Stoush - Korean and Vietnam Wars

Korean and Vietnam Wars

The third influence on Digger slang were Australia's involvement in the Korean War and its involvement in the Vietnam War. As with the Second World War, much of the slang was carried over, and some of it evolved. In the Second World War, a subaltern was "baggie-arsed", but was simply a "baggie" by the time of the Korean War. Similarly, the Second World War "mongaree" and "monga" for food, taken from Arabic as "mongy" was taken from the French "manger" in the First World War, and from which "hard monga" for iron rations and "soft monga" for ordinary food were derived, became "mongar", this time adopted from Italian. World War II "cock orange" for a commanding officer became a "cock oboe" in the Korean War.

The Korean War introduced further words to Digger slang, which were re-used in the Vietnam War. One such was "hutchie", the equivalent to World War I "dugout", taken from the Japanese word for a house. The Vietnam War introduced "noggies" for Vietnamese in general ("gooks" being the North Vietnamese in particular), "frag" (shared with U.S. military slang) for a foolhardy officer killed by his own men, "bush-bash" (a reference to four-wheel driving practices in the Australian Outback) for a jungle patrol, "mammasan" for a madam of a brothel, and "Saigon rose" (or "Vietnamese rose") for a particular sexually transmitted disease. Other Digger slang words coined during the peacetime after the Second World War and that were then used in the wars were "nasho" for a national serviceman.