Men of No. 4 Commando after a raid on the French coast near Boulogne, 22 April 1942
23 July 2020
Commandos are elite, special operations soldiers, specializing in raids and operations behind enemy lines. Or at least that’s the prevalent definition today. But the word has its roots in Dutch colonial oppression in South Africa.
The word comes from the Portuguese, meaning a command or a party of soldiers. It was adopted into Afrikaans, the South African dialect of Dutch, in the sense of an armed party, specifically that of a local, paramilitary militia. It first appears in English in 1790, in a translation of naturalist François Le Vaillant’s Travels from the Cape of Good Hope. This citation is also an excellent example of how the brief usage citations found in dictionaries often do not convey the entire sense and context of usage. The Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED’s) citation, taken from a 1791 work that excepts the 1790 translation, simply says:
“A colonist,” says he [sc. Le Vaillant], “who lives [...] up the country [...] intreats a commando, which is a permission to go, with the help of his neighbours, to retake his property.”
And the OED’s definition for this sense reads:
An armed and usually mounted party of men, typically civilians, mustered, esp. against indigenous peoples, for forays, reprisals, and the recovery of stolen cattle; an expedition undertaken by such a party.
But the relevant passage in Le Vaillant’s book reads, in full:
A Colonist who lives two hundred leagues up the country, arrives at the Cape, to complain that the Caffrees have taken all his cattle, and intreats a Commando, which is permission to go, with the help of his neighbours, and re-take his property; the Governor, who either does not, or feigns not to understand the trick, adheres strictly to the facts expressed in the petition; a preamble of regular information would occasion long delays—a permission is easily given—'tis but a word—the fatal word is written, which proves a sentence of death to a thousand poor savages, who have no such defence or resources as their persecutors.
Thus the monster (regardless of religion) having compleated his business at the Cape, returns with an inhuman joy to his villainous accomplices, and extends his Commando as far as his interest requires; the massacres this occasions, is but the signal for other butcheries; for should the Caffrees have the audacity to attempt regaining any part of their lost herds. the confusion recommences, and only ceases when there are no more victims or no more plunder.
(Note that Caffrees, as spelled by Le Vaillant’s translator, is a highly offensive term today, akin to the N-word in American English.)
The brief citation does not convey the brutality with which the Dutch settlers oppressed the indigenous peoples of the region. Le Vaillant was clearly shocked by the Dutch tactics, so this is not a case of applying twenty-first century morality onto an earlier age. The OED’s definition and clipped citation are a whitewashing of the horrors of European colonial practices. (Note that the definition was written after the 1989 second edition, which reads similarly but is different; so, this is not a case of an old nineteenth-century definition just not being updated.)
Commando continued to be used in English in this sense through to the end of the nineteenth century. Then the Boer War of 1899–1902 saw the word used to refer to units in the Boer army, especially paramilitary, militia units. For instance, from the Edinburgh Evening News of 2 October 1899:
Trustworthy information has reached camp that the Boers intend attacking Dundee at an early date, and that a commando at Buffalo bridge has been detailed for this duty, and is only waiting for reinforcements.
It is during this war that the word is introduced to the British public at large, and the number of uses of the word skyrocketed. For instance, the Hansard Corpus of speeches in the British parliament records six uses of commando in the 1890s, but a total of eighty-six in the decade 1900–09.
I have also found a use of the paramilitary/militia sense of commando used in a non-South-African context. During World War II, the London Times uses the word to refer to unit of Greek resistance fighters on Crete in May 1941:
On report says that Greek passion reached almost a sublime intensity at one moment when a little half-armed commando called on a heavy concentration of German machine-gunners to surrender.
But this is not the common use of commando in that war, which introduces the sense of a unit of special operations troops, or the soldiers constituting such a unit. Winston Churchill was the first to use this sense of the word that have a record of, but he did not coin the term as it is clear from his use that this sense was already in use. On 2 July 1940, Churchill wrote to General Ismay about the German seizure of the Channel Islands:
Plans should be studied to land secretly by night on the islands and kill or capture the invaders. This is exactly one of the exploits for which the Commandos would be suited.
The name was undoubtedly adopted out of memory of the ferocity of Boer resistance in the earlier war, and the adoption resulted in commando being valorized and reclaimed as a positive term.
The existence of the special operations commando units was made public in late 1941. This mention appears in Aberdeen Press and Journal of 11 October 1941:
The secret of the “Commandos” has just been released. For more than a year they have been in existence—specially selected bodies of what the War Office last night called “Shock Troops”—men put through the most intensive training that any units of the British Army have had to undergo. [...] Men of the Commandos must be tough—as tough as the old South African Commandos during the Boer War.
From this British use doing World War II, commando has grown to unofficially refer to special operations troops and units of any nation.
It has also developed a slang sense. The phrase to go commando, meaning to forgo wearing underwear, was first identified in U.S. student slang in 1974 by linguist Connie Eble. The phrase was made famous in the 26 September 1996 episode of the sitcom Friends, “The One Where No One’s Ready,” in which the character Joey says:
It's a rented tux. Okay? I'm not gonna go commando in another man's fatigues.
The connection between commandos and underwear is uncertain. It could be a reference to the tough nature of the soldiers who don’t need comfortable clothing, or perhaps to the difficulty in obtaining fresh clothing during long-range patrols, or it simply could be a reference to being daring and unconventional.
So, commando has undergone quite a journey, from Dutch colonial oppression to elite soldiers to students going without underwear.
Sources:
A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles. Oxford University Press, 1996, s.v. commando n.
“The Coming War.” Edinburgh Evening News, 2 October 1899, 2.
Davies, Mark. (2015) Hansard Corpus. Part of the SAMUELS project.
Divine, A.D. “‘Commandos’ Our Secret Shock Troops. Press and Journal (Aberdeen), 11 October 1941, 4.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2020, s.v. commando adv.
Internet Movie Database (IMDb), accessed 22 May 2020.
Le Vaillant, François. Travels from the Cape of Good Hope, vol. 1 of 2. London: William Lane, 1790, 355–57. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
Matter, Kathy. “Slang: The Language of Students.” Lafayette Journal and Courier (Indiana), 22 October 1989, 41.
“No Respite Struggle for Crete.” Times (London), 26 May 1941, 4.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. commando, n.
Photo credit: Imperial War Museum.