKid).

To me, the “leaders” who led the world into World War I and campaigns like Gallipoli, the Somme, and others, must all have been wood.

The image today is a photo of soldiers resting during the assault at Suvla Plain on August 21, 1915.